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The elevator descends. Floor thirty-eight. Thirty-seven. Thirty-six. With each passing number, my panic rises.

He kissed me. He kissed me right there for the whole world to see; hell, I’d be surprised if the tabloids aren’t already mocking up tomorrow’s front page.

And he won’t explain a bit of it?!

The elevator deposits us in the lobby, and Lukas’s hand finds the small of my back, steering me past the security guards whose jaws have collectively dropped to the marble floor. I’m still firing questions at him, but he deflects every single one.

“Lukas, you can’t just?—”

“Later.”

“But the company?—”

“Later.”

“Kir—”

“Rae.” He sighs. “Later.”

His chauffeur is waiting beside a black Mercedes, engine already growling. He opens the back door for us without a word, and Lukas helps me inside before sliding in beside me.

We drive through Manhattan in silence. I watch familiar landmarks streak past my window and try to orient myself in a world that’s suddenly gone topsy-turvy.

When we finally stop, it’s not at the luxurious penthouse I’ve always imagined him living in. Instead, we’re in front of a stoic brownstone in Brooklyn, tucked away on a tree-lined street that feels like a secret the city forgot to share.

Lukas opens my door and offers his hand. “Come,” he says softly.

Despite every rational instinct screaming at me to run, I take it.

But I dig my heels in when we get to the door. “Lukas, I really can’t… I can’t be here right now.” I swallow down the surge of panic in my throat. “I need to call Jillian. I need to figure out what this means for my job and for my brother’s treatment payments and for the inevitable press shitstorm that’s about to rain down on both of us?—”

“Stay.”

I blink. “Huh?”

“Stay,” he says again.

It’s the change in his tone that gets me. For weeks now, he’s growled every single command at me in a way that makes my knees weak and my common sense evaporate. This is… not that.

This is aplea.

“You want to know something, Rae?” he asks in that soft, plaintive rasp. “I’m terrified right now.”

I actually take a step back.

“Not of Kir.” He shakes his head slowly. “Or of losing the company. I’ve lost things before. I know how to survive that.”

He rubs at his beard and gazes at the sky overhead.

“I’m terrified because I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be anything other than what I’ve been for eighteen years. Cold. Controlled. Untouchable.” He reaches out to cup my cheek in his grizzled palm. “But you make me want to try.”

I stare at him in disbelief. The whole way here, I told myself again and again that I’m just collateral in this strange war between father and son. This doesn’t have anything to do with me, not really—I’m nothing more than a symbol, a proxy for the real thing.

Now, Lukas is standing here, telling me that’s false.

Itisabout me.

“I’m terrified ofyou,” I whisper back hoarsely, stunned by what is happening. “Of what you are and what you’ve done. Of what you make me want.”