Page 23 of Suite 7

My jaw tightens.

“And let me set the record straight. Damon was wrong.” Simple. Immediate. No softening. “And every part of you that believed him is also wrong.”

“You don’t know⁠—“

“Yes I do. Because you came here and sat in Dominic’s office and told him your deepest truth. You walked in here tonight and stayed. You fought me through every single thing I gave you—“ his voice doesn’t waver, “—because you are constitutionally, fundamentally incapable of doing anything halfway.”

“Yes.” My voice comes out raw and a little wild. “That’s exactly the problem. Thank you for clarifying.”

“That’s not a flaw, Vera.”

“It clearly is, because I just spent an hour⁠—”

“Stop.”

Not loud. Not harsh. Just — final.

My mouth closes.

He holds my gaze for a long moment, long enough that I feel the full weight of his attention, long enough that I can’t look away.

“Strength and surrender aren’t opposites,” he says. “They’re the same material under different conditions. But you can’t control your way into letting go. You’ve been trying to manage the surrender, and it doesn’t work like that. It was never going to work like that. That’s not your failure. That’s just physics.”

“Then how⁠—”

“You give me the reins.” His voice settles. Lower, certain. “You stop running the analysis and you let me think for both of us. Your mind, your body, your responses — they belong to me when you’re in this room. Not because I’ve taken them.” He holds my gaze. “Because you’re choosing to hand them over.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“I don’t need you to know. I need you to try.” He waits. “And when the voice comes back, you look at me. Right here. Let me be louder than it.”

I look at him. Really look, the way he’s asking me to.

His eyes are steady. No judgment in them, no impatience, no trace of the frustration I’ve been bracing for. Just Kane, close and certain, watching me the way he has watched me all night.

“Do you want to stop?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” I look away. At the floor. At my hands in my lap, the silk still loose around my wrists.

“Vera.” Quiet. “Look at me.”

I make myself find his eyes again.

“Tell me what color it is.”

The voice in my head says red. Says you’ve already proven everything Damon said, just go, just stop, just⁠—

I breathe in. All the way down, the way I couldn’t manage an hour ago.

His eyes don’t leave mine.

I breathe out.

And underneath the voice, underneath the fear and the shame and the years of believing I was broken — something else. Something that has been here all night, patient, waiting for the rest of me to quiet down enough to hear it.

“Green,” I say, steadier than I expected.

His expression doesn’t change. But something in it warms, almost imperceptibly, like a light turned up by a single degree.