Page 54 of The Boss
He crossed to the desk. She rounded to the other side. Paper lay in ordered stacks, evidence logs and manifests and names like little landmines waiting for feet. He dragged a folder free and flipped through pages, reading lines he already knew by heart. She stood close enough that when she leaned in he smelled her skin, the clean note under his jacket where his scent clung to her. It messed with his focus more than he liked.
“Here,” she said, tapping a line. “Vendor sign-ins. Final sweep at 7:45. The device was timed for fifteen minutes after thestart of the conference. This delivery is stamped after the sweep. Too late to be part of it. But no one flagged it.”
“Because the manifest matched the contracted florist’s spec.” His mouth went hard. “Clipboards lie. Men help them.”
“Which men?”
He didn’t answer. He was thinking of faces. Henry on nights. Rolf on days. Two new hires from Magnus’s list. Afloat guard whose name he hated the sound of for no good reason. It was as though all the oxygen had been pulled out of theroom.
She watched him think, read the shift in his shoulders, the way his eyes dropped half a centimeter when he was counting backward through time. “If you decide Rocco did this because it’s tidy, you’ll miss the hand inside your own house,” she said. “And that hand will use me again. Use you. Because it worked.”
The words hit him where nothing else could. He snapped the folder shut and stepped into her space, into the gravity that always yanked him closer than sanity, closer than good sense. “You think I don’t know what it means to be used?” he said softly. “I was raised to be a sharp edge. I’ve been used like a knife my entire life.”
“And I was raised to be currency,” she answered in the same soft tone. “I know what it’s like to be traded and smiled at and told to say thank you.” She swallowed, throat working. “I’m not a bargaining chip. Not for Stellan. Not for you. And not for your Brand.”
“Our Brand,” he corrected. “You think the Brand is a cage.”
“I think you want to use it like one when you’re scared.”
“Scared?” Amusement filled him. He let the word curl in the air, then cut it off sharp. “I don’t scare. Not ever.”
Her smile was almost kind and that made it worse. “Then admit it shakes you when it’s me.”
He had nothing to say to that, because it was true and he didn’t know how to hold truth gently. He only knew how to crush it until it fit hishand.
“Tell me what you want,” hesaid.
“I want to go to my apartment and get my things.” She said it simply, like an itinerary. “I want my papers, my passport, the ring I kept from my mother that I swore I’d never let Stellan sell. Iwant more shoes and clothes that don’t smell like you.” She paused, then added, quieter, “I want to decide to come back to this room. Not be trapped in it.”
Something hard and mean slid under his skin. “You want out.”
“I want the choice,” she said. “If I walk back in, it’ll be because I chose you. Not because you locked a door.”
He thought about keys. He thought about all the ways he knew to keep something precious safe. Put it where no one could reach it and post a man with a gun. He thought about how much he hated the picture of her walking away and not turning around.
“Go after breakfast,” he said atlast.
“I already ate.”
He gave in. “Tomas will take you.”
Her chin tipped. “I can take a cab.”
“You can take my car.” The words came out flat. Command. He didn’t back away from them. “You’ll be shadowed. He’ll keep ten paces when you want space and one pace when I say so. He’ll stand in the hall while you pack and he’ll check the locks whenyou leave. If anyone we don’t know breathes on your door, he’ll put them to sleep and I’ll decide if they wake.”
She stared at him a long moment, trying to decide if she should fight him on this and risk losing the sliver of ground he’d just given. Finally she nodded. “Fine.”
He should’ve let her walk out then. He should’ve stayed at the window and watched the river and called Alaric to pull vendor rosters until the pages bled. Instead he heard himself say, “One more thing,” and he crossed the space and caught her mouth withhis.
It wasn’t a kiss meant to change her mind. It was a collision. He tasted coffee gone cold on his own tongue and the clean heat of her. She made a sound that wasn’t consent and wasn’t protest. It was something in between, the place where their fights always lived, that narrow strip where everything burned hotter.
He cupped the back of her neck and dragged her closer. His jacket slid off her shoulders and hit the floor. His thumb found the pulse at her throat and pressed, picking up on the rabbit-quick thrum that matched his own. She opened to him. He didn’t ask. Hetook.
Papers skidded when he pushed her backward into the desk. Apen rolled and dropped with a small sound that was indecent in the quiet. He lifted her onto the edge and stepped between her knees. Her hands went to his shirt and fumbled with buttons and then gave up and ripped. He heard stitches give and didn’tcare.
“Leif,” she said against his mouth, and his name in her voice made something in him uncoil.
“Don’t run,” he said into hers. “Not from this.”
