Kilian turns back, his expression shifting from smug satisfaction to curiosity. The warehouse suddenly feels smaller, like the walls are listening.
"You're ready to come home?" His voice carries that particular brand of hope that sounds like ownership.
"Not exactly." I stand, even though nobody said I could, because fuck asking permission in my own kidnapping. "What if I work for you instead?"
The thugs exchange glances like NPCs witnessing dialogue they weren't programmed for. Kilian's eyebrows do this thing where they're trying to be skeptical but land somewhere around intrigued.
"Work for me? Princess, you can barely manage your coursework."
"But I can manage something you need—access." I move closer, watching his pupils dilate like I'm a pharmaceutical he's been craving. "Campus is a closed system. You need someone on the inside for your little side business."
Here's the thing about dangerous men: they think they invented danger. But they've never been a nineteen-year-old girl who learned survival before she learned algebra. I knew about Kilian's pharmaceutical entrepreneurship before our second date. The mysterious packages, the coded phone calls, the associates who looked like they majored in intimidation with a minor in breaking kneecaps.
"How do you—"
"The same way I know your Tuesday shipments come through the marina, and your contact at the medical school just got cold feet after that DEA raid in September." I trace my finger along the nearest crate, leaving a line in the dust. "You need a new pipeline. Young, innocent-looking, already established on campus. Someone nobody would suspect."
"You're suggesting you become my drug mule?"
"I'm suggesting a mutually beneficial arrangement. I make your deliveries, you keep those photos buried deeper than your emotional capacity."
He laughs, but it's not amusement—it's reassessment. Like he's seeing me for the first time as something other than a collectible he misplaced.
"And what makes you think I'd trust you with my business?"
"Because you don't have to trust me. You just have to know I'm more afraid of poverty than I am of you." I step into his space, close enough that he can smell Victor on me, though he doesn't know that's what it is. "Plus, you'd have leverage. Your courier with a documented history of intimate photos? That's insurance you can take to the bank. Or the police. Or my scholarship committee."
His hand finds my waist, and I don't flinch even though my skin tries to file for immediate evacuation. "This isn't what I want from you, Elisa."
"But it's what you'll take, isn't it? Because having me useful is better than not having me at all."
"You've gotten harder since you left."
"I've gotten smarter. There's a difference."
"Is there?" His other hand comes up to my throat, fingers tracing the marks Victor left. "Because smart girls don't come to warehouse meetings with mysterious bruises."
"Maybe they do if it gets them what they want."
"And what do you want?"
"Freedom with conditions beats captivity with comfort."
He's fully hard now—I can feel it against my hip, and the familiar revulsion mixes with something worse: the memory of when that used to make me feel powerful instead of puke-y.
"Signal your men to leave," I tell him, my voice dropping into that register that used to make him sign checks without reading them.
"Why would I do that?"
"Because you're about to fuck your newest employee, and they don't have the right pay grade for that show."
He waves them off without breaking eye contact. The door closes with an echo that sounds like fate sealing itself.
"Get on your knees," he commands.
"No." I push him backward until he hits the chair. "You get on yours."
"Elisa—"
"You want me to work for you? Then you work for me first. Kneel."
The power dynamic shifts like tectonic plates. He actually does it—this forty-five-year-old man with more money than morals drops to his knees on the concrete floor.
I hike up my skirt, revealing that I never put my underwear back on after Victor. The bruises on my inner thighs look like a constellation of someone else's desire, but Kilian's too far gone to do the math on whose.
"Make me come, and maybe I'll consider your offer."
He dives in like a man who just discovered his favorite restaurant is closing forever. His tongue is desperate, practiced, trying to prove something about his worth that has nothing to do with his bank account. The thing about letting your enemy eat you out is that it's the ultimate power move—they're literally on their knees, serving you, while you plan their destruction from above.
The fact that I'm still swollen from Victor, still carrying the evidence of his careful attention (the man actually brought condoms to his own moral downfall, prepared bastard), makes this feel like biological warfare. Kilian's tasting another man's conquest without knowing it, and the betrayal makes me come faster than expected, my body apparently really into psychological violence as foreplay.
"Good boy," I gasp, and his whole body shudders at the praise. "Now sit."
He scrambles onto the chair, already unzipping, his cock spring free like it's been waiting for this specific moral violation.
"You're different," he pants as I straddle him. "God, you're so different."
"I'm exactly the same," I tell him, sinking down with the kind of practiced motion that makes men think they're special. "You just never bothered to look past the performance."
I ride him mechanically, efficiently, the way you'd operate any tool designed for a specific purpose. He comes embarrassingly fast the first time, but stays hard because Viagra is basically his generation's participation trophy.
"Again," he begs, and I comply because two orgasms are better leverage than one.
The second time takes longer. I zone out, thinking about Victorian literature and whether I can still salvage my Political Thought grade, while he whispers all the things he wants to do to me, own me, save me, keep me.
When he finally finishes, I climb off like I'm dismounting gym equipment.
"Every Sunday," he says, tucking himself away with shaking hands. "You make my deliveries. Three locations, always different. Twenty percent of the gross."
"Thirty."
"Twenty-five."
"Deal."
He stands, straightening his suit like dignity is something you can smooth back into place. "This doesn't mean you're free, princess."
"No," I agree, already walking toward the door. "It means I'm useful. And useful women are harder to disappear."
"Elisa?" He calls as I reach for the handle. "Those photos still exist. This arrangement doesn't change that."
"I know," I tell him, not turning around. "But now you need me functional more than you need me frightened."
Outside, dawn is fully committed to exposing everyone's bad decisions. I've got Victor's bruises under Kilian's spit, a drug delivery schedule in my future, and a Political Thought paper due in six hours.
Just another overachiever, collecting complications like extra credit.