Violet’s POV
The corridor outside Adison's office feels like a war room aftermath.
Muffled voices seep through the heavy door—lawyers dissecting strategies in language I can't quite decipher, throwing around terms that sound important and intimidating.
Walter's lawsuit has detonated in the middle of everything good, and I'm standing here feeling useless while Adison fights battles that should be mine too.
He's my blood, after all. Even if I wish otherwise.
The door opens, and three lawyers emerge with those carefully neutral expressions that mean everything's terrible but they're too professional to show it. They nod at me in passing, briefcases clutched like shields, already moving toward the elevators.
Then Zachary appears, closing the door behind him with deliberate care.
Adison doesn't follow.
"How's she holding up?" I ask, stepping forward.
Zachary's response comes clipped and distant. "Don't disturb her right now."
He retrieves his tablet from a side table, fingers already swiping through screens with practiced efficiency. His voice shifts into that professional monotone I've come to hate. "Meeting with the board at two. Conference call with the investors at four. She needs the quarterly reports reviewed before—"
"Stop." The word comes out sharper than I expected.
He pauses, finally looking at me with those dark eyes that used to hold warmth. Now they're just careful. Controlled. Empty of everything that mattered.
"I need to get back to my office," he says, already moving past me.
I've had enough.
For weeks, Zachary has been avoiding me—maintaining careful distance, constructing walls of professionalism where none existed before. The man who held me while I cried, who called me a good girl with heat in his voice, has vanished behind corporate armor.
"What changed?" I plant myself directly in his path, forcing him to acknowledge my existence. "Between us. What the hell changed?"
The question catches him off-guard. His expression flickers—surprise, something darker—before recovering with that infuriating smoothness. "We're colleagues, Violet. Both friends of Adison. That's all we've ever been."
He adjusts his tablet, avoiding my gaze. "I don't understand what you're implying."
"Bullshit." I step closer, anger rising hot in my chest. "You used to be relaxed around me. Confident. Present. Now you're just another corporate rat scurrying through your hierarchy, and I hate it."
His jaw tightens at the comparison. "Professional boundaries exist for a reason."
"There was never anything professional between us." My voice drops lower, deliberate. "And we both know it."
Zachary opens his mouth to respond, but I'm done listening to careful deflections and corporate speak. I'm done being managed like a problem that needs solving.
I close the distance between us until I can feel his warmth, until the expensive cologne he wears fills my lungs with every breath.
"You wanted me to be a good girl who listens." I tilt my head back, meeting his eyes with a challenge burning through my veins. "But I've never been like that. So what exactly do you plan to do about it?"
His pupils dilate. His breath catches—just slightly, but I notice. I notice everything.
Then his phone shatters the moment.
Zachary answers with a curse barely contained, his free hand gripping the tablet so hard his knuckles go white. "Yes. No, the projections are— I understand. Give me ten minutes."
But his voice has changed. Dropped into something rougher, strained, edged with frustration that bleeds through his professional mask.
When he finishes, he sets his phone and tablet aside on the side table with careful, deliberate precision. Each movement controlled. Measured.
Then he pulls me toward him.
The motion isn't gentle. His hand wraps around my wrist with enough pressure to leave heat in its wake, tugging until I'm pressed against his chest, caught between the wall and his body.
"You're playing with fire." His warning comes soft and dangerous, breath ghosting across my lips. "I'm a man married to his work, Violet. I understand what you're offering, but I need you to think very carefully about what happens next."
Something flickers in his eyes—concern mixed with hunger that makes my stomach flip.
"If you don't want to be used and discarded when I'm done, you need to stop. Right now."
Fear lances through me, sharp and electric.
I ignore it.
"I don't want to stop." The words come out steadier than I feel inside, where my heart is trying to break through my ribcage.
Something shifts in his expression. The careful control cracks just enough to reveal the predator underneath—the man who knows exactly what he wants and isn't afraid to take it.
His lips hover close enough that I can taste his breath. The tension coils unbearably tight, winding through muscle and bone until I can't tell where anticipation ends and fear begins.
My eyes flutter closed.
"We have work to do." His voice cuts through the moment like ice water. "The report I requested an hour ago is due in thirty minutes."
Then he turns me around with firm hands, and delivers a sharp slap against my butt that resonates through every nerve ending I possess.
"Make your work, Violet."
He walks away without looking back, collecting his phone and tablet with movements that suggest nothing just happened. The door to his office closes with a quiet click that somehow sounds louder than slamming would have.
I stand frozen in the corridor.
Pulse racing. Skin burning where his hand landed. My entire body vibrates with tension that has nowhere to go.
Completely uncertain whether I just won or lost.
The lawyers are gone. Adison is still behind her closed door. And Zachary is in his office pretending we're nothing but colleagues while my butt still stings from his hand.
I press my palm against the wall for balance, trying to remember how breathing works.
This feeling—this combustible mix of frustration and desire and fury—is either going to destroy me or transform me into something stronger.
Right now, standing here with my heart in my throat and my body still humming from his touch, I honestly can't tell which.
But I know one thing with absolute certainty: I'm not stopping.