Dinner becomes something I didn't expect—a celebration.
Maria serves the food without making eye contact, her movements quick and embarrassed, and the second she retreats to the kitchen, Jake catches my eye across the table.
"Did you see her face?" His voice carries barely contained laughter. "I thought she was going to spontaneously combust."
"Stop." I press my napkin to my mouth, fighting the giggles building in my chest. "She's probably traumatized. We're terrible people."
"We're happy people." He reaches across the table, his fingers finding mine. "There's a difference."
The giggles escape despite my best efforts. Inappropriate. Uncontrollable. The kind of laughter that only comes when you've done something reckless and survived it.
"The elevator." I shake my head, still not quite believing it happened. "Of all the places to completely lose control—"
"Not my finest strategic thinking." Jake's grin is unrepentant. "But I don't regret a single second."
"Neither do I." The admission comes out soft. Real. "Even if Maria never looks at me directly again."
"Worth it." He squeezes my hand, his thumb tracing patterns across my knuckles. "Though I have to say—what we did in that elevator? That was just the beginning."
Heat floods my cheeks. "Jake—"
"I've been thinking about what else I want to do with you." His voice drops lower, rougher. "About bending you over that ridiculous marble counter in the kitchen. Taking you against the floor-to-ceiling windows so all of Manhattan can see you come apart."
"Stop." My face burns despite everything we've already done. "You can't just say things like that at dinner."
"I can say whatever I want." His eyes hold mine, dark with promise. "And later tonight, I plan to do everything I'm saying."
The evening mellows after that. We migrate to the living room with books and coffee, settling into opposite ends of the couch with our feet tangled in the middle. Jake wears his reading glasses again, and I find myself watching him more than reading my own book.
Domestic. Peaceful. Almost normal.
For a few hours, Manhattan stops existing. The press. The board. The performance. All of it fades into background noise while we simply exist together.
Then Zachary appears.
I hear his footsteps before I see him—precise, measured, wrong somehow. He stops in the doorway with his tablet clutched against his chest and an expression that makes my stomach drop.
"The assistant seems to have taken up residence." Jake doesn't look up from his book, his tone deliberately casual. "Do you actually live here now, or just show up at inconvenient moments?"
"The important thing is that you don't do the same, Mr. Sullivan." Zachary's voice carries an edge I've never heard before.
I sit up straighter, the peaceful bubble of the evening popping around me. "What's happened?"
Zachary crosses to where we're sitting and sets his tablet on the coffee table with deliberate care. His face is pale beneath the professional composure.
"Security discovered something online." Each word lands like a stone. "A video. From the elevator."
My blood turns to ice.
"Your encounter." He doesn't look at either of us. "Everything. It's been posted publicly."
"How long ago?" My voice sounds strange. Distant.
"Long enough." Zachary finally meets my eyes, and I see something like pity there. "It's already viral."
Jake sets down his book slowly. His jaw is tight, processing. "There are cameras in the elevator."
The observation is obvious. Obvious and devastating.
I'm already spiraling, pieces clicking together in my mind with horrifying clarity. "The breakdown wasn't mechanical failure." The words come out barely above a whisper. "Elevators in buildings like this don't just stop. Someone orchestrated this."
"It appears that way." Zachary's voice is clipped.
Panic claws up my throat. My father. The press. Everything I've built with Henderson, with the board, with Victoria—
"He can't find out." I'm on my feet without deciding to stand, hands shaking. "My father is dying in a hospital bed. This will destroy him. And the press—they're already circling. This gives them everything they need to—"
"This is what happens when judgment fails." Zachary's tone turns sharp. Scolding. "When carelessness outweighs consequence. Both of you should have known better."
"Shut up." Jake rises from the couch, his voice dangerous. "Addison is my woman. We haven't done anything criminal. Two consenting adults—"
"Two consenting adults in an explicit video that's now everywhere." Zachary doesn't back down. "Do you understand what this means? For her reputation? For the company?"
"I understand you need to watch your mouth." Jake conveyed the threat with his tone of voice.
"And you need to understand who you are, Mr. Sullivan." Zachary steps closer, matching Jake's aggression. "How old you are. How this looks to the world. A forty-three-year-old man with a twenty-one-year-old woman half his age—"
"Age has nothing to do with—"
"It has everything to do with perception." Zachary's voice rises over Jake's. "And perception is reality in this world. Something you've clearly never bothered to learn."
"I've learned plenty about people who hide behind professionalism while manipulating situations to their advantage—"
"Stop." My voice comes out thin. Weak. Neither of them hears me.
"You think I manipulated this?" Zachary's laugh is bitter. "I've been protecting her from the consequences of your presence since you arrived."
"Protecting her? You've been isolating her. Turning her against—"
"Please stop." Louder now, but still not loud enough.
They're arguing over my head. Voices rising. Words becoming weapons. Neither one pausing long enough to notice me standing between them, drowning in their conflict.
I think about the elevator. The recklessness. The joy.
I think about how that joy is now a weapon someone will use to destroy me.
Tears slide down my cheeks. Silent. Hot. The same tears I cried in my father's hospital room, only these ones feel different. These ones feel like losing.
"—don't presume to lecture me about what she needs—"
"—exactly the attitude that created this disaster—"
Their voices blur together. I watch them fight and realize something terrible.
Neither man is looking at me.
Neither man has noticed I'm crying.
Neither man can see past his own position long enough to recognize that I'm shattering right in front of them.
I was wrong about the elevator. Wrong about what it meant.
That wasn't liberation. That was the beginning of the end.