POV Eric
Watching Floris come undone on that stage was fucking magical.
Pure art. The way she surrendered while keeping that spark of defiance that made her impossible to predict? That was everything I’d been chasing without knowing it.
And then I went full amateur hour and said three words that should’ve stayed locked in whatever passes for my soul.
“I love you.”
Jesus Christ. I don’t even know what came over me.
Maybe it was seeing her trust me enough to be that vulnerable in front of strangers. Maybe it was the way she looked at me afterward—like I’d hung the moon instead of orchestrating her public breakdown.
Maybe I actually meant it. Which was terrifying on levels I didn’t have therapy for.
I carried her back to her room like she was made of glass, watched her fall asleep with her head on my chest, and spent twenty minutes just… existing. No calculations. No power plays. Just Eric Brighton having feelings like some kind of rookie.
Pathetic.
Sia was lurking in the hallway when I finally dragged myself away from Floris’s room. Arms crossed, leaning against the wall like death in designer clothes.
She didn’t say a word. Smart—she knew better than to start a fight she couldn’t win. But the look she gave me could’ve cut diamonds.
‘You’re destroying her,’ her expression screamed. ‘And you’re too selfish to care.’
Maybe. Probably. But I was done taking relationship advice from someone who’d spent fifteen years pining for a man who’d never love her back.
I walked past her without acknowledgement. She could glare all she wanted—I had bigger problems than her wounded feelings.
My office felt different at 3 AM. Quieter. Less like a command center, more like a confessional where I could sit with the uncomfortable reality of what I’d become.
I’d told Floris I loved her. Actually said it out loud, to another person, without it being manipulation or strategy.
What the actual fuck was happening to me?
My phone buzzed. Message from an unknown number, which should’ve been impossible with my security protocols.
Video file. No sender ID.
The preview thumbnail made my blood freeze.
My mother. Helena Brighton in all her psychological warfare glory, standing over my father like a queen surveying her broken kingdom.
I knew this footage. Had watched it obsessively as a teenager, trying to decode the mechanics of power and submission. The blueprint for every twisted relationship I’d ever constructed.
I hit play.
There was my father, on his knees in their bedroom, begging for forgiveness that would never come. My mother, cold and calculating, making him grovel for scraps of affection she’d never intended to give.
“Please, Helena,” his voice cracked through my phone speakers. “Just tell me what you want.”
“What I want,” she replied, voice like ice, “is for you to remember your place.”
The same words. The same scene. The same humiliation that had taught me everything about breaking people.
But this wasn’t my private collection anymore.
This was viral.
I scrolled through the notifications flooding my phone. Social media. News outlets. Business networks. The video was everywhere, spreading like digital wildfire with headlines that made my chest tight.
“Brighton Systems CEO’s Dark Family Secrets Exposed”
“Corporate Psychopath or Victim? The Helena Brighton Tapes”
“The Making of a Monster: Inside Eric Brighton’s Twisted Childhood”
My hands were shaking. Actually fucking shaking like I was some kind of amateur who’d never handled a crisis before.
Someone had weaponized my deepest shame. Turned my psychological foundation into public entertainment.
And there was exactly one person on earth who knew about these tapes.
Floris.
The woman I’d just confessed my love to. The cybersecurity expert who could hack Pentagon systems before breakfast. The girl who’d looked at me with such trust and vulnerability that I’d actually believed she was different.
But maybe she was different. Maybe she was smarter than all the others combined.
Maybe while I was busy breaking her, she was busy destroying me.
I stared at my phone, watching my father’s humiliation play out for the ten thousandth time, and felt something I hadn’t experienced since childhood.
Fear.
My phone rang and I knew exactly who it was. I picked up my voice shaking. “Mother.”