POV: Jasmine
The door barely closes behind Jackson before the brothers explode.
"Absolutely fucking not." Liam's voice cracks like a whip, his usual warmth incinerated by rage so hot it transforms him into someone I barely recognize. "I'll kill him before I let him control her. You don't know what he's capable of—what he did to women when Mom was alive, what he's done since. He's a predator wearing a suit, and I won't hand her over like a sacrifice."
"And what's your alternative?" Asher's voice is cold, calculated, his grumpy demeanor hardened into something far more dangerous. "Without his intervention, the company dies within six months. The lawsuit drains resources faster than we can generate them. Stock continues hemorrhaging. Artists flee to competitors who aren't drowning in scandal." He spreads his hands, the gesture brutal in its simplicity. "Simple math, Liam. We can hate him and still need him."
"There has to be another way—"
"There isn't." Asher cuts him off without mercy. "I've run the numbers a hundred times. Without outside capital injection, without his connections to stabilize the board, we're done. Everything Mom built, everything we've tried to protect—gone."
Finn paces the length of the conference room like a caged animal, his usual playboy deflection stripped away completely. He won't meet anyone's eyes, his jaw working silently, hands clenched at his sides. The transformation is almost more unsettling than Liam's rage—Finn without humor is Finn without armor.
"He'll destroy her." Finn's voice comes out raw, scraped clean of charm. "You both know what he does to women. How he breaks them down piece by piece until there's nothing left. And you're actually considering handing her over?"
"I'm considering keeping us alive," Asher snaps. "Someone has to think strategically while you two spiral into emotion."
"Emotion?" Liam advances on his brother, and for a moment I think they might actually come to blows. "She's not a chess piece, Asher. She's—"
"I know exactly what she is." Asher doesn't back down. "Which is why I'm trying to find a solution that doesn't end with all of us destroyed. Including her."
I watch them argue—three men debating my fate like I'm not standing right here. My body. My future. My choices. Reduced to variables in their calculations, a problem to be solved rather than a person to be consulted.
Something snaps inside me.
My phone is in my hand before I consciously decide to move. Fingers flying across the screen, typing words that feel like swallowing glass.
I accept your terms.
Send.
The silence that follows the soft whoosh of the departing message is deafening. Three sets of eyes turn to me, confusion shifting rapidly to horror as they realize what I've done.
"What did you just do?" Liam's voice is barely a whisper.
"I accepted." I hold up my phone, showing them the sent message. "One week of professional assessment. Those were his terms."
"You can't—" He reaches for me, desperation cracking through the rage. "Jasmine, you don't understand. He's not just difficult, he's dangerous. The things he's done to women who work for him, women who trusted him—"
"I know exactly what he is." My voice comes out steady despite the terror clawing at my chest, trying to shred me from the inside out. "I've known men like him my whole life. Foster fathers who looked at me too long. Social workers who touched too much. I know what monsters look like when they're wearing expensive suits and charming smiles."
"Then why?" Finn's question is raw, anguished. "Why would you walk into that willingly?"
"Because this is who I am." I meet each of their eyes in turn—Liam's desperate green, Asher's calculating gray, Finn's wounded blue. "I'm the woman who sold her virginity to save her brother from loan sharks. I'm the woman who walked back into Cadence Records knowing everyone thought I was a whore. I survive impossible situations because the alternative is watching people I love suffer." I take a breath. "One week of professional assessment. I survived the auction. I can survive your father."
"Jasmine—"
"It's done." I cut Liam off before his optimism can find a foothold. "The message is sent. He'll have seen it by now. So instead of arguing about whether I should have done it, help me figure out how to get through it."
Monday morning arrives like an execution date. I reach Cadence Records at seven thirty, coffee prepared exactly as Jackson specified—black, two sugars, temperature precise. My armor for the day is carefully chosen: tailored slacks, button-down blouse buttoned to the collar, professional and covered. Nothing that could be misinterpreted. Nothing that invites attention.
Jackson arrives at eight, settling into Liam's office like a king reclaiming his throne. He surveys my preparation with clinical detachment—the coffee, the organized files, my rigid posture—and I can't tell if I've passed or failed some invisible test.
"Come here." He doesn't look up from the documents he's reviewing, but the command is absolute.
I approach the desk, stopping at what I hope is a professional distance. He lets the silence stretch, pen scratching across paper, making me wait. Making me understand who controls this room, this company, this week.
Finally, he sets down the pen and looks at me. Really looks, his gaze traveling from my sensible heels up my covered legs, lingering on my buttoned collar with something that might be amusement or might be displeasure.
"Too conservative." He rises, circling around the desk toward me, and I force myself to hold my ground. "Too covered. Not what I want to see when I look up from my desk."
"I dressed professionally, as you requested—"
"I requested you to work with me." He stops behind me, close enough that I can smell his cologne—expensive and suffocating, the scent of a man who has never heard the word no. "Professionalism means meeting the expectations of your supervisor. And my expectations include a more... accessible aesthetic."
Every muscle in my body screams to run. To turn around and walk out and never come back. But I think of Liam's shaking hands, Asher's brutal calculations, Finn's hollow eyes. I think of the company bleeding out, of everything they've built crumbling because I wasn't strong enough to endure one week.
His hand closes around my shoulder—possessive, proprietary, fingers pressing into my flesh through the fabric of my blouse.
"We're going to have a very productive week, Jasmine. Very productive indeed."
And I realize with sickening clarity that professional assessment was never what he wanted.