Ava didn't walk out of his office.
She couldn't. Not with her resignation letter lying on his desk like a useless threat. Not with the truth about her mother still rattling in her head. Not with Lucien standing there—raw, vulnerable, almost unrecognizable.
Instead, she bent, picked up the cardboard box she'd abandoned at the door, and carried it back to his desk. She set it beside the letter. The gesture felt symbolic. A quiet decision. Not a promise to stay forever, but a choice to remain—for now. Long enough to understand what was really happening between them.
"I need answers," she said, her voice low but steady. "Real ones. No more half-truths. No more games. If I'm going to decide whether to stay or walk away, I need to know who you actually are."
Lucien studied her. For a long beat, he didn't move. Something flickered in his eyes—relief, maybe. Or exhaustion. Then he gestured toward the leather couch in the corner of the office. She'd seen it before, of course, but never him sitting on it.
"Sit," he said. But this time it wasn't a command. It was an invitation.
She crossed the room and sank into the cushions. It felt strange—no desk between them, no physical barrier reinforcing his power. Just two people about to have a conversation that could tilt everything.
Lucien took the opposite end of the couch. He kept some space between them, but the distance only seemed to underline how close this really was. He looked tired, she realized. Not the kind of tired an expensive suit could hide. The kind that lived in his eyes, his shoulders.
"What do you want to know?" he asked.
"Everything." The word came out sharper than she intended. "Why you helped my mother. Why you hired me when I wasn't qualified. Why you've been so… obsessed with controlling every piece of my life."
"That's a long conversation."
"We have time." She lifted a hand toward the office around them. "Pretty sure the CEO can block off an hour for something important."
A ghost of his usual arrogance crossed his mouth. "Fair point."
He leaned back, staring at the ceiling for a second. She thought he might refuse. But then his voice softened. Quiet. Almost reflective.
"I told you about my mother. About watching her die. But not about what came after." He paused, as though choosing carefully. "My father was successful, but cold. Calculating. He thought grief was weakness. After she died, he buried himself in work, and he expected me to do the same."
Ava listened. In his face she could almost glimpse the boy he'd been—sixteen, drowning.
"He taught me the only way to survive was to control everything. To never care about what I couldn't own completely. To build walls so high that nothing could touch me again."
"That's a terrible lesson to give a child," Ava said softly.
"It was effective." His voice carried the weight of years lived by that rule. "I built an empire by controlling every variable. By keeping emotions away from business. By treating people as transactions that could be managed."
"And then you saw me."
"And then I saw you." Something shifted in his face. "You were everything I'd avoided. Vulnerable. Emotional. Sacrificing yourself for someone you loved. By all logic, you should've been a warning sign."
"But I wasn't."
"No." His eyes locked onto hers with intensity that made her pulse trip. "You were magnificent. Stubborn. Proud. Refusing to quit even when reason said you should. You reminded me of my mother. Not in looks, but in spirit. She fought her cancer with the same fierce will you used against your circumstances."
Her throat ached. "So you tried to save me. The way you couldn't save her."
"I tried to give you the resources I wish someone had given us," he said. "But at some point, it stopped being about her memory. It started being about you."
"When?"
His gaze went distant, remembering. "The first interview. You sat across from me in that oversized suit, shoes resoled twice, and you looked me in the eye. You didn't beg. You didn't lean on your mother's illness. You just laid out what you could bring to the job. Pure, stubborn competence."
A short laugh escaped her, bitter. "And I had no idea you already knew everything about me."
"I did. But I didn't know you." His tone softened. "Facts aren't the same as seeing someone. And in that interview, I saw strength. Pride that wouldn't crack. Integrity that couldn't be bought."
"So you decided to buy it anyway."
"I decided to test it," he admitted. "I wanted to know if you were really that incorruptible. If you'd hold to your principles even when I dangled everything you needed."
"The job. The pay. The medical care. All of it—a test?"
"A gamble," he corrected, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "I gambled you'd take the help without losing yourself. That you'd fight me, even when I held all the power."
"And when I did fight?"
His smile was almost fond. "I fell harder. Every time you pushed back. Every time you met me with anger instead of fear. It made me want you more."
Heat stirred under her skin. Not just desire, but something more dangerous. Because he wasn't describing control—he was describing attraction to her strength.
"But you still tried to control me," she reminded him. "The rules. The surveillance. The constant monitoring."
"Because I'm terrified of losing control." The words came heavy, like they cost him. "My father taught me partial control is no control at all. So when I started caring—really caring, not just as a project—I panicked."
"Panicked how?"
"Every man who looked at you. Every conversation I wasn't part of. Every minute you were out of my sight—it all felt like a threat. Like the world was waiting to take you away."
She thought of James from accounting. Of Alexander Vance. Of the app on her phone. Fear, not malice. It didn't excuse it, but it reframed it.
"That's not love, Lucien. That's obsession. Trauma."
"I know." He shoved a hand through his hair, wrecking its perfect style. "I know the difference in my head. But in practice… I don't know how to care without protecting. Even against shadows."
"So you became the danger instead."
The words hung like a strike. He flinched but didn't argue.
"Yes," he said quietly. "I was so focused on shielding you from everything else that I didn't see I was the one hurting you."
"And Paris?" The question slipped out before she could stop it. "That night—and the way you treated me after?"
Pain crossed his features. "That was me realizing I'd crossed a line. That I'd turned whatever existed between us into something I couldn't control."
"So you pretended it was nothing."
"I pretended it was a transaction. A way of control." His voice fell to a whisper. "But the truth? That night terrified me more than anything."
"Why?"
"Because for the first time in my adult life, I wasn't in control." His eyes met hers, raw. "You weren't submitting out of necessity. You chose me. You were vulnerable with me. And I didn't know how to exist without my armor of dominance."
Her chest tightened. This was the most naked truth she'd ever heard from him.
"So you fell back on what you know," she said softly. "You pushed me away. Tightened your grip."
"I told myself distance was safer. That if I kept emotions at bay while keeping you close, I could protect both of us from the fallout."
"How's that going for you?"
A bitter laugh. "About as well as you'd think. I've spent a week watching you pull away. Watching the anger build. Knowing I'm losing you, and not knowing how to stop without giving up the only tools I have."
"Control and manipulation."
"Control and manipulation," he echoed. "The things that built my empire and destroyed any chance at something real."
Ava studied him. This man who had dismantled her independence, all while searching for a cure for her mother. Who had woven himself into her life because he didn't know how else to love.
"You said I wasn't supposed to know any of this," she murmured. "The donor search. Your mother. The obsession. What did you think was going to happen?"
He stared at his hands for a long while. When he finally spoke, his voice was faint.
"I thought I'd find a donor. You'd be grateful, relieved. You wouldn't question too much. I'd loosen control, little by little. Maybe you'd choose to stay. Or maybe you'd leave for better work, and I'd let you go."
"Let me go?" Skepticism cut through her tone.
"Eventually. Probably. Maybe." A shadow of a smile touched his lips. "I don't even know if I could. But I would've tried."
"And if you'd found the donor before I caught on?"
"Then you'd be free. Of me. Of the debt. Of this mess. You could've moved on, and I could've gone back to the cold CEO I was before."
"Except you can't go back," she said softly. "Can you?"
His eyes found hers. What she saw there made her chest ache. Longing. Fear. Hope he was trying to hide.
"No," he admitted. "I can't. You've already broken too much of me. Even if you walked out today, I'd still be the man who fell for his secretary."
The air shifted. This was more intimate than Paris. More vulnerable than anything physical. Because it wasn't about possession. It was about emotion, messy and terrifying.
"Why me?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "You could have anyone. Why me?"
He rose, walking to the window. He stared out at the skyline, his back rigid.
"Because you're the only thing I've ever wanted that I was afraid to break."
The words slammed into her, knocking her breath away. Not for the poetry, but for the fear they revealed. Afraid his need to own would destroy what made her worth wanting.
She sat in silence, watching him silhouetted against glass. Inside her chest, something shifted. Not forgiveness—what he'd done was still wrong. But understanding, maybe. Compassion for someone who didn't know how to love without chains.
"What happens now?" she asked.
He turned, and his face was open—terrified and hopeful all at once.
"That's up to you," he said. "You know everything. My past. My reasons. The truth of why I am this way. The only question is whether any of it changes what I've done."
It was the most honest question he'd ever asked her. No manipulation. No demands. Just raw truth.
Ava had no answer. Not now. Maybe not ever.
But for the first time since stepping into his world, she felt like she was seeing him—all of him. Not the CEO. Not the monster. Not just the broken boy hiding behind walls. The whole man, complicated and human.
And that, she realized, might be the most dangerous thing of all.