Ava stood in the lobby of Lucien's building, the green light from the elevator keypad still flashing in her memory. She could walk out those doors. Could hail a cab, go to her mother's hospital, disappear into the city and never look back. Marcus would call Lucien, report that she'd escaped, and whatever happened next would unfold without her participation.
She took three steps toward the exit before stopping.
Running wouldn't give her answers. Running wouldn't help her understand what the code—her birthday encoded into his security system—actually meant. Running would just leave her with more questions and the same impossible choices she'd been facing for months.
Besides, she was tired of running. Tired of being manipulated and controlled and pushed around by men who thought they knew what was best for her. If she was going to end this—whatever this was—she was going to do it on her own terms.
She turned around and walked back to the elevator, inputting her birthday with fingers that were steadier than they should have been. The doors opened immediately, recognizing her as authorized access to Lucien Drake's fortress. The irony wasn't lost on her.
Marcus looked surprised when she stepped back into the penthouse. "Miss Lane—"
"I'm staying," she said calmly. "But I'll need you to leave. And the chef. I'll be fine alone until Mr. Drake returns."
"I don't think that's—"
"Marcus." She looked at him directly, using the same tone of authority she'd heard Lucien employ a thousand times. "Call Mr. Drake if you need authorization, but I want privacy. Real privacy, not the supervised kind."
He studied her for a long moment, then nodded and pulled out his phone. The brief conversation was one-sided—Marcus explaining the situation, listening, then hanging up with a look of mild surprise.
"Mr. Drake says to give you whatever you want," he reported. "Chef Margot and I will be downstairs if you need anything."
They left within minutes, the elevator carrying away Lucien's carefully placed guards and leaving her alone in his fortress. Ava moved to the windows and stared out at Manhattan, watching the sun begin its descent toward the horizon and the city lights start to flicker on like stars being born.
She'd spent the afternoon thinking. Really thinking, without the distraction of locked doors or watching eyes or her own panic. And she'd come to some conclusions.
Yes, Lucien had imprisoned her. But he'd also given her the code to escape. Had made her birthday—the most fundamental fact about her existence—the key to his most protected space. That wasn't the behavior of someone who wanted her trapped. That was the behavior of someone who was trapped himself, by his need for control and his inability to simply ask her to stay.
The sun had fully set by the time she heard the elevator. She didn't turn from the windows, just waited as she heard him step into the penthouse and stop, probably surprised to find her still there.
"You stayed," he said finally, his voice rough with emotion she couldn't identify.
"I stayed." She turned to face him, taking in his appearance. He looked exhausted—his tie loosened, his usually perfect hair disheveled, his eyes dark with something that might have been fear. "Did you expect me to run?"
"Yes." The admission was simple, honest. "Marcus called to say you'd discovered the code. I thought—" He cut himself off, running a hand through his hair. "I thought you'd leave and I'd never see you again."
"That was an option," Ava agreed. "I considered it. Made it all the way to the lobby before I realized that running wouldn't give me what I need."
"Which is?"
"Answers." She moved away from the windows and settled onto the sofa, deliberately casual, projecting a calm she didn't entirely feel. "Real answers, not the carefully curated ones you've been feeding me for months."
Lucien stared at her for a long moment, clearly thrown by her composure. He'd probably expected her to be furious about being locked in, to scream or cry or respond with the kind of emotional volatility he could manage with his usual tools. Instead, she was giving him rational questions and steady eye contact.
It was a shift in power dynamics, and they both felt it.
"What do you want to know?" he asked carefully.
"Let's start with this morning. You locked me in your penthouse." She said it matter-of-factly, without accusation. "Why?"
"Because I was afraid you'd leave before we could talk."
"So you imprisoned me."
"So I tried to keep you safe until I could—" He stopped, recognizing how hollow the excuse sounded. "Yes. I imprisoned you. Add it to the list of terrible things I've done."
"The code was my birthday," Ava continued, watching his face carefully. "Not yours, not your parents', not any date related to your business. Mine. When did you set that code?"
He looked away, jaw tight with tension. "When I bought this property. Five years ago."
Five years. Before he'd ever met her, before he'd started his surveillance, before he'd orchestrated her employment. He'd bought his most private residence and encoded it with her birthday.
"How did you even know my birthday five years ago?"
"I told you—I'd been researching your father for years. His obituary mentioned his surviving daughter, age six. Basic math gave me your birth year. Public records gave me the exact date." He moved to the bar and poured himself a drink, his movements jerky with suppressed emotion. "I used it as the code because... because even then, you were part of the plan. Part of the revenge I was building."
"But it became something else," Ava said quietly.
"It became something else," he agreed, downing the scotch in one swallow.
She let the silence stretch, using the same technique he'd employed against her so many times—waiting for him to fill the uncomfortable quiet with information he hadn't planned to share.
"Did you ever plan to tell me?" she asked finally. "The truth about our fathers, about your revenge plot, about why you really hired me?"
"No." His honesty was brutal. "The original plan was to never tell you. To let you believe I was your savior, that I'd rescued you from desperate circumstances out of the goodness of my heart. To let you be grateful and dependent while I slowly revealed information about your father that would make you question everything you believed about yourself."
"And then?"
"And then I would have watched you break," he said quietly, staring into his empty glass. "That was the plan. Make you care about me, depend on me, trust me—and then destroy that trust by revealing what your father had done. Maximum emotional damage, perfectly executed."
Ava absorbed this confirmation of what she'd suspected, feeling surprisingly little emotion. Perhaps she'd already processed the worst of it, or perhaps she was just too exhausted for more devastation.
"When did the plan change?" she asked.
"The interview." He set down his glass and turned to face her fully. "I'd prepared for that meeting for months. I'd imagined confronting the daughter of the man who destroyed my family. I expected to find someone weak, someone who'd inherited their father's moral failings, someone I could manipulate without guilt."
"But that's not what you found."
"No." A ghost of something that might have been wonder touched his expression. "I found you. Proud despite your circumstances. Strong despite being overwhelmed. Honest about what you could offer even though you desperately needed the job. You looked me in the eye and refused to beg, and I—"
He cut himself off, but she could fill in the blank. He'd fallen. Not immediately, perhaps, but the cracks in his revenge plot had started forming from that first meeting.
"So you hired me anyway," Ava said. "Knowing the plan was already compromised."
"I hired you because I needed to understand why my carefully constructed revenge fantasy was falling apart before it even started." He moved closer but maintained distance, as if approaching a wild animal that might bolt. "I thought if I spent time around you, if I implemented the control I'd planned, I could get back on track. Could remember why I'd spent years planning to destroy you."
"Did it work?"
His laugh was bitter, self-loathing. "The opposite. Every time I tried to see you as your father's daughter—as the enemy I'd been preparing to destroy—all I saw was you. Your determination to save your mother. Your pride that wouldn't let you be broken by circumstances. Your refusal to compromise your integrity even when offered everything you needed."
Ava felt something shift in her chest, but she kept her expression neutral. "And Paris?"
Pain flickered across his face. "Paris was when I realized I'd completely lost control of the situation. That night wasn't supposed to happen—wasn't part of any plan. It was just... us. Real connection without manipulation. And it terrified me."
"So you pushed me away."
"So I pushed you away and tried to reassert control through the methods I knew—surveillance, monitoring, restricting your freedom. As if doubling down on the original plan would somehow undo the fact that I'd fallen for the woman I was supposed to destroy."
The admission hung between them, raw and vulnerable. Ava studied his face, seeing exhaustion and guilt and desperate hope that she might understand, might forgive, might somehow still want him despite everything.
"Was any of it real?" she asked quietly. "Or was I just the target of an elaborate revenge fantasy that went wrong?"
Lucien closed his eyes, and she saw genuine anguish in his expression. When he opened them again, they were filled with an honesty that was almost painful to witness.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I can't untangle what started as manipulation from what became genuine feeling. I don't know if I'm capable of love or if everything I feel is corrupted by the revenge plot that brought us together. I don't know if you're the woman I fell for or just a better person than I expected my enemy's daughter to be."
It was perhaps the most honest answer he could give—not false declarations of love or claims that everything had been genuine from the start, but a simple admission that he was too damaged and the situation too complicated for him to separate reality from carefully constructed fantasy.
"Why did you lock me in this morning?" Ava asked, returning to the question that had started this conversation.
"Because I was afraid," he said simply. "Afraid that after telling you everything, after stripping away all the lies and manipulation, you'd disappear. Afraid that I'd lose the one thing that had become more important than my revenge."
"So you took away my choice."
"So I took away your choice," he agreed. "Because that's what I do. When I'm afraid of losing control, I eliminate variables and manage outcomes. It's how I built an empire, and it's how I've systematically destroyed any chance of a real relationship with you."
The self-awareness in his words was both refreshing and heartbreaking. He knew exactly what he was doing wrong, knew how his need for control was poisoning everything between them, and still couldn't seem to stop himself from trying to manage her life.
"The birthday code," Ava said. "You gave me the ability to leave while telling Marcus to keep me prisoner. Why?"
Lucien sank into the chair across from her, looking more defeated than she'd ever seen him. All the arrogance and control and intimidating presence had drained away, leaving behind just a man who was profoundly exhausted by his own machinations.
"Because I wanted you to choose," he said quietly. "I wanted you to have the power to leave or stay, even while I was too afraid to give you explicit permission. The code was my way of giving you freedom while maintaining the illusion that I was in control."
"That's the most twisted logic I've ever heard."
"That's my entire relationship with you summarized." His smile was bitter, self-aware. "Twisted logic and competing impulses—wanting to possess you while wanting you to choose me, trying to control everything while hoping you'll take control back, building cages with doors I secretly want you to unlock."
Ava studied him sitting in his expensive chair in his cold penthouse fortress, looking more vulnerable than she'd ever seen him. This was the real Lucien Drake, stripped of all pretense and manipulation—just a damaged man who'd tried to exact revenge and ended up destroying himself in the process.
"The plan was revenge," he said, his voice rough with exhaustion and emotion. "Elaborate, carefully orchestrated revenge for what your father did to mine. But the plan failed the moment I saw you."
The confession hung in the air between them, more intimate than any physical touch had been. Not a declaration of love—that would have been too simple, too clean. But an admission that his carefully constructed plot had collapsed the moment he'd been confronted with the reality of who she was rather than the fantasy of who he'd expected her to be.
"What now?" Ava asked quietly. "Where do we go from here?"
Lucien looked at her with eyes that held too much pain and not enough hope. "That's up to you. For once in this twisted relationship, I'm giving you actual control. Stay or leave, believe me or doubt me, forgive me or hate me—it's your choice. No manipulation, no threats about your mother's care, no locked doors or security codes."
"Except the code is still my birthday," she pointed out.
"Except the code is still your birthday," he agreed. "Because even when I try to give you freedom, I can't help encoding you into the architecture of my life."