Kyle's POV
I stood in the guest room, the door closed quietly, leaning my forehead against the cool, glass wall. My lungs felt too small for the air I was desperately trying to pull in. The adrenaline was a fierce, humming pressure behind my eyes, but it wasn't the rush of a successful acquisition; it was the sharp, painful jolt of pure, unadulterated love.
I walked to the small desk in the corner—a utilitarian slab of white marble—and pulled out my laptop. I couldn't sleep. The only way to process the sheer magnitude of what had just happened was to force the chaos onto the page.
I opened the manuscript, the narrative of the war that was now definitively over. I started typing, the words coming out fast and ragged, a confession to the void:
~He had spent a lifetime studying vulnerabilities—market gaps, emotional deficits, the soft spots in a hostile defense. Yet, it took the woman he loved, the most ruthlessly intelligent person he had ever known, to expose the one deep, pathetic weakness he possessed: the cold, ignorant cruelty of his past.~
I paused, seeing her face again. Not the fierce Arbiter, but the utterly vulnerable woman on the bed, her eyes wide with a desperate, terrified plea. She was offering her body, not as an act of desire, but as an act of insurance. She was surrendering the one thing she thought men demanded as a non-negotiable term for permanence.
The shock was a physical nausea. I had engineered this entire, complicated courtship to prove she was different, irreplaceable, and valued above physical transaction. And her final response was to panic and offer the commodity she thought she needed to retain my interest.
I had missed it.
I closed my eyes, a sickening realisation washing over me. How many times, in the years of casual, transactional intimacy, had I seen that exact look? That flicker of anxiety, that underlying desperation to please, to confirm worth through compliance? I had never looked that deeply. I hadn't needed to. They were, in the brutal calculus of my past, just appointments—assets of fleeting value whose emotions were irrelevant to the contract. I had always assumed the transaction was mutually agreed upon, a simple, adult exchange. I had never bothered to look past the surface and see the deep-seated fear that had driven Viola's move tonight.
It was an arrogance so profound, so embedded in my corporate conditioning, that it took my deepest love to expose the depth of my failure.
I typed again, forcing the raw truth out:
~The real battle was not for the company's soul, but for her own self-worth, a battle she was still losing. Her willingness to give him the one thing he wanted most, purely out of fear of his eventual disinterest, was the single most devastating tactical move she had ever executed. It was a move born of the assumption that he was like every other man she had encountered—a predator who required payment for devotion. And the worst realisation was that, until she walked into his life, he absolutely was.~
I got up and walked to the window. The city lights were indifferent. I was a man who had built a billion-dollar empire on seeing the unseen variables, yet I had been blindly ignoring the simple, human truth in the eyes of every woman I'd been with. I hadn't just been cruel; I had been negligent.
I had to be better than the man she feared I was. I had to be better than the man I had been.
I looked toward the primary suite, where she was finally sleeping, safe and contained by nothing but my word. The wait wouldn't be torture; it would be a privilege. It would be my permanent, non-liquid commitment to proving that her worth had nothing to do with what she offered in my bed.
I walked back to the laptop and typed one last line, closing the manuscript for the night.
The new chapter required a patience the conqueror had never known, but the man in love was willing to learn.
It was now the next morning.
I woke exactly at 6:00 AM, but I didn't move. The sunlight, still soft, filtered through the sheers, illuminating the primary suite. The bed beside me was empty. A faint knot of panic tightened in my chest—a primal fear that she had fled, that the intensity of last night had been too much.
Then I heard the sound of water running from the shower. Relief washed over me, so profound it was dizzying. She was still here.
I slid out of bed and, instead of heading to the gym, I went straight to my phone. I needed to clear the day and procure the one thing that symbolised the defiant life she brought to my sterile world.
I sent a rapid-fire string of commands to Marshall.
"Marshall," I dictated in a low voice. "Clear my entire schedule. No board meetings, no calls about Sterling. I'm taking the day. Priority one: Procure the largest, most vibrant bouquet of sunflowers available in the city. Have them delivered to The Modern at 8:00 AM. And Marshall—find the most beautiful, ludicrously romantic card you can. Don't worry about the text; I'll handle that myself."
I walked back into the primary suite just as Viola emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a large, fluffy white towel, her hair damp and dark. She looked up, and her eyes held a soft, unguarded warmth that obliterated all memory of last month's corporate hostilities.
"Good morning," she murmured, a faint, genuine smile touching her lips. "I thought you'd be three hostile mergers deep by now."
"My primary focus has shifted," I replied, my voice husky. I walked toward her and pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to her forehead. "I've cleared the day. I'm taking you to breakfast. Get dressed, beautiful. We have a new contract to sign."
Soon we arrived at the aesthetically pleasing restaurant I know she loves, because she keeps taking pictures of everything. That makes me happy because it means I did good.
We were seated in a quiet, sun-drenched corner of The Modern. The conversation was easy, focused not on strategy or betrayal, but on simple, wholesome things—her favorite kind of coffee (a ridiculous triple-shot latte), and a story about her grandmother's crooked brownstone in Italy.
Then, a massive bouquet of vibrant yellow sunflowers arrived, placed on the small table between us, overwhelming the elegant setting.
Viola gasped, touching the velvety petals. "Kyle, they're enormous. They're ridiculous. I love them."
"A fresh start," I said, reaching across the table to cover her hand with mine. "The symbolic acquisition of joy."
As we finished our main course, a waiter approached, not with the bill, but with a pristine white porcelain plate covered by a silver dome.
"Compliments of the chef, Mr. Lodge," the waiter stated.
Viola raised a skeptical eyebrow. "What strategic move are you pulling now? Is this a hostile dessert offering?"
I simply smiled and nodded for the waiter to lift the dome. Beneath it, nestled on a bed of powdered sugar, was a single, perfect chocolate mousse with a small, elegant scroll resting on top.
Viola picked up the scroll, her eyes widening as she unrolled the tiny, parchment paper. It contained a single, formal question, penned in my precise, confident script:
She looked up at me, her eyes shining with unshed tears. The grand strategist, the ruthless author, had just asked her to be his girlfriend with a surprise dessert. It was the absolute, perfect antithesis to the man she thought I was.
"Yes," she breathed out, the word thick with emotion. "Yes, Kyle. Officially, unofficially, and irrevocably, yes."
I reached across the table, taking her hand and bringing it to my lips. "I'm glad you said yes, Love. Now… let's go home."