For a long moment, neither of them moved.
The storm pressed against the glass, steady and insistent, like the city was trying to get in.
Ava stood near the center of Ethan's penthouse — if you could call it that. It didn't look like a billionaire's lair. No gold. No dramatic art. It was quiet. Sparse. Clean lines, dark wood, floor-to-ceiling windows that made the skyline feel like an aquarium of light and weather.
She thought, distantly: Of course. He doesn't live in excess. He lives in control.
Ethan was still watching her.
You, he'd said.
It hadn't been romantic. That would've been easier to block. It had been worse — clinical, nearly tactical, said in the same tone he might use to move eight figures across a balance sheet.
Like she was no longer optional.
Her voice, when it came, was steady. Mostly.
"You don't get to say that," Ava said quietly.
His gaze didn't flicker. "Why not."
"Because you don't get to use me in a boardroom, then bring me up here and make me sound like a decision you've already made."
"That's exactly what I get to do," Ethan said. "That's exactly what I just did."
Her jaw tightened. "You don't own me."
Something sharp moved through his expression — not anger. Something closer to interest.
"Good," Ethan said.
Ava blinked. "…Good?"
He stepped closer. Not touching. But he closed enough space that she could feel the residual heat of him, could smell faint clean cologne and rain still drying on his shirt.
"If you were someone I could own," he said softly, "you'd be useless to me."
The room felt suddenly, impossibly smaller.
Ava swallowed. "That's not an answer."
"It is," he said.
Lightning cracked somewhere to their left, painting his profile in brief white. His face in that flash was not the public Ethan Lucan — all impossible balance and ice-polished stillness.
It was the private one. Harder. Tired. Human.
Too human.
"Sit," he said quietly.
It wasn't a command, not exactly. It was more like he was giving her a way to breathe without losing ground.
She didn't sit.
Instead she countered. "Tell me why you really brought me here."
"I already did."
"Then say it again," she said. "But this time don't talk like a CEO giving a directive. Talk like a person."
Something in his jaw went still.
He didn't like that.
He didn't walk away from it, either.
When he spoke again, his voice had changed. Fractionally. Lower, less metal.
"Vanessa thinks you're impulsive," he said. "Gray thinks you're ornamental. The rest of them think you're a temporary flame I'll snuff out once I'm finished getting what I need."
Ava watched him. "And you?"
"I think," Ethan said, "that you are the first variable I've introduced in years that actually moves the equation."
That landed.
Not compliment. Positioning.
He went on, smooth and surgical, like he was laying out an internal report instead of talking about her body standing three feet in front of his:
"You walked into a room built to punish disruption, and you disrupted anyway. You weren't deferential. You weren't loud. You didn't overplay. You didn't apologize." His eyes flicked, fast, to her mouth, then back. "You made them feel outdated without letting them call you insolent."
"That wasn't strategy," she said. "That was survival."
"Same thing," Ethan said.
For a heartbeat Ava couldn't tell if she was cold or warm.
Her brain was still catching up to a different part of what he'd said.
Temporary flame.
"People think I'm… what?" she asked softly. "Your distraction?"
"They think you're leverage," he said. "That you're there to soak the attention, so I can move something else behind them while they're busy being offended by you."
Her stomach went tight. That one hurt more than she wanted it to.
"And is that what I am?"
"No," he said.
Just that. No.
He didn't qualify it. He didn't lace it with implication. He just laid that word down between them like placement, like boundary.
Some of the pressure in her chest let go.
Ava finally moved to sit, more because her knees suddenly felt unreliable than because he'd told her to.
The seating area wasn't staged like a lobby the way most billionaire spaces were. There was no faux-casual conversation pit. Just a low, matte-black table and a long gray sofa angled toward the city. She sat on the edge of it, hands braced on her knees.
Ethan stayed standing, which should have felt like a power move.
It didn't.
It felt like restraint. Like he didn't trust himself any closer.
"You don't sleep much, do you," Ava said quietly.
He huffed out the smallest sound. "Observation or concern?"
"Observation," she said. Then, after a beat: "Ask me again in a week and it might be concern."
His mouth did something that wasn't a smile, but lived in the same neighborhood.
"No," he said. "I don't sleep much."
"Because of Lucan?"
"Because of control," he corrected. "Because if I close my eyes, someone moves a piece."
"That's how you live? All the time?"
"That's how you stay," Ethan said.
Stay.
Not win. Stay.
He said it like it was the more honest word.
Ava let herself look at him then, really look. The loosened tie. The rolled sleeves. The way his shoulders carried tension like a thing that had long ago fused into bone.
"You think they're going to come for me," she said. "Not in the room. In public."
"It already started," he said. "The article used the right adjectives — untested, accelerated, ambiguous influence. Nothing directly damaging. Just enough smoke to make investors wonder if there's a fire."
"That was Vanessa."
"Yes."
"So fire back."
"I did," Ethan said.
Ava blinked. "When?"
"I leaked the addendum," he said.
Her head snapped up. "You what?"
He watched the reaction hit her. He let her feel it.
"I sent Addendum 8 to two people who make money betting on what they think I'll do," he said. "They'll tell the right ears exactly what that document means."
Ava's pulse kicked. "That I'm in the minutes."
"That the minutes are now evidence," he said. "Evidence that if you're ignored and something fails, I can point to a paper trail that protects both of us. That tells every senior partner in this city two things: one, you're not a toy. Two, anyone who touches you answers to me."
Her throat went suddenly dry.
"That sounds," Ava said quietly, "a lot like ownership."
"It's insurance," he said.
"You're insuring me?"
"I'm insuring the narrative," he said. Then, almost as an afterthought: "And you."
"And me," she repeated.
His eyes dropped, just for a breath, to her wrist — where ink had been two nights ago. Gone now. But he looked anyway.
It was the smallest tell she'd seen from him.
It felt like heat finding a fracture.
She leaned back a little. Not relaxing — testing.
"If you're going to use me like a weapon," she said, tone quiet and clinical, "you have to tell me where you're aiming."
He laughed then.
Soft.
Brief.
Real.
"Ava," he said, and the way he said her name would have been dangerous if he'd meant it to be. "You still think you're the weapon."
Her heartbeat stuttered. "I'm not?"
"You're the message," Ethan said.
That hit lower than she expected.
Because it was true.
Her throat tightened. "And what's the message?"
He didn't answer right away.
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It felt like walking along the edge of a rooftop in the dark — high, clean air, endless drop under your toes.
When he spoke, it was quiet.
"That I won't build the future of this company with people who were comfortable keeping it dead," Ethan said. "That if I have to rewrite this place from the inside out, I'll start with the one person in the room who didn't look at me like I was a throne they needed to survive."
Her chest felt too tight to hold an even breath.
He wasn't close enough to touch her.
But the way he was looking at her felt like contact.
Not hungry. Not sentimental.
Committed.
Ava forced her voice not to shake. "You don't even know me."
He tilted his head. "Wrong."
"Forty-eight hours is not knowing me."
"I don't need forty-eight hours," Ethan said. "I need data."
Of course, she thought. Of course.
"And what does your data say?" she asked.
He didn't blink. "That you'll tell me the truth even if it hurts me. That you'll choose the work over being liked. That you'll stand in the line of fire if you believe the outcome is worth it. That you haven't decided yet whether I'm worth it."
Silence.
A slow, low pulse moved through her.
He was too close to the center of her stomach with that.
"Careful," she said softly.
"Of what."
"Thinking you can read me."
"I already did," he said. "In that room."
Her laugh was a breath. "That wasn't me, Ethan. That was adrenaline."
"And this?" His voice dropped. "What's this?"
Her mouth went dry.
This was not adrenaline.
This was a strange, electric awareness running the length of her spine. This was heat under her skin and logic in her throat and the steady, growing knowledge that she was standing in front of a man who could break her in six different ways that had nothing to do with her body.
And she hadn't stepped back yet.
"Unwise," she said at last.
His jaw moved once. "For you or for me?"
"Yes," she said.
Lightning flashed again, throwing his face into stark definition — the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the line of his mouth, the intent in his eyes.
He wasn't looking at her like prey.
He was looking at her like partnership.
That was worse.
Much worse.
Her voice softened. "If you're going to tie my name to yours this fast, you should at least warn me what that costs."
"It costs everything," Ethan said.
No hesitation.
Her breath caught.
He didn't soften it. He didn't explain. He didn't say it like a romantic confession. He said it like a financial disclosure.
It costs everything.
The city hummed below them. The rain lashed the glass in sheets. Ava felt her heartbeat everywhere.
She held his gaze. "And what does it buy?"
His answer was immediate.
"Access," he said. "Protection. Leverage. A future. Not just in this building — outside it."
Her pulse kicked. "That sounds like you're offering me a deal."
"I am."
He said it like oxygen.
Her fingers curled slowly against her knee. "Say it, then. Say the terms. Out loud."
For a moment, it felt like the whole tower went still.
When Ethan spoke, he did it the way he did everything: clean, stripped, irreversible.
"Stay," he said. "Stand next to me when they try to move me. Tell me when I'm wrong — in private, not in front of them. Don't flinch when they aim at you to get to me. In return, I make sure they never get through you."
Her throat worked.
"That sounds," she whispered, "like war."
"It is," he said.
"This is your idea of a job offer?"
"No," Ethan said. "This is my idea of an alliance."
Her pulse punched hard against her ribs.
Alliance.
Not assistant.
Not figurehead.
Not pawn.
Alliance.
She should have laughed. She should have said no. She should have told him that aligning herself with him this early would paint a target on her back so bright the whole city could see it from space.
Instead, what came out was, "And if I say no?"
For the first time, something almost human crossed his face. A flicker — brief and unguarded — of something like disappointment.
"Then," he said quietly, "I'll pull you out before they can break you."
That stunned her.
"You would just let me walk?"
"If you're not willing to stand in that fire with me, I don't put you in it," he said. "I'm not sentimental, Ava. But I'm not wasteful."
Her chest tightened.
There it was again — that strange, surgical tenderness that wasn't soft at all, but undeniable.
She realized, with a small shock, that he meant it.
Not as a test. As a promise.
Ethan Lucan did not promise lightly.
She wet her lips. "Do you always do this?"
"What."
"Offer people a future like you're sliding them a weapon and telling them to pick a side."
His eyes held hers. "No."
Her breath stilled. "Just me."
"Yes."
It wasn't a confession.
It was a verdict.
Her mouth felt strangely dry. "You understand that if I say yes, someone in that room — probably Vanessa — will try to take my throat out and call it market discipline."
"They can try," he said.
"Richard will call me destabilizing."
"He already did."
"The press will call me reckless."
"They're already writing it."
She let out a shaky exhale that was almost, almost a laugh. "And you're… fine with that."
His answer was quiet. "I chose you in front of them. I don't walk that back. Ever."
Her pulse did something she did not have language for.
This wasn't flirting.
This was binding.
Ethan took one small step closer.
She felt the air change.
"Last chance," he said softly. "Say no, and I'll find a way to make this all look like a temporary optics exercise so you walk out clean. Say yes…"
He didn't finish.
He didn't have to.
Because she already knew.
If she said yes, there was no walking out clean from anything ever again.
Not from Lucan.
Not from him.
Not from herself.
Ava held his gaze for a long, suspended moment.
Fear wasn't loud. She'd learned that already.
This wasn't loud either.
This was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet just before a structure changes shape forever.
Her voice, when it came, was barely above a whisper.
"Yes."
Something happened in his face.
Not relief — he'd expected her to say it.
Not triumph — he'd never doubted she would.
It was smaller than both. More dangerous than both.
He inhaled once, like his body was adjusting to a new constant.
"Good," Ethan said softly. "Then from this point forward, they do not touch you."
There was a pause. The space between them felt electrically thin.
"And what about you?" Ava asked.
That stopped him.
"What about me."
"Do you touch me?" she asked quietly.
There was a long, deep silence.
For the first time since she'd met him, Ethan looked almost — almost — unsteady.
Not because he didn't know the answer.
Because he did.
He leaned in, just enough that his breath brushed her cheek when he spoke.
"No," he said, voice low. "Not unless you ask."
The air went hot and thin.
Her pulse slammed.
He straightened before she could respond. Stepping back. Rebuilding distance. Layering control over whatever had just cracked through him.
"Get some sleep," he said, like nothing had happened. "Tomorrow they'll come louder. You'll need your voice."
"I don't sleep much," she said, her own voice not entirely steady.
"Observation," he said, and that almost-smile tugged at his mouth, "or concern?"
She tried not to let him see that he'd gotten to her. "Ask me again in a week and it might be concern."
"Go home, Ava," he said softly. "While it's still yours."
That last line hit somewhere she hadn't armored.
She rose.
At the elevator, she paused and looked back.
He was standing the way he had been when she first walked in — tie loose, sleeves rolled, the city lit up behind him. But something fundamental had changed.
Not in him.
In the space between them.
"In case you're wondering," Ava said, hand resting on the elevator sensor, "I'm not afraid of Vanessa."
"I know," Ethan said.
"And I'm not afraid of Richard."
"I know."
Her eyes held his for a moment longer. "But you? I haven't decided yet."
For one second, his eyes darkened in a way that felt like contact.
Then that controlled half-smile ghosted across his mouth.
"Good," he murmured. "Stay undecided."
The elevator doors slid shut between them.
Ava leaned her head back against the cool steel for half a breath, eyes closed.
Her heart was still going too fast.
Her body was still humming like live current.
Her mind — her mind had already started rewriting the way the world worked.
Alliance.
It wasn't a love story.
It was something more dangerous.
It was a contract.
And she had just signed it without ink.