The flowers arrive at 9:47 AM on a Tuesday, which is approximately 9:47 AM too early for my patience and definitely too early for peonies in December.

"Who sends peonies in December?" I ask Iris, not looking up from my email. I'm reading a security audit that makes me want to simultaneously commit violence and take a very long vacation, preferably to somewhere without internet.

"Someone with more money than sense?" Iris appears in my office doorway with the arrangement, her nose wrinkled. "These are expensive, Scar. Like, aggressively expensive. There's a card."

I don't reach for it. I know exactly who sends expensive flowers with cards, and I'm not in the mood for whatever nostalgia he's peddling.

"Bin them," I say.

"Don't you want to—"

"Iris."

She sighs the sigh of someone who's spent three years watching me weaponize avoidance into an art form. She sets the flowers on my desk anyway—because she's chaos incarnate and also my best friend—and fishes out the card. "It says: 'Darling, we have unfinished business. Lunch? —D'"

The D hits like a punch I saw coming but couldn't dodge.

Dominic.

Of course it's Dominic. Because the universe has a sense of humor, and that humor is profoundly fucked up.

"Oh no," Iris says, reading my face. "Oh no, no, no. What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything. He's probably just—" I don't finish because I don't know how to finish. Dominic Reeves exists in a carefully sealed box in my mind, filed under "Before" and "Never Again." He's not supposed to emerge into the present like some expensive, designer-suited ghost.

"Just what? Randomly remembered you exist after eight years?"

Eight years. Eight years since I was someone else entirely. Someone smaller. Someone who believed that charm could substitute for kindness, that control could masquerade as love, that a man who touched her like she was his possession was actually just passionate.

I was so fucking stupid.

"He wants to have lunch," Iris says, still holding the card like it might spontaneously combust. "Scar, that's not—"

"I'm not having lunch with him."

"Good. That's good. That's the right answer. I'm proud of you for—"

"Iris."

"Right. Shutting up now."

But she doesn't leave, and I don't tell her to. We sit in the hum of my office—all glass and steel and deliberately impersonal—and I feel something crack inside my chest, some wall I thought was permanent developing a fault line.

---

He shows up at 2 PM anyway.

This is the thing about men like Dominic: they don't understand the word no. They hear it as a negotiation, a challenge, a coy refusal that will crumble under the right amount of pressure and charm.

I'm in a meeting with our infrastructure team when Iris appears in the doorway, her face doing that thing it does when she's delivering bad news—all apologetic tension and barely contained fury.

"You have a visitor," she says. "He insisted."

I excuse myself, which is a decision I'll regret in approximately thirty seconds.

Dominic Reeves is standing in my office like he owns it, examining one of the abstract paintings I hung specifically because I find it unsettling. He's aged well, which is infuriating. Still golden-skinned, still perfectly styled, still wearing clothes like they're armor made of money. The bergamot cologne hits me before he does, that chemical sweetness I used to find intoxicating and now find nauseating.

"Scarlett," he says, turning with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. It never did. I just didn't notice before. "You look exactly as I remembered."

"I'm going to stop you right there," I say, staying near the door. A calculated choice—proximity to escape. "Whatever this is, it's not happening. You need to leave."

"Still so direct." He laughs, and it's all practiced charm, all performance. "I always loved that about you. Come, sit. We should talk about the proposal."

"There is no proposal. You're not buying my company."

"Not buying. Partnering." He moves closer, and every instinct I've spent eight years cultivating screams at me to move away. I don't. I stand my ground because showing fear is showing weakness, and I've forgotten how to do that. "I'm developing a venture fund focused on cybersecurity infrastructure. Your company would be the crown jewel. Think about it—what we could build together."

Together.

The word tastes like poison.

"I'm not interested in building anything with you, Dominic. I'm not interested in talking to you. I'm going to ask you one more time to leave my office."

He studies me for a moment, and I watch the charm flicker. Just for a second. Just long enough to see what's underneath—something empty and entitled and absolutely certain of his right to have whatever he wants.

"You're involved with Julian Ashford," he says, and the shift in his tone is glacial. "That's... unfortunate."

My stomach drops. "How do you—"

"I know everything about you, darling. I've always known everything about you." He steps closer, and now I'm close enough to smell that cologne, close enough to feel the air between us thicken into something suffocating. "Julian's a good man, but he's not right for you. He's protective to the point of dysfunction—did you know his sister was murdered? He's been trying to control everything since. You don't need someone trying to control you. You need someone who understands that you're meant to be owned."

The word lands like a slap.

"Get out," I say, and my voice is very quiet. Very still. The voice I use when I'm one breath away from doing something that would require lawyers. "Now."

"I'm trying to help you," he says, and he actually sounds sincere, which is somehow worse. "Julian will eventually want to cage you, make you small. I never wanted that. I just wanted you."

"No," I say. "You wanted the idea of me. You wanted something you could collect and control and display. That was never love, Dominic. That was entitlement."

Something flashes across his face—anger, real and unvarnished. He reaches out, and it's a small gesture, just his hand extending toward my face, but it's enough. Eight years of survival instinct ignites.

I don't flinch. I move.

"If you touch me," I say, my voice absolutely steady, "I will have security remove you. Then I will file a restraining order. Then I will destroy you in ways that will make you wish you'd never heard my name. Do you understand?"

He drops his hand. The charm reassembles itself, but it's cracked now, visibly fractured.

"You'll regret this," he says quietly.

"I regret a lot of things. You're not in the top ten anymore."

He leaves. Of course he leaves. Men like Dominic only stay where they feel they're winning.

I don't realize I'm shaking until Iris appears in the doorway.

---

I call Julian because I'm catastrophically stupid and apparently incapable of learning that needing people is the same as handing them weapons.

"I need you to come to my office," I say, the moment he answers. No hello, no preamble. Just raw need bleeding through my voice like an open wound.

"Are you hurt?" His voice changes completely—becomes sharp, focused, dangerous.

"No. Yes. I don't know. Just come."

He arrives in eighteen minutes, which means he broke several traffic laws and probably terrified several pedestrians. He looks like violence barely contained in an Italian suit—his jaw clenched, his eyes storm-dark, his entire body coiled like a spring.

"What happened?" he demands, and he's already scanning me, checking for injuries, his hands hovering like he's afraid to touch me and more afraid not to.

I tell him. About Dominic, about the flowers, about the things he said. About how his hand reached out and how I felt like I was twenty-four again, smaller and quieter and terrified.

Julian's face gets very still.

"He threatened you," he says. It's not a question.

"He implied things. About you. About us."

"What things?"

"That you'd try to control me. That I should let him instead because at least he'd be honest about it." I laugh, and it sounds unhinged. "As if any of this is actually about control. As if any of this is—"

I don't finish because Julian crosses the space between us in two strides and suddenly I'm against my office door and he's everywhere—his hands on my face, his body blocking out the rest of the world, his scent of cedarwood and leather and something dark and expensive consuming everything I am.

"Listen to me," he says, and his voice is rough, controlled fury barely leashed. "I am not him. I will never be him. And I will burn down anyone who makes you feel small."

"Julian—"

"I know you're scared. I know you don't want to need anyone. I know you've built walls that could withstand nuclear war." His thumbs trace my cheekbones, and I'm trembling, which is unacceptable, which is also apparently happening. "But you're not alone in this. You're not alone in anything anymore."

"You can't promise that," I whisper.

"I can. I am. I'm promising it right now."

He kisses me, and it's not gentle. It's claiming and desperate and everything I've been trying not to want since the moment he walked into my life. His hands slide into my hair, pulling the careful bun loose, and my fingers are gripping his jacket like it's the only thing keeping me tethered to reality.

His mouth moves to my neck, and I'm gasping because apparently my body has decided to betray every principle my mind has ever held. He smells like cedarwood and want, and I want to disappear into him, to let him be the strong one, to stop carrying all of this alone.

The thought is terrifying.

"Julian, wait—"

He pulls back immediately, though it costs him. I can see it in the tension of his shoulders, the way his hands clench, the ragged edge of his breathing.

"Too much?" he asks, and his voice is wrecked.

"No. Yes. I don't know." I press my forehead against his chest, and his heartbeat is racing almost as fast as mine. "This is—I'm not good at this. I'm not good at needing people. I'm not good at letting anyone close enough to hurt me."

"I know."

"And you're okay with that?"

He's quiet for a moment, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on my lower back.

"I'm not okay with it," he says finally. "But I understand it. And I'm patient enough to wait for you to realize that I'm not going anywhere."

It should feel like a cage, that kind of certainty. Instead, it feels like the first time I've been able to breathe in eight years.

"He said you'd try to control me," I tell him. "He said you'd make me small."

Julian pulls back just far enough to look at me, and his eyes are fierce and honest and absolutely unguarded in a way that makes my chest hurt.

"I see you," he says. "All of you. The sharp edges and the scars and the armor. I don't want to change any of it. I just want to stand next to you while you figure out that you don't have to carry all of it alone."

"What if I ruin this?" The question escapes before I can stop it. "What if I'm too broken? What if—"

"You won't. You're not. And I'm not going anywhere."

He says it like a promise. Like a threat. Like the most dangerous thing he could possibly offer someone like me.

I want to believe him so badly that it physically hurts.

"I should probably tell you that Dominic implied he knew you," I say, because deflection is my native language. "That you have some kind of history."

Julian's jaw tightens. "We do. Nothing you need to worry about."

"That's not reassuring."

"I know." He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his touch gentle despite the violence in his eyes. "But it's the truth. He's a collector, Scarlett. He collects companies, people, control. He wanted to collect you, and when you escaped, it became an obsession. But you're not his. You were never his. And he needs to understand that."

"Are you going to do something?" I ask, and I'm not sure if I'm asking because I want him to or because I'm terrified he will.

"I'm going to make sure he understands the boundaries," Julian says carefully. "But I need you to promise me something."

"What?"

"That you'll tell me if he contacts you again. That you won't try to handle it alone."

It's a reasonable request. It's also asking me to do the one thing I'm most afraid of—admit that I need help, that I can't armor myself against every threat, that there are things bigger than my ability to control them.

"Okay," I say, and it costs me everything. "I promise."

He kisses my forehead, and it's so tender that I feel something crack open inside me, something I've spent eight years welding shut.

"I should go," I say, because staying here, in his arms, in this moment of vulnerability, feels like the most dangerous thing I could possibly do. More dangerous than Dominic, more dangerous than any threat I can name.

"You should," he agrees, but he doesn't let go.

We stand like that for a long time—his arms around me, my face against his chest, both of us pretending that this doesn't change everything.

When he finally releases me, I feel the loss like a physical wound.

"Scarlett," he says as he's leaving. "What Dominic said about me trying to control you—"

"I don't believe him."

"Good. Because I'm not interested in controlling you. I'm interested in protecting you. There's a difference."

After he leaves, I stand alone in my office and realize that I've made a terrible mistake.

I've let him in.

And now he knows exactly where to hurt me.