The silence in the sealed conference room is suffocating.
My phone is on the floor somewhere, cracked, forgotten. My phone with Marcus's desperate messages. My phone with the proof of a life I was trying to build outside of this—outside of him.
Dominic stands at the head of the conference table, his sleeves still rolled up, his expression completely calm now. The anger from moments ago has crystallized into something worse: cold certainty. He's made a decision about what happens next, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
"Tell me something, Bella." His voice cuts through the silence like a blade. "And I want the truth. Not the lie you tell yourself. Not the rationalization you use to sleep at night. The actual truth."
I don't answer. I'm pressed against the glass wall still, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I'm afraid it might crack them from the inside.
He walks toward me slowly, deliberately, like he's approaching a frightened animal. Like he wants me to understand exactly how trapped I am before he makes his move.
"Do you love him?"
"That's not—"
"Yes or no, Bella. Simple question."
I should lie. I should say yes and protect Marcus and myself. I should fight back against the control in his voice, the certainty in his eyes, the absolute conviction that he knows the answer before I speak.
But I can't.
"No." The word escapes like a prisoner breaking free. "No, I don't love him."
His smile is predatory. "Thank you for being honest."
He stops a breath away from me, and I can feel the intensity radiating off him in waves. It's not warmth—it's something darker, more consuming. It's the feeling of standing too close to a fire and realizing too late that you're about to get burned.
His hand rises to my face. His fingers are warm, strong, absolutely certain in their claim over my skin. He traces my jawline with a softness that contradicts everything terrifying about this moment.
"Now tell me something else." His thumb brushes across my cheekbone. "When he touches you, when Marcus holds your hand or kisses you or lies beside you at night—tell me his touch feels the same as mine."
I can't breathe. His hand is on my face and his eyes are burning into mine and he's asking me to articulate something I've been running from for three years.
"Bella."
His voice drops into a register that's almost hypnotic. Almost intimate. Like we're the only two people in the universe and he's asking me to confess something sacred.
"Tell me his touch feels like mine."
I want to pull away. I want to turn my head, step to the side, create distance between us. Every survival instinct is screaming at me to move.
I stand completely frozen.
"You can't," he whispers, and it's not a question. It's a statement of fact. "Because he doesn't make you feel the way I do. His hands don't ignite your skin. His voice doesn't make your entire nervous system stand at attention. His proximity doesn't make you want to surrender everything just to feel him closer."
His other hand finds my waist, spanning it with possessive certainty. He's not pulling me toward him, but the implication is there. The threat—or promise—of what could happen if he decided to close this space between us.
"I know because I've watched you for three years, Bella. I know the difference between the way you respond to him and the way you respond to me. You're polite with Marcus. You're dutiful. You're playing a role."
He leans closer, and I can feel his breath against my skin now. Warm. Intimate. Terrifying.
"But with me?" His voice becomes almost reverent. "With me, you're honest. You can't hide. You can't pretend. Your body betrays you every single time I'm near you."
"This is insane—"
"Is it?" He cups my face with both hands now, forcing me to maintain eye contact. "Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you don't think about me when you're with him. Tell me you haven't fantasized about what it would be like if I wasn't your boss. If there was no hierarchy between us. If I could just take you the way I want to."
My breath catches. Because he's right. I have thought about exactly that. Late at night when I'm supposed to be sleeping beside Marcus, I've imagined what it would be like to be with Dominic without the complications. Without the power imbalance. Without the rules that keep us separated.
"You have," he says, seeing something in my face that confirms it. "I can see it. You're thinking about it right now."
"Dominic, please—"
"Please what? Please stop touching you? Please stop reminding you of what you already know? That you don't belong with a man like Marcus. That you were never meant to be the kind of woman who settles for flowers on Thursdays and a 401k and a predictable life."
His hands slide down to my shoulders, and he's pulling me slightly closer. Not aggressively, but with absolute confidence that I won't resist.
"You belong somewhere darker, Bella. Somewhere more intense. Somewhere that challenges you and consumes you and makes you feel alive in a way that mediocre men could never understand."
"You're talking about obsession. You're talking about control—"
"I'm talking about passion." His eyes are dark now, burning with something that might be love or might be possession or might be the same thing twisted into something darker. "I'm talking about being wanted so completely that nothing else matters. I'm talking about being known so intimately that you can't hide anything anymore."
He releases my shoulders but keeps his body close to mine, creating a cage of heat and proximity that I can't escape.
"Do you know what Marcus is doing right now?" His voice is casual, conversational, which somehow makes it more terrifying. "He's sitting at some restaurant, waiting for you. Checking his phone. Wondering where you are. Completely unaware that his life is about to change in ways he can't even imagine."
"What did you do?"
"Nothing yet." He steps back slightly, and the distance is almost worse than the proximity because I feel the loss of his heat. "But I'm going to. Because that's what I do, Bella. I protect what's mine. And you're mine."
"I'm not—"
"You are." His voice is absolute. "You stopped being your own the moment you challenged me in that interview and I saw something in you that I needed. Something that completed something broken inside me."
He walks away from me toward the window, his back to me. He's silhouetted against the glass, and I can see the rigid tension in his shoulders, the controlled fury barely contained in the line of his spine.
"I was going to let this play out, you know. Let you marry Marcus. Let you pretend that you could be happy with him. Let you live in your little fantasy world where you're normal and I'm just your boss and there's nothing between us but professional respect."
He turns back to face me.
"But then you had to come in here with that ring, and you had to remind me that time is the one thing I can't control. That you could slip away from me. That I could lose you to mediocrity and flowers and a man who will never deserve you."
"So what? You're going to keep me locked in this room forever? That's your master plan?"
"No." His smile is cold, calculated, terrifying. "We're going to play a game."
The words hit like ice water.
"A game?" I don't like where this is going. I don't like the certainty in his voice, the predatory confidence in his expression, the absolute conviction that whatever he's about to propose is already decided.
"You and me, Bella." He walks back toward me, and I press myself against the glass wall, trying to create space that doesn't exist. "A test to see if you can be honest with yourself about what you really want."
"I want you to let me go."
"No, you don't." He stops in front of me, and his hand reaches for my face again. I don't pull away. I haven't pulled away once, and we both know it. "You want me to keep you here. You want me to make this decision for you so you don't have to live with the consequences of choosing me."
His fingers trace my lower lip, and the sensation shoots through me like electricity.
"Here's the game, Bella. For the next seventy-two hours, you're going to stay with me. In my penthouse. In my space. With no phone, no contact with the outside world, no way to reach Marcus or your mother or anyone who might convince you that what you feel for me is wrong."
"That's kidnapping—"
"Call it what you want. I call it clarity." His hand drops to my throat, not choking but possessing. His thumb rests against my pulse point, and he can feel my heart racing. "For three days, you're going to admit to yourself what you already know. That you love me. That you want me. That Marcus was just a beautiful lie you told yourself so you wouldn't have to face the darkness of what we are together."
"And if I don't?" My voice is barely a whisper.
"Then I go to Marcus. I show him the messages you've been sending me. Messages where you describe in intimate detail what you want me to do to you. Messages where you beg me to touch you. Messages where you tell me you love me."
I freeze. "I never sent you messages like that."
"No," he agrees, and his smile is ice. "But I'm very good at forgeries. And he's not going to question it when I present them to him alongside the video evidence of you and me together in this office. Your engagement will be over within hours. Your reputation will be destroyed. Your mother will see it. Your friends will see it. Everyone will think you're the kind of woman who cheats on her fiancé with her boss."
The room spins.
"That's blackmail."
"That's survival." He releases my throat and steps back, allowing me to breathe. "I've spent three years waiting for you to come to me voluntarily. I've been patient. I've been professional. I've been a gentleman."
He moves to the conference table and sits in his chair like we're about to discuss quarterly earnings instead of my complete and total destruction.
"But you forced my hand, Bella. You chose someone else. You decided to throw away what we have for the comfort of a mediocre life. So now we're going to do this my way."
"This is insane—"
"Maybe." His dark eyes lock onto mine. "But you're going to come with me anyway. Because the alternative is losing everything. Your reputation. Your career. Your engagement. Your dignity."
He leans back in his chair, completely relaxed now that he's established total control.
"So what's it going to be? Are you going to choose me? Or are you going to choose the destruction of everything you've worked for?"
I should fight. I should scream. I should call for security or throw something through the window or do literally anything except what I'm about to do.
But I'm already walking toward him.
Because he's right. He's absolutely, devastatingly right. And I can't pretend otherwise anymore.
"Three days," I whisper.
"Three days," he agrees, and his smile is victorious. "By the end, you're going to admit that you've always been mine."