My lungs seize for a second. I do not move.
He lifts one brow, and there is no arousal in the look, only expectation and contempt.
"Or do we draw the line here," he asks, "after millions in imaginary morals and twenty-five thousand in actual cash?"
The humiliation is so intense it makes my skin feel too tight. I step toward him again because the alternative is walking out without the money and without any way to fix the mess that keeps my parents awake at night. My hands feel numb as I lift them to the row of buttons down his shirtfront.
The first button comes undone more easily than I expect. The soft click sounds too loud in the quiet room. The fabric parts a fraction of an inch, revealing a sliver of warm skin and the sharp line of his collarbone. My throat tightens. I tell myself not to look, but my eyes flicker there anyway.
I move to the next button. Then the next. My fingers are clumsy, traitorous. Each small motion feels like a public confession. The shirt loosens gradually, inch by inch, and with it the space between us shrinks until I can feel the heat radiating off him, steady and unmistakable.
He does not move.
He does not help and he does not step back. He stands there and lets me undo him, one small plastic circle at a time, as if this is a test and I am failing it in slow motion.
By the third button my hands are shaking badly enough that I have to swallow hard just to keep going. The shirt hangs open now, exposing the faint lines of muscle beneath, the controlled rise and fall of his chest. His skin looks warm, solid. I feel cold in comparison, brittle and exposed despite being fully clothed.
The fourth button resists.
My fingertip catches in the stitching for half a second. That pause stretches. My breath stutters before I can stop it. I am close enough now to feel the heat coming off him in waves, close enough that the space between us feels charged, as if the air itself has thickened and turned heavy.
I do not notice the way his jaw tightens.
I do not see the faint flare of his nostrils as he inhales, slow and controlled, as if reminding his body who is in charge. His hands remain at his sides, fingers curled just enough to betray effort. Not restraint born of politeness. Something sharper than that.
The button finally gives.
My knuckles brush his skin by accident as the fabric slips free. The contact is brief, barely there, but it lands like a spark. The shirt falls open another inch, and I am suddenly acutely aware of how close we are, of how little space remains between my body and his.
All I can hear is my own pulse, loud and humiliating in my ears.
There is a strange intimacy in standing this close to a man who is watching me like a problem he refuses to solve the easy way. I think his stillness means disinterest. I mistake control for absence. I tell myself that if he felt anything at all, he would move.
I do not see the way his chest rises a fraction deeper now. I do not see how his focus has narrowed to the exact point where my fingers hover, trembling, over the center of his chest. I do not know that he can feel the heat of my palm without being touched by it, and that it is the worst part.
If I had looked up then, I might have seen it.
Not hunger.
Not kindness.
Something more dangerous. Want colliding with contempt. Familiarity colliding with self-loathing. The knowledge that if this continues even one second longer, he will cross a line he has spent years pretending does not exist.
I lift my hand again.
"Enough."
The word lands like a slammed door.
My fingers freeze mid-air, hovering uselessly between us. I look up at him, disoriented by the sudden stop.
His eyes meet mine, and the expression there is not lust, not even anger. It is disgust, sharp and unfiltered, directed as much inward as it is at me, and that somehow makes it worse.
"I have seen what I needed to see," he says. His voice is low and precise, as if he has already sealed this moment into memory. "You will do anything if the price is high enough."
The shame burns so brightly it feels physical. I drop my hands away from him as if the undone buttons themselves have scalded me. His shirt remains partly open, the evidence of how far I went hanging there between us like an accusation.
He turns away. The rejection in that single movement hits harder than if he had struck me.
"Leave," he says. His tone is almost bored now. "You have your money."
The words settle like ice in my stomach. I stand there a heartbeat too long, aware that this is the last moment where refusal might still look like dignity. The problem with dignity is that it does not pay rent or silence creditors.
There is no space left for argument. No opening for explanation. I know better than to try to salvage anything from this wreckage. There is nothing here for me but a check, a ruined night, and the confirmation that in his mind I stepped cleanly into the role he always believed I would.
I walk to the door because there is nowhere else to go. My heels sound too loud on the floor even though I am trying not to make a sound. The handle is cool beneath my palm, smooth and indifferent to everything that just happened.
At the door, I hesitate.
Not because I want to stay.
Because walking away like this feels like losing a war I never wanted to fight.
I open the door anyway.
I leave without looking back.
But my pride—
That I leave behind on his polished floor, crumpled beside whatever remained of the girl he used to know.
The hallway is quiet, hollow rather than hostile. I pull the door shut behind me, and the soft click sounds final, like a gavel delivered just below hearing range.
By the time I reach the elevator, my chest is tight and my fingers ache from gripping the check too hard. I stare straight ahead, refusing to look back over my shoulder. If I do, I will imagine him standing there, watching me leave again and telling himself a story that hurts less than the truth.
The elevator arrives. I step inside. The mirrored walls throw my reflection back at me, and for a moment I barely recognize her. Her lipstick is smudged where she bit down to keep from saying something catastrophic. Her eyes look bruised from the inside.
I look down at the check. The numbers are clean and indifferent. His signature curls across the bottom, decisive and final. It is everything I came for and nothing I wanted to pay this way.
I slide it into my bag. Walking out without it would make the night pointless, and I am not generous enough to give him that satisfaction.
As the elevator descends, a heavy realization settles over me, slow and unavoidable.
I have the money now.
I am not going to pretend that does not matter. It will keep certain doors open. It will keep certain men from knocking, at least for a while.
But when the doors close and I am sealed in with my reflection again, I finally let my breath leave my lungs.
I have the money.
But I have never felt smaller.
And something tells me Adrian Vale is not done tearing me apart.