Page 23 of His Verdict
It doesn’t make sense.
“No,” I whisper. The word is an instinct, a reflex. “No, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to torch my entire life and then show up at my door expecting me to go to court for you the next day. Get someone else. Get one of your other uncomplicated, non-argumentative whores to do it.”
I point a trembling finger at the door. “Get the fuck out. Leave me alone. I will figure my own life out. I don’t want your job. I don’t want your money. I just want you to disappear.”
He doesn’t move. He just watches me, his expression unreadable. “I can’t do that,” he says softly.
“Why not?” I cry, the frustration boiling over.
He just looks at me, and then he stands. He moves toward me, his steps slow and deliberate. I instinctively back away until my back hits the wall. He stops a few feet away, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
The two words are so unexpected, so completely out of character, they throw me completely off guard. He has never apologized for anything. He has only ever justified his actions.
“What?” I ask, my voice a whisper.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, his voice low and laced with a sincerity that feels terrifyingly real. “For what I put you through. In the courtroom. With your job. It was… a necessary cruelty. But it was cruelty nonetheless. And for that, I ask for your forgiveness.”
He says the words, but his eyes are telling a different story. They are not the eyes of a penitent man. They are the eyes of a strategist making a calculated move. But my heart, the stupid, traitorous organ, doesn’t care about strategy. It hears the apology it has been starving for.
Tears, hot and unwelcome, prick at the corners of my eyes. A single, traitorous drop escapes and traces a path down my cheek.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. The word has no force behind it now. “You don’t… you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to destroy everything and then apologize. You can’t just throw money at me and say you’re sorry and expect that to fix it.”
He takes another step, closing the distance between us. He slowly lifts his hand, and his thumb comes up to gently, tenderly, brush the tear from my cheek. His touch is not possessive or demanding. It is soft. It is careful. And it is the most devastatingly effective weapon he has used on me yet.
“I know,” he says, his voice a low murmur. “But I can fix it. Iwillfix it. All of it.” He looks directly into my eyes, and his gaze is an ironclad promise. “The bar investigation will disappear. The sanction will be expunged from your record. There will be no mark on your career. It will be as if it never happened. You will be clean.”
He pauses, letting the immense weight of that promise sink in. The one thing I thought was gone forever—my name, my professional future—he is offering to hand it back to me, pristine and whole.
“You just have to agree to work for me,” he says softly. “At Donovan & Creed. One of my holdings.”
The weight of my life, of my choices, of my debt and my ruin and my hopeless future, comes crashing down on me. I am so tired. So tired of fighting. So tired of being broke and scared and alone. He is offering me an out. Not just a job. Not just money. He is offering me absolution. A complete erasure of my sins.
All I have to do is say yes. All I have to do is surrender.
The fight finally goes out of me. The tension drains from my shoulders, leaving me limp, exhausted. The tears I’ve been holding back for days begin to fall freely, silent tracks of defeat down my face.
“There has to be a sign-on bonus,” I whisper, the words a last, pathetic attempt at negotiation, at retaining some shred of control. “A big one.”
A slow, gentle smile touches his lips. It’s not a smirk. It’s a look of quiet victory, but there’s something else in it, too. Something that looks almost like relief. “Of course,” he says. “Whatever you want.”
And with that, he leans in and kisses me.
It is nothing like the bruising, angry kiss in his penthouse. This kiss is achingly soft, impossibly gentle. His lips move over mine with a tender reverence, tasting the salt of my tears. It is a kiss of comfort, of promise, of sealing a deal.
I try to push him away, my hands coming up to his chest, but there is no strength in the gesture. It is a token resistance, a final, futile protest from the woman I used to be. He ignores it, deepening the kiss, his arms sliding around my waist, pulling me away from the wall and flush against his body.
He holds me, letting me cry, his lips never leaving mine, kissing away the tears as they fall. He murmurs against my mouth, soft, incoherent promises. It feels like coming home after a long, brutal war. It feels like salvation. I know it’s a lie. I know it’s a different kind of cage. But right now, this one feels warm and safe, and I am too broken to care.
When my sobs finally subside, he lifts his head, his forehead resting against mine. Our breaths mingle in the quiet space between us.
“Where is your bedroom?” he asks, his voice a low, rough whisper.
I don’t answer with words. I just tilt my head, gesturing down the short hallway. It’s all the answer he needs.
He scoops me up into his arms as if I weigh nothing. I gasp, my own arms instinctively wrapping around his neck, holding on. He carries me into my bedroom, a room he has never seen but moves through as if he knows every inch of it. He lays me down gently on the bed, on my rumpled, unmade sheets. He follows me down, his body covering mine, propped up on his elbows so he isn’t crushing me.