Page 249 of Love Me in the Dark

More tailored.

More... mine.

She’ll wonder what changed. What she did wrong.

But she won’t complain.

Won’t understand.

She won’t suspect me.

Not yet.

But one day she’ll look back and realize—this is when it started.

This moment. This breath. This fucking second.

This is when I decided she doesn’t belong to anyone else. And I don’t care if it makes me a monster. I can’t give her the option to accept it. To learn about it.

When we finally get back to the city two days later, I relish the fact that she’s almost close enough to touch.

Soon.

The flaws in my supposedly flawless system.

My boardroom smells like money and fear when Asher and I walk into the room for the meeting I demanded after reading over Ivy’s files.

Ten executives. Two analysts. One outside consultant who already knows he’s about to lose his contract. They’re all staring at the digital wall display, trying to make sense of the predictive drop in user engagement and the rise in complaints.

I lean back in my chair, silent.

Asher’s seated at my right, tapping notes into a tablet, watching them sweat with a smirk pulling up one side of his mouth like this is all entertainment for him.

For both of us, really.

The consultant clears his throat. “The dip is temporary, we believe. Part of the adjustment curve as we shift to the new framework?—”

“It’s not,” I cut him off without looking at him.

Everyone goes still in the already silent room.

Perfect.

I finally lift my eyes from the second screen resting on my lap—the one showing a mirror Ivy’s desktop. She’s poking through a hidden directory I left in the new system, one she wasn’t supposed to find yet. Of course she found it.

She always seems to find the cracks. I’m not even watching her face and my dick is hard as steel. Just her keystrokes turn me on. Embracing the pain, because there’s no way in hell I’m about to adjust myself in a room full of these assholes, I turn my attention away from Ivy.

“You’re basing your projections on incomplete behavioral models,” I say to the consultant. “Your heatmap analysis is outdated, and your interface assumptions are wrong.”

He blinks, clearly caught like a deer in headlights. “With respect?—”

“No,” I cut him off once more. “You don’t have my respect. You have three minutes to walk out of this room and off this floor before I blacklist your firm from every vendor list I control. You’re lying to my face when accepting there’s an issue would have saved the contract.”

He pales. Scrambles for his briefcase. No one makes a sound as the door hisses closed behind him.

Asher speaks up, smooth as ever. “Do you want us to reroute the design contract?”

“Yes. Pull the sandbox team. Use the Phoenix prototype, the last one I buried.”