She didn’t ask for her playlist for the drive. I didn’t offer it because I already knew she wouldn’t want it. Not today.
She is so utterly silent—has been since the conference room. But I try my best to share the stillness instead of letting it stifle me. I can’t help but feel the choking dread of never being able to fix this chasmic error of my own damn making.
Her eyes are somewhere else, locked on the mirrored wall of the elevator as we move up, her hands tucked into her coat like she’s holding herself together.
“I’ll be muting everyone except Amanda, Taewon, and our lawyers,” I say quietly. “You should do the same. Turn everything else off for a few days.”
“I… blocked your parents,” she mumbles. “They kept calling since this morning.”
My lips twitch in spite of myself. “That’s—that’s good, baby.”
We step inside the marble foyer but something about the air is off. The kind of stillness that sets your teeth on edge. I brush it off. Just nerves. Paranoia, probably.
My keycard buzzes over the scanner as we reach my penthouse door, but my free hand doesn’t leave her back. Not until the front door clicks open.
Cece’s eyes trail toward the living room as she shrugs off her coat. Her voice is soft, but weary. “I was thinking… it’s too late to take the article down. The screenshots are everywhere. But what if we can trace the clause leak… find who it was, if it wasn’t your parents—”
I pause mid-step, turning to look at her. She’s in strategy mode. Or maybe it’s survival disguised as sharpness.
“—then we can challenge it, maybe even counter with a privacy or defamation claim,” she adds. “Assuming we can prove intent or at least negligence.”
I blink. “You want to go on the offensive?”
“Your parents did this one way or another, Levi,” she whispers, shrugging dejectedly. “So when the authorities come for them, we won’t be on the wrong side of public scrutiny—for the most part.”
She’s right.
Fuck, she’s right.
I nod slowly, stepping toward the tablet mounted on the wall to pull up the security screen and engaging the alarm system. “I’ll get Taewon to work with our lawyers on it. I know it’s my parents but you’re right about th—”
“Well, you two took your time.”
A voice slices the air clean in half.
Male. Calm. Smooth as marble, echoing from the kitchen area.
Jesus Christ.
Cece lets out a choked breath, something between a gasp and a scream. I act on instinct.
My entire body coils as I spin toward the sound of the voice, immediately shoving Cece behind me. Her fingers fist into the back of my shirt.
The hair on the back of my neck rises.
Because the sensor lights in the kitchen are already on. There’s a cup of coffee on the fucking island. Andsomeonehas already made themselves at home after breaking in.
“What the—”
The man himself casually strolls through my living room, a smirk playing on his face.
“Hey, you got creamer?”
NINETEEN
Cece
My brain kicks into action when I finally register the familiar voice. It almost makes me recall my college days at Harvard, trying to make sense of a degree when my classmate already had a blooming security business.
