Page 293 of Black Reign

I go still.

“Careful.”

“The anonymous girl. The brilliant mind. The mystery. The teasing photographs. The wounded daughter with a tragic story.”

My jaw starts to tighten.

He keeps going.

“She found exactly the weakness nobody believed you had.”

“Stop.”

“You don't date. You don't attach. You don't trust women long enough for anyone to exploit it. So she built a relationship where you felt safe.”

The veins in my hands become visible as my fingers curl against the desk.

My father watches.

He thinks he's winning.

Wrong.

“She got inside the one place no one else could.”

“Enough.”

“A honey trap doesn't require sex, Xavier.”

My chair hits the wall when I move.

“Do not call her that.”

There.

My father sees it.

The first real loss of control.

His eyes sharpen.

“That is precisely what I mean.”

I grip the edge of the desk.

Hard enough that the wood presses into my palms.

He keeps his voice calmer now.

“She seduced your mind instead of your body. More sophisticated. More effective. You pride yourself on being impossible to manipulate, and she made you believe the manipulation was intimacy.”

Every word lands exactly where he intends.

Not because I believe him.

Because I know what Sabine would think if she heard it.

She already questions whether Ghost and Xavier can coexist.