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“Are you scared?”

There’s a mocking edge to it, the kind he uses when he wants to get under my skin and stay there. I turn slowly to face him, irritation already scraping along the inside of my ribs.

“What did you say?”

Maksim shrugs, maddeningly calm.

“You heard me.” His mouth curves, cruel and knowing. “Are you scared to fuck me in my father’s office?”

I blink, genuinely stunned; because of all the reckless shit he could’ve shot me with, this is the grenade.

“You said next time you saw me, you’d fuck me,” he presses, annoyance bleeding into his tone now, edged with something rawer. “You promised.”

Shit.

I run a hand through my hair and let out a short, humorless scoff. His eyes flash at the sound, hot and immediate, and for a brief second I catch it before he hides it. That flicker of anger mixed with hurt.

That should not affect me as much as it does.

“And you think your father’s office is where I should fuck you?” I say, incredulous, my voice climbing despite myself. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

He laughs, and it’s soft, warm, a little broken around the edges.

“I’m always out of my mind, Tristan.” He pulls a cigarette from the pocket of the cargo jorts he’s wearing and slips it between his lips. “You’d have to be a little insane to understand me, and so far, I think you’re doing a great job.”

I should leave.

I know I should.

Everything in my life, everything I’ve spent years building, everything Pavel just laid at my feet like a warning wrapped in silk and steel, is telling me to walk out of this room and not look back.

But I’m still standing here.

Still looking at him.

Still letting him occupy every inch of oxygen.

“I thought you were angry with me,” I say instead, tilting my head. “You were practically trying to skin me alive with your attitude downstairs.”

“I am angry,” he says, lighting the cigarette and taking a slow drag before exhaling toward the ceiling. His gaze finds mine through the smoke. “Angry at the fact that the man who watched me fuck myself on camera, talking me through it, promising to wreck me next time he sees me keeps dodging me like I’m contagious. ‘I don’t break promises,’ you said. Except you do. You always do.”

The words settle hard.

He says them lightly, but they don’t land lightly.

There’s accusation there, yes. But there’s also something worse and raw. The kind of frustration that only comes when someone has gotten too far under your skin to be dismissed properly.

“And that,” he adds, voice lower now, “is irritating.”

I push my tongue into my cheek and stare at him, praying for patience I absolutely do not have. Why does he do this? Why does he keep pulling at every thread I’m trying to hold together?

And the more dangerous question…why the hell am I still here?

I should’ve walked out the second he locked the door.

Instead, I move toward him.

Each step is deliberate, heavy with the kind of choice you feel before you fully understand it. Because I know, with perfect and sickening clarity, that whatever happens next pushes this into a place neither of us gets to come back from unchanged.