Prudence's POV
The hangover from the gala wasn't from champagne. It was from humiliation, a bitter vintage that had steeped in my veins for two days. I had let my guard down. I had allowed the music and the mercury silk and the intensity in Justin Steele's stormy eyes to make me forget the fundamental truth of my existence: men are dogs, and the moment you believe otherwise, you get bitten.
I had been bitten.
The image of him walking away, Eva's crimson-clad arm linked possessively with his, was a looped video playing behind my eyes every time I blinked. It wasn't jealousy. It was rage. Rage at myself for that fleeting, traitorous moment of softening. Rage at him for being so predictably, pathetically male.
My promise to myself was absolute. I would freeze him out. The merger could proceed, but it would be conducted through layers of management, a glacial and impersonal process. Justin Steele would become a name on a memo, a signature on a contract. Nothing more. I had hoped to much that I forgot who I was.
To that end, I buried myself in the work I had neglected in the futile preparation for the gala. I hid myself in my home office, the wide view of the city my only witness. I attacked the backlog with a cold fury. I dissected supply chain inefficiencies, tore apart lackluster marketing proposals, and authored blistering critiques of our Q3 digital strategy. This was my element. This was where I was untouchable. Numbers didn't flirt with you and then walk away with a socialite. Spreadsheets didn't have stormy eyes that promised understanding and delivered betrayal.
For hours, I was a machine. I slept at my desk for a few fitful hours, sustained by espresso and a simmering anger that kept the more dangerous emotions; the hurt, the disappointment safely at bay. The world outside my penthouse ceased to exist. There was only the work. The clean, logical, unforgiving work.
It was on the evening of the second day that the sanctity of my fortress was breached.
The discreet chime of my doorbell was an alien sound in the focused silence. I frowned, checking the time. 8:17 PM. I wasn't expecting anyone, and my staff knew better than to arrive unannounced.
I activated the intercom. "Yes?"
The voice of Robert, the night doorman, was apologetic. "My sincerest apologies for the disturbance, Ms. Smith. A gentleman was just here. He left this for you. Said it was urgent."
A gentleman. My blood ran cold, then hot. I knew, with a certainty that felt like fate, who it was.
"Describe him," I commanded, my voice tight.
"Tall, sir. Well-dressed. Charismatic, but… intense. He left his initials. J.S."
A wolfish smile, slow and sharp, spread across my lips. J.S. So, the Titan was prowling at my gates. He'd tried and now he was resorting to handwritten notes. How quaint. How desperate.
The anger I had been carefully metabolizing into productivity now ceased into something else: a cool, clean opportunity. The chessboard was set, and he had just made his first, foolish move.
"Robert," I said, my voice dripping with a casual authority I knew would be obeyed. "Run after him. Tell him if his message is so urgent, he can deliver it to me in person. Himself."
I released the intercom and stood, my heart hammering not with nerves, but with the thrill of the hunt. This was a game I understood. A game of power and control. I walked to my bar and poured a measure of whiskey, not to calm myself, but to savor the moment.
He arrived within ten minutes. The elevator doors slid open directly into my foyer, and there he stood. Justin Steele, in a simple dark jacket and trousers, looking less like a corporate titan and more like… a man. A very compelling, very dangerous man. He seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the room.
He stepped out, his eyes finding me immediately. I remained by the window, glass in hand, a queen receiving a supplicant.
"Justin," I said, my tone as cool as the marble beneath his feet. "This is highly unorthodox."
A flicker of a smile touched his lips. "I find orthodoxy overrated."
He took a step closer, and I let him. Let him feel the vast, expensive space that was my domain. Let him smell the Sovereign in the air. Let him understand the scale of the fortress he was trying to besiege.
He stopped a few feet away, his gaze intense. "I have a proposition for you."
I took a slow sip of whiskey, saying nothing. Let him work for it.
He seemed to gather himself, his expression turning uncharacteristically serious. "The gala… leaving with Eva… it was a mistake. A stupid, tactical mistake born of my own… discomfort."
"Discomfort?" I arched an eyebrow. "With what?"
"With you," he said, his voice low and resonant. "With how you made me feel on that dance floor. It was… real. And it terrified me."
The admission was a masterstroke. It was the last thing I expected. Not a justification, not a flirtation, but a raw, startling confession of vulnerability. For a second, it threatened to disarm me. I saw the ghost of the fifteen-year-old boy Anya's research had uncovered, the one who had lost everything. I saw the man who built an empire from nothing, who understood loss as intimately as I did.
The pull was magnetic. And that made it all the more dangerous.
I forced my expression to remain impassive. "You don't owe me an explanation, Justin. Your personal life is your own."
"I think I do," he countered, his gray eyes holding mine with an unnerving sincerity. "Because I'm not here for a merger, Prudence. I'm here for a truce."
A truce. The word hung in the air between us, tantalizing and absurd.
"A truce," I repeated, letting the skepticism drip from the word. "And what, precisely, are the terms of this truce?"
He took another step closer. I could see the faint weariness around his eyes, the determined set of his jaw. "The terms are simple. For one hour, we don't talk about Provida. We don't talk about Titan. We don't talk about market share or synergistic potential."
A laugh, dry and humorless, escaped me. "What would we talk about?"
"That's the point, Prudence," he said, his voice dropping to an intimate murmur that skated over my skin. "We'd figure it out. Or we'd stand in silence. But it would be real. No agendas. No armor. Just… a truce."
My mind raced. It was a brilliant, diabolical offer. It appealed directly to the part of me I had locked away, the part that was tired of the armor, that was lonely in this beautiful, empty fortress. He was offering a glimpse of something genuine, something that had nothing to do with our net worth or our corporate titles.
And that was why I had to destroy it.
I let the silence stretch, watching him, seeing the hope war with the fear in his eyes. He was laying himself bare, and he was waiting for my verdict. The power in that moment was an exquisite, potent drug.
Finally, I let out a slow, deliberate breath. I gave a single, sharp nod.
"Alright, Steele," I said, the words feeling like a sentence. "A truce. Noon. Don't be late."
Relief flashed across his face, so raw and genuine it almost made me reconsider. He nodded, turned, and stepped back into the elevator. As the doors closed, I saw him give me a last, unguarded look, a look of such fierce, hopeful intensity that it stole my breath.
The moment the doors sealed, the cool, calculating part of my mind re-engaged. The game was not over. It had just begun.
He had chosen the time. Noon. I would let him choose the place. Let him think he was in control.
The next morning, I went about my routine with a serene detachment. I did my yoga. I ate a light breakfast. I read the financial times. At 11:45 AM, my phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number. I'd known he would find a way to get it.
Justin: The corner of 5th and Main. I'll be the one without an agenda.
I smiled. 5th and Main. It was a barren, windswept corner downtown, currently a nightmare of construction fencing and jackhammers. A deeply unromantic, utterly practical location. It was a choice designed to prove his sincerity. No fancy restaurant, no cozy cafe. Just a street corner. How very… real of him.
I typed back a reply, my fingers flying over the screen.
Prudence: On my way.
I was, of course, still in my silk robe, curled on my sofa with a book of poetry I hadn't actually opened. I had no intention of going.
This was the payback. This was the score-settling. He had made me wait, publicly humiliated, at the gala. Now, he would wait. He would wait in the dust and noise of a construction site, wondering, worrying, his hope slowly curdling into doubt.
I pictured him there, checking his watch, his shoulders growing tense. I imagined the confident smile fading from his lips. The thought was a balm, a sweet, cold satisfaction that seeped into my bones.
I spent the afternoon luxuriating in my revenge. I took a long, scented bath. I had a masseuse come to the penthouse and knead the remaining tension from my shoulders. I watched a terrible, engrossing reality TV show. I did everything but go to 5th and Main.
My phone remained silent. He didn't text again. He didn't call. I admired his pride, even as I relished breaking it. He was waiting it out, believing I was stuck in traffic, that a last-minute crisis had detained me. He was giving me the benefit of the doubt, a courtesy I had no intention of returning.
As the afternoon bled into evening, the sky outside my window deepening to a bruised purple, a faint, unwelcome trickle of unease began to seep through my satisfaction. What if he had left? What if my lesson had been too effective, and he had simply written me off?
The thought was unexpectedly… disappointing. I didn't want him to write me off. I wanted him to understand the cost of crossing me. I wanted him chastened, not gone.
The city lights twinkled on, a false galaxy against the velvet dark. 8 PM. 9 PM. 10 PM. My penthouse, usually a sanctuary, began to feel like a gilded cage. The silence was no longer peaceful; it was waiting. I found myself glancing at my phone, the blank screen a mute accusation.
Then, at 2:03 AM, it rang. The shrill sound shattered the deep silence, making my heart jolt. His name flashed on the screen.
I let it ring three times, savoring the moment, before I swiped to answer. I brought the phone to my ear but said nothing.
There was a beat of silence on the other end, filled with the distant, hollow sound of the wind. Then, his voice. It wasn't angry. It wasn't pleading. It was quiet, layered with a fatigue that sounded like it went straight to the soul.
"I'm still here," he said.
The simplicity of the statement was a physical blow. He had waited. For fourteen hours. Through the heat of the day and the chill of the night, surrounded by the skeletal remains of a construction site, he had stayed.
The victory I had been savoring all day suddenly tasted like ash. This wasn't just a lesson. It was cruelty.
But I was Prudence Smith. I had built an empire on being harder than the world that had tried to break me. I would not falter now.
I let the silence stretch, letting him hear the absolute stillness of my home, the proof that I had never intended to come.
Then, I laughed. A soft, cold, deliberate sound.
"Consider this payback for the gala, Justin," I said, my voice as sharp and final as shattering glass. "Don't ever try to play me again."
I ended the call.
I sat in the profound quiet, the phone a cold weight in my hand. I had won. I had humiliated him as he had humiliated me. I had proven my power, my control, my absolute immunity to his charms.
So why did I feel so hollow?
Why did the image of him standing alone on a dark street corner feel like a loss instead of a victory?
I had wanted to teach him a lesson, and I had. But as I sat in the towering silence of my penthouse, the ghost of his hopeful smile from the night before haunting the room, I had the chilling premonition that the lesson he would take from this wasn't the one I intended. I hadn't pushed him away. I had simply given him a new, more intimate understanding of the fortress walls. And Justin Steele, the boy who had rebuilt an entire empire from nothing, was not a man who was afraid of a long siege.
The game was far from over. But the rules had just become infinitely more dangerous.