I Said Not After Tonight While He Cleared The Boardroom And Kept Me There...

He didn't touch me when he told me to move. He just stepped back from the walnut table and gestured toward the door with an open palm, like I was a guest he was showing out after dinner.

I stood. My legs felt too light. The white button-up had stuck to my back, and I felt it peel away as I straightened. The two guards had already filed out without looking at me, and the door they'd left through was still open. Cold air from the hallway cut through the warm tungsten light of the boardroom.

He picked up my coat from the back of the chair I'd never sat in properly. He held it out. I slid my arms in. His hands didn't brush my shoulders, but they hovered close enough that I could feel the heat off them.

"After you, Miss Merson," he said, quiet.

The hallway was empty and too bright. Polished marble and recessed lights that buzzed faintly. Floor-to-ceiling windows still showed snow coming down sideways past the skyline, but out here there was no wood, no whiskey, no amber light to soften it. Just glass and stone. My flats made a small sound with each step. His shoes made almost none.

We passed a wall of frosted glass offices, all dark. At the elevator bank, a cleaning cart was parked against the wall. A woman in a gray uniform was wiping down the glass with a spray bottle. She was maybe sixty, her hair pulled into a net, earbuds in but no music playing loud enough to hear.

She looked up as we approached. Her eyes went first to him, then to me. She took in my coat, my hair coming loose, the way I was holding my purse too tight against my stomach.

Her mouth opened a little. I could have said anything. Help. I don't want to go. Call someone. Her hand tightened on her spray bottle. She was already deciding whether to look away.

I didn't speak. I looked down at the elevator call button and pressed it, even though he'd already pressed it. The light was already on. My finger left a faint print on the steel.

The doors opened with a soft ding. Empty. He let me step in first, then followed. The woman in gray was still watching us as the doors slid shut. I watched her face narrow to a line, then disappear.

Inside, the elevator was warm. Too warm. No music, just the low hum of the cables and our breathing. The doors reflected us back at each other — me pale under the overhead light, him dark and still beside me. He didn't stand close. He stood at the opposite wall, hands at his sides, stubble catching the light.

He pressed P without looking. Penthouse.

The car dropped. My stomach lifted.

"You're wondering if I've done this before," he said after a few seconds. His voice was lower in here, with nowhere to go.

I didn't answer. I watched the numbers change. 42. 41.

"Not like this," he said. "Usually they ask for the job first. Or the money. You didn't ask for anything."

I swallowed. The air felt thin. "You asked me a question," I said.

He gave a short, quiet breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "I did."

The elevator kept falling. 38. 37. I could hear the soft rustle each time either of us shifted weight. My coat brushed against the rail.

"There was a girl," he said, eyes on the reflected doors, not on me. "Two years ago. Same table. She laughed when I asked. Thought I was joking. She wasn't. Her boyfriend called the next day to negotiate. I told him she wasn't for sale, she was just nervous. He thanked me."

His jaw tightened on the last word. He said it flat, like he'd tasted something bad remembering it.

"What happened to her?" I asked. My voice sounded smaller than I wanted it to.

"She went home," he said. "I sent her home in a car. She sent me an email a week later asking if the offer still stood. It didn't."

The numbers kept dropping. 29. 28. The hum got louder for a second, then softened.

He finally looked at me. Direct, no smile now. "I don't make the same offer twice, Miss Merson. So you should be sure before those doors open."

I realized I was holding my breath again and forced it out. My hands were cold inside my sleeves. I thought of the woman with the spray bottle, how she'd looked away because it was easier.

"I'm sure," I said. I wasn't sure what I was sure of — that I wouldn't run in the lobby, that I wouldn't scream — but the word came out steady.

He nodded once. The elevator slowed. Lobby. The doors opened onto marble and a single security guard at a desk, his head down over a monitor. Snow light glowed through the revolving doors beyond him. The guard glanced up, saw him, and immediately looked back down, like he'd been trained to.

He stepped out first this time. He didn't offer his hand. He waited for me to follow.

At the far side of the lobby, past the desk, there was another elevator. Smaller. Private. Its doors were dark wood, not steel, with a keypad glowing faint blue beside it. He entered a code without hiding it from me — 4-1-9-7 — and the doors opened on a car lined in the same dark walnut as the boardroom table.

He held the doors with his arm.