The conference room in the glass tower of Brown Dynamics headquarters was literally cracking under the pressure that had built up. It felt like one more moment of that dense, almost tangible silence and even the glass would finally give in, already barely holding against what Richard Brown had created in just a few minutes. His face, young and almost too well-preserved for a forty-year-old, seemed carved from stone. But his gaze. The way he slowly swept it over each of the twelve division heads like a scanner revealed everything, determination, cruelty, power, and absolute control over the life of every single one of them.
"I asked a question," he said calmly, and several of the fifty-year-old executives, men who had survived the 2008 financial crisis, aggressive acquisitions, billion-dollar lawsuits with the state, a pandemic, mass layoffs, and three brutal restructurings during which they themselves had to fire thousands of people, almost simultaneously looked away like schoolboys before a strict teacher, "How did that arrogant bastard Ethan Blackwood, who has been trying to take a bite out of my market for ten years, find out about the deal?"
Jonathan Myers, the first employee Richard Brown’s father had ever hired into the company and the one everyone believed had the safest position of all, gave a small, deliberate cough, deciding to take the hit himself.
At that exact moment Richard’s overly calm eyes snapped onto the source, and not a single muscle on his face moved, even his gaze remained just as "detached".
"Did you want to say something, Joe?" Richard said, tilting his head slightly, and that almost imperceptible change was enough to make the room even quieter.
Jonathan slowly exhaled, understanding there was no way back now.
"There is one possibility, Richard," he said carefully, holding eye contact. "Three days ago in the cl-o-sed me-e—..."
Jonathan’s words turned into a torn, unnaturally stretched noise for Richard, as if someone had suddenly twisted the dial of reality and left behind only a distorted echo where individual sounds broke apart into meaningless fragments, growing quieter and quieter, like a radio picking up two stations at once and trying to align both frequencies at the same time, and doing it badly. Honestly, terribly.
Richard, as always, tried not to show anything, but when the sound disappeared completely and everything around him began to blur as if the room had suddenly filled with thick, transparent water, for the first time in many years his expression shifted, just barely. Not fear. More like irritation of a man used to instantly understanding what was happening and suddenly faced with something that had no rational explanation whatsoever.
He tried to stand, but the table, the chairs, the glass walls, the silhouettes of the executives, and even his own hands began to break apart into countless flickering fragments, as if reality itself could no longer decide what it was supposed to be. A white light flared so brightly that for a moment it erased everything entirely, and then through the deafening emptiness he heard an unfamiliar, muffled voice that spoke a single short phrase, the meaning of which he hadn’t yet managed to grasp.
The calm with which he accepted what was happening could have put even the most experienced bomb technician to shame, because even now, when the world around him had completely stopped obeying the laws of logic, Richard Brown forced himself, above all else, to observe.
And the first thing he felt was a scent.
Sweet, intrusive, cloying expensive perfume mixed with light floral notes, as if someone had sprayed it right next to him.
Then sound.
"So I told him, baby, I’m not some kind of doll," a girl laughed brightly, apparently sitting across from him and, judging by the sound, lazily stirring a bright pink cocktail with a straw. "If you want me to go on a yacht with you, at least buy a proper ring first. Not this... ugh."
Richard hadn’t even opened his eyes yet, but he already understood he was nowhere near where he was supposed to be.
The scent of expensive perfume now blended with the smell of freshly brewed coffee and sweet pastries, somewhere nearby soft pop music was playing quietly, and under his palm he felt the cool surface of a white marble tabletop.
But that wasn’t the main thing. The main thing was the strange sensation of his own body, which had nothing in common with what Richard Brown had considered himself just seconds ago. Something heavy and soft now rested on his chest, pulling gently downward with a warm, living weight that swayed softly with each breath, long cool strands slid over bare shoulders and tickled his neck, and the thin fabric of the dress clung so tightly to the waist and hips that it felt impossible to remove without help. On his wrist he felt the cool touch of an expensive bracelet, on his finger a ring with a large diamond, and the perfume that had irritated him with its cloying sweetness a second ago was now clearly coming from him.
Richard slowly opened his eyes.
A white marble table. Panoramic windows. The terrace of an expensive café somewhere high above the city. Across from him sat a striking blonde, about twenty-five, in a cream-colored suit, lazily stirring a bright pink drink with a straw. Noticing that her friend had finally stopped staring into space, she laughed brightly.
"Chloe, are you even listening to me?" she asked, slightly pouting her perfectly made-up lips. "I’ve been telling you for a full minute how awful Damon’s gift was."
Chloe?
Trying not to give anything away, Richard fixed the blonde across from him with the same look that just minutes ago had made CEOs, ministers, and owners of billion-dollar corporations fall silent. Now, none of what he expected happened. Quite the opposite.
The girl just laughed again, rolling her eyes, then without any hesitation leaned across the table and lightly tapped his glass with a perfectly manicured nail.
"Chloooe..." she sang with amused condescension. "Don’t look at me like that. You’ve got that face again, the one where you try to look smart. That’s really not your thing."
She laughed again at her own joke.
"God, you’ve become so funny after the wedding."
Richard didn’t respond.
Instead, he kept carefully studying the girl across from him, trying to gather any information. Around twenty-five. Expensive jewelry. Flawless manicure. Not a single sign of tension. Judging by her behavior, they had known each other for a long time. Judging by how freely she spoke to him, there was no distance between them.
"You..." Richard began in his usual calm tone, however instead of the cold, confident voice of a man used to commanding thousands of employees, what came out of his own mouth was unexpectedly soft:
"Like... uh..."
This time Richard’s eyes betrayed him and widened slightly. He clearly understood that the thought in his head had been perfectly formed, cold and logical, yet somewhere between it and his tongue an invisible filter had appeared, turning his usual phrase into a ridiculous, helpless mumble.
He fell silent, trying again.
"I... like... wanted... uh..."
The words came out so naturally and at the same time so alien that for a moment Richard didn’t even immediately understand why just seconds ago he had thought he said something wrong.
"Oh my God, you’re so funny," the girl kept giggling, casually waving the waiter over with two fingers as if she did it ten times a day. "Mark, sweetheart, can we get one more each? Same for me, and for Chloe... you probably want something non-alcoholic now, right, sweetie?"
A tall waiter in a perfectly pressed white shirt stopped by the table and smiled warmly.
"Of course, Mrs. Blackwood. As usual?"
Richard felt something inside him tighten coldly.
Blackwood.
That was enough for thousands of fragments of memory to instantly snap into a single logical chain. Ethan Blackwood. The very man he had been about to destroy with a deal just minutes ago.
Richard clenched his fists, then immediately stopped himself. Damn those long nails digging into the soft skin of his palm, and from his mouth slipped a traitorous:
"Ah..."
He quickly opened his fingers, as if startled by the sound itself, by the tone that came out too soft, too... not his, while the waiter didn’t even react, only briefly glancing at him with that same habitual, almost automatic politeness that held not a trace of respect, only a rehearsed pattern of dealing with "people like this", and gave a slight smile.
"Everything alright, Mrs. Blackwood?"
Richard had already opened his mouth to respond sharply, harshly, the way he always did, but instead his shoulder lifted slightly on its own, his chest pushed forward, and his voice came out slow, absurdly soft:
"Yeah… like… I’m totally fine… hehe~"
"Hey, her usual, you know, the strawberry one," the blonde answered for Chloe quickly, then immediately leaned back into the conversation, resting her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands, "Okay, spill, is Ethan really as hot in bed as he looks? I heard he likes it rough. Is that true? Oh my God, Chloe, I literally can’t take it anymore, like physically. I. Need. To. Know!"
Richard, distracted by his own cleavage that blocked most of his view and made it impossible to see what was between him and the table below, slowly lifted his gaze and for a split second tried to bring back that same cold, cutting eye contact he used to break people, but instead his lips parted slightly on their own and his head tilted to the side almost coquettishly.
"Uhh… like… in bed?" he started, then, getting irritated at that sugary, soft, obviously too dumb voice, added, "OMG! Like, what… what freaking bed?! I’m so confused right now, like, literally what are you even talking about?"
The blonde froze for just a second, then burst out laughing so loudly that a few people at nearby tables turned their heads.
"Oh my God, Chloe!" she gasped through laughter, clutching her stomach. "You should’ve seen yourself. ‘What freaking bed’," she mimicked, "you looked like I asked you about rocket fuel, not your husband."
She shook her head, still smiling.
"Don’t dodge the question. You literally got married to the most desirable man in Manhattan like a week ago, I need details."
Richard’s mind was racing, trying to slip away from logic, from undeniable facts, from everything he was seeing right now, trying to call it a dream, a hallucination, some drugged-out delirium. Anything but reality.
But reality was relentless. The heavy weight on his chest kept softly swaying with every breath, stretching the thin fabric of the tight dress, his hair kept tickling his bare neck, and between his legs. Between his legs he knew for sure, even without checking. It was already wet. He had noticed it the moment the girl across from him mentioned that asshole Ethan Blackwood, who, apparently, was now his, or rather, her husband. Chloe’s husband. Chloe Blackwood.