Bound By The CEO's Cruel Contract

The bass at Apex hit like a physical force, a low-frequency vibration that traveled through the floor, through the leather of the couch, into Ellsworth's sternum. He sat in the center of the VIP section, a glass of Macallan 25 in his hand, watching the bodies move below him without seeing any of them.

He was thinking about her shoulders. The way they'd shaken at her desk. The way she'd held that folder out to him, her arm trembling, her jaw set, refusing to bend.

The door slammed open.

Pierce burst through like a force of nature, his hair wet from the rain, his eyes too bright, his smile too wide. He threw himself onto the couch beside Ellsworth, close enough that their knees touched, and snatched the glass from his hand.

"You're not going to believe this," Pierce said. He drained the whiskey in one swallow, grimaced, set the glass down with a crack. "I have gossip. Nuclear-level gossip. The kind that ends careers. The kind that-"

"Leave," Ellsworth said. He didn't look at his friend. His eyes remained fixed on the dance floor, on the anonymous mass of bodies moving in the dark. "I'm not in the mood."

"Oh, but you are." Pierce leaned closer. His breath smelled of mint and the cocaine he definitely shouldn't have done before coming here. "This involves you, my friend. Or rather, involves someone who works for you. Someone very close to you. Someone named-"

Ellsworth's hand closed around Pierce's wrist. The pressure was enough to bruise. "Choose your next words carefully."

"Claire Page," Pierce said. He didn't flinch. He was too high, too excited, too stupid to recognize the danger in Ellsworth's stillness. "Your perfect assistant. Your ice queen. I saw her tonight. At Dr. Sharma's place. You know, the discreet-"

Ellsworth released him. He reached for his cigar, lit it with the lighter from his pocket, and exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. "And?"

"And she was wrecked, El. Destroyed. Walking like she'd been-" Pierce paused, searching for words dramatic enough to match his excitement. "Like a broken doll. Like someone had taken her apart and put her back together wrong. The codes I saw on her chart... they're for severe physical trauma. The kind that comes from-"

The fine crystal of the glass in Ellsworth's hand didn't shatter. It creaked, a sound of immense pressure, a network of tiny fractures spiderwebbing across its surface before he deliberately set it down on the table with a sharp click. A single, perfect drop of blood welled from his palm where the stem had dug into his skin. He ignored it.

The music didn't stop. The club was too loud, too insulated, too designed for privacy. But in the VIP section, everything went silent.

Pierce stared at him. His mouth hung slightly open. His wrist, where Ellsworth had gripped it, was already purpling.

Ellsworth looked at his hand. The blood was thin and bright. He hadn't felt it. He felt nothing except the roaring in his ears, the memory of her body beneath his, the way she'd gone rigid and he'd thought-he'd told himself-

"El," Pierce said. His voice had changed. The excitement was gone, replaced by something careful, something that understood it was standing on the edge of a very deep hole. "Ellsworth. Did you-"

"Get out," Ellsworth said. His voice was perfectly level. Perfectly controlled. "Both of you."

He pressed the call button. The club manager appeared instantly, anxious, obsequious.

"Send someone up," Ellsworth said. "Two women. Blonde. The ones who were hovering by the bar earlier."

"Of course, Mr. Mosley. Immediately."

They came within minutes. Professional, practiced, their smiles fixed in place as they settled on either side of him. The one on his left-her name was something forgettable, Tiffany or Brittany-pressed her breast against his arm and laughed at something her friend said.

Ellsworth smelled her perfume. It was heavy, synthetic, cloying. It smelled of desperation and calculation and everything Claire Page was not.

His stomach turned. Literally turned, a physical revulsion that made him jerk away from her touch, that sent him to his feet with his hand over his mouth like he might actually be sick.

"Leave," he said to the women. To Pierce, who hadn't moved from the couch. "All of you. Now."

They scattered. Pierce was the last to go, pausing at the door, looking back at the fractured glass, at Ellsworth's bleeding hand, at the expression on his face that he couldn't read.

"El," he said. "The person who hurt her. The one who-"

"I know who it was," Ellsworth said.

He stood alone in the ruined room, surrounded by the evidence of his own violence, and thought of her walking through the rain to a doctor she couldn't name, carrying injuries he had given her, and felt something in his chest that he didn't have words for.