Dante slammed his fist into my jaw. My head snapped back, and the taste of copper filled my mouth.
It should’ve hurt, but adrenaline blunted the impact. I shook it off and returned his hit with one of my own. The vicious hook caught him high on the chest, eliciting a pained grunt.
Perspiration coated my face and torso. We’d been at it for over an hour. My muscles screamed with agony, and the scent of blood, sweat, and testosterone clogged my nostrils. Once my adrenaline crashed, I was going to be out for at least a day.
I’d worry about that later. For now, I narrowed my focus onto beating Dante and off of a certain meeting in London. Neither the current CEO nor the candidates were allowed in the room during deliberations, so I was flying blind until the election committee announced their decision.
I landed another punch on Dante’s cheek; he caught me in the ribs.
Again and again, the familiar rhythm of our jabs and hooks was almost enough to drive the vote to the back of my mind.
Almost.
“You could’ve saved yourself the torture of waiting if you’d used what I gave you,” he panted, dodging an uppercut. “I literally delivered the position to you on a silver platter. Or in a manila envelope, if we’re being technical.”
It was the first time he’d acknowledged sending Christian’s Christmas “gift.”
“I told you, I don’t need to stoop to blackmail.” The thought of using the information had crossed my mind after the photos of me and Isabella first surfaced, but I’d dismissed it as quickly as it came.
Resorting to blackmail was the same as admitting defeat. It meant I wasn’t good enough to win on my own.
“It’s not blackmail. It’s insurance.” Blood leaked out of a cut on Dante’s brow, and the beginnings of a bruise darkened his jaw.
Vivian was going to give me hell later for the battered condition I’d return her husband in, but I doubted I looked much better. Today’s session was a cathartically brutal one.
“Funny. That’s exactly what Harper said.”
“And he’s right.” Dante paused with a grimace. “Don’t tell him I said that. Bastard’s ego would shoot through the fucking roof.”
I snorted. “I would think you’d be against blackmail, given what happened with Vivian’s father.”
His face darkened at the mention of his father-in-law. “In certain situations, yes,” he said. “But it also proves astonishingly effective in the short term. You just have to be smart enough to preempt the long-term consequences.”
Or I could bypass it and not have any long-term consequences to begin with.
Before I could respond, my phone’s ringtone blared through the sweat- drenched air and sucked the levity out of the room.
Our movements stilled. The air evacuated from my lungs as I zeroed in on the bench where I’d placed my phone.
It could be a telemarketer, my assistant calling with a question, or a dozen other possibilities, but my gut told me it wasn’t.
It was eleven in the morning here, which meant it was near the end of the workday in London. Perfect timing for a CEO announcement.
My heart pounded hard enough to drown out the ringtone. A metallic taste welled on my tongue, flooding me with equal parts anticipation and foreboding.
After everything—the schemes, the scandals, the setbacks—this was it.
The moment of truth. “Kai.”
Dante’s low voice pulled my attention back to him. His eyes were fixed on something over my shoulder, and I followed his gaze to the exit.
An anchor dragged my stomach straight to the boxing ring’s black canvas floor. A low buzz filled my ears.
Isabella stood next to the door, her chest heaving with quick breaths. I didn’t know how she got in, but I knew why she was here. It was written all over her face.
I’d lost the vote.
ISABELLA
The silence was deafening.
Dante had muttered an excuse about meeting Vivian for lunch and made a quick exit, leaving me and Kai alone in the boxing gym.
He stood still as stone in the middle of the ring. Sweat gleamed on his bare torso and dampened his hair, making him look like a warrior fresh from battle.
I’d caught the tail end of his match with Dante. It was my first time seeing Kai box, and it’d taken my breath away. The precision, the power, the lethal grace—it was like watching a master execute a beautifully choreographed dance.
If I were here for any other reason, I would’ve savored the experience, but all I felt was an icy ball of dread in the pit of my stomach.
“Who?” Kai’s face and voice were wiped clean of emotion.
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. “Someone named Russell Burton?”
He reacted then. A tiny jerk of his shoulders, followed by a dark, burning realization in his eyes.
The name had surprised him.
I waited for a bigger reaction—a curse, a rant, something that would indicate his acknowledgment of what happened. Instead, he stepped down from the ring, wiped his face with a towel, and unscrewed the cap of his water bottle. If it weren’t for his tightly controlled movements and the tension cording his neck, I would’ve thought he hadn’t heard me.
I walked toward him with the caution of a hiker approaching a rattlesnake.
When I saw the news about Russell’s selection, my stomach had pitched like I was the one who’d lost. I couldn’t imagine how Kai must’ve felt. This was his family. His company. His legacy.
A sympathetic Alessandra gave me the day off. She’d gotten ahold of Dominic and somehow convinced him to get me access to Valhalla, where I knew Kai was boxing with Dante.
I didn’t know what to do or how I could help, but I just wanted to be here for him.
“Maybe it’s a mistake,” I ventured. I’d rushed here as soon as I could and hadn’t read the article in its entirety. “Maybe they—”
“It’s not a mistake.” Kai sounded eerily calm. He looked up, his skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. The uneven rise and fall of his chest betrayed his masked emotions.
My heart wrenched. “Kai—”
He crushed the rest of my words between our mouths. The kiss was so sudden, so unexpected, that I stumbled back a step before I caught myself.
We’d kissed before, many times. Sweet, scorching, hungry, languorous… the nature of our embraces ebbed and flowed depending on our moods, but he’d never kissed me like this. Hands tangling in my hair, teeth scraping across my lips, muscles vibrating with coiled energy. Desperate and feverish, like he was drowning and I was his only lifeline.
Pieces of his stony mask clattered to the floor around us. Emotions poured through the jagged cracks, dragging my hands to his shoulders, his teeth down my neck, and his fist around the hem of my skirt.
Kai yanked it up and backed me against the boxing ring at the same time. A tear of silk, a rustle of clothing, and then he was inside me, fucking me with an intensity that had me gasping for breath. My body shook with the force of each thrust, and I scrabbled for a hold on something, anything, that could ground me while we worked out his anger together.
A symphony of grunts, cries, and the slap of flesh against flesh echoed in the otherwise empty room. One hand fisted his hair while the other clutched at the ring ropes above me. We’d had rough sex before, but this wasn’t sex. It was a catharsis.
Hard. Urgent. Unforgiving.
Still, it didn’t take long before pleasure overtook my senses. One more thrust, and my orgasm detonated, rippling through my body in a series of shudders and aftershocks.
Kai came soon after me, biting out a harsh “Fuck” as his cum dripped down my thigh.
We held each other for a moment, our breaths ragged in the silence. Languid warmth flooded my veins, but it was tempered by the knot in my throat.
When Kai lifted his head again, his eyes were filled with remorse. The knot tightened. “Isa…”
I didn’t have to ask for the reason behind his guilt.
“It’s okay,” I reassured him. “I’m on the pill.” He wasn’t the only one who’d gotten carried away. The thought of condoms hadn’t even crossed my mind until now.
“I shouldn’t have… I didn’t…” He wiped a hand over his face. “Fuck,” he repeated. His gaze swept over me, lingering on my neck and chest. I looked down and winced when I saw the hickeys marking my skin. “Are you okay?”
“More than okay, if my orgasm was anything to go by,” I quipped, hoping to erase his frown. It didn’t work. My mouth softened with fresh worry. Now that my post-sex high was fading, the severity of the situation returned in full force. “I should ask you the same question.”
It was a stupid question because of course he wasn’t okay. He’d just lost control of his family’s company. But I had no experience dealing with issues like that, and I would rather he talk about it than pretend everything was fine. I’d learned from experience that bottling things up only led to more problems in the future.
Kai’s throat bobbed. “Russell Burton.”
My heart split at the numb disbelief in his voice. “Yeah,” I said softly.
I didn’t know who Russell was, but I hated him more than anything else in the world right now. No, correction: I hated the voting committee more than anything else. I hope they all choked on their bad decisions and ugly corporate pens.
Kai didn’t cry, shout, or say another word, but when he buried his face in my neck and my arms wrapped around his back, I felt the intensity of his pain like it was my own. It reverberated through my body, strangling my lungs and stinging my eyes. He was always so cool and composed that seeing him break apart, even a little, ignited a raw ache that punched me straight through the heart.
I wished I had the power to turn back time or knock some sense into the voting committee. Since I couldn’t and there was nothing I could say that would make things better, I simply held him and let him grieve.
