CRIMSON CAMELLIA

The Policy

The next morning, Sophia called Ethan into a secure conference room and shut the door behind them with a click that felt more final than it should have. She set a printed copy of Crimson Camellia's fraternization policy on the table between them, squared it precisely to the edge, and said, "This can't happen."

Ethan read the policy without touching it, then looked at her instead.

"Once I commit to something," he said quietly, "I don't look back. Not to rule. Not to fear. Not to a piece of paper someone printed to protect an organization that has never once asked what I wanted." He held her gaze. "I want you — not as a distraction, not as a complication, but as the one thing in this life that still feels like it belongs to me and not to Marcus Hale."

Sophia's carefully maintained professionalism cracked down the middle, visible for exactly one unguarded second before she looked away and then, deliberately, back.

"You're going to get us both killed," she whispered.

"Then we'll die honestly," he said. "Which is more than either of us can say right now."

She did not file the report that night. She told herself she would write it in the morning, when her hands were steadier, and her judgment had returned to something resembling professional. The morning came and went, and the report stayed unwritten. That night, lying alone in her own bed for what felt like the last time in a long while, Sophia Chen admitted to herself, in the dark, that she was already falling — and that somewhere above her, in an office with a file drawer full of her own reports, Marcus Hale was very likely already several steps ahead of the both of them, waiting to see exactly how far they'd fall before he decided what to do about it.