Under Contract

Chapter 15: Terms of Distance

I locked Anton’s office door and stood there with my back pressed against it, as if a thin sheet of wood and metal could keep Anton Vespucci out of my life.

Or my head.

The envelope was still in my hand. My notebook was crushed against my chest. My pulse hadn’t settled since the sixty-second floor hallway.

I crossed to my desk and dropped everything on it harder than I meant to.

The papers spilled open again, those clean corporate words staring back at me with all their polished cruelty. Alignment. Transition. Exposure. Authority. Men like Anton never needed blood on their hands when they had language like that. They turned betrayal into strategy and called it necessary.

I sank into my chair and forced myself to look at the file on my company again.

My company.

That part hurt in a different way.

Not because he had found us early. I understood research. I understood investors tracking markets and founders and risk patterns. I would have been a hypocrite to pretend otherwise. But there was something invasive about the way it all sat in the same file as the documents that proved how ruthlessly he had secured his place in his family. As if business, power, and obsession all lived in the same drawer for him.

I turned the pages more slowly this time.

There were notes in the margin on one of the reports. Not many. Just two short lines in sharp black ink.

Founder has unusual retention instinct.

She’ll either scale brilliantly or burn herself out refusing to compromise.

I stared at the handwriting until my vision blurred.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me whose it was.

A laugh caught in my throat and turned bitter before it fully escaped. Of course Anton had reduced me so perfectly in two sentences. Of course he had seen the part of me that refused to bend and recognized it because it lived in him too.

I leaned back and shut my eyes.

The whole day came rushing back in jagged pieces. The lobby. His smile. His voice. The old humiliation flooding my body before rage had a chance to catch up.

My phone lit up on the desk.

I reached for it too fast, then immediately hated myself for the little leap in my chest.

It wasn’t Anton. Asking me to open the office doors.

It was Lara from operations.

Need you downstairs at nine. The Halo Noir event has to be walked through before guests arrive. Press list changed. Partner table changed. Also... Anton approved the revised launch visuals.

I stared at the message.

Halo Noir was the club event we’d been forced to keep on the calendar after the investment announcement shifted. A private launch-night showcase with press, affiliate partners, and enough beautiful strangers in expensive clothes to make everything look effortless from the outside. I’d fought to postpone it once already. Apparently the universe had decided I wasn’t getting another chance.

I typed back:

I’ll be there in twenty.

Then I stayed exactly where I was for another five minutes, trying to remember how to arrange my face into something functional.

By the time I finally stood, I had changed nothing except my lipstick.

I told myself that mattered.

The club was on the lower entertainment level of the building, all smoked glass, dark gold lighting, and velvet that looked soft enough to confess into. By the time I walked in, the staff were still doing final checks. The room smelled like citrus, expensive liquor, and polished wood. A DJ was running sound at low volume while screens behind the bar looped visuals of city maps, destination clips, and the clean branding for the platform integration we were debuting.

It should have excited me.

Months ago it would have.

Lara spotted me first and came over with a tablet tucked against her side. “Thank God,” she said. “The revised seating chart is chaos, two media people were added last minute, and the venue manager keeps asking whether the Vespucci table should stay open until ten.”

I forced myself into work mode. “Keep it open until ten-thirty. If the press list changed, put the lifestyle editor from Luxe North closer to the demo station. She’ll care more about the experience angle than the investment story. And move the founders of Nylo travel tech from the bar before they drink enough to tell everybody their real numbers.”

Lara gave me a quick, relieved smile.

I managed one back.

For the next hour, I lived inside logistics.

It was the only way I got through it.

I checked the visuals. Approved the lighting levels. Fixed a sponsor card that had my company name misaligned by half an inch. Redirected one overeager brand rep away from the central display. Smiled at people. Let them think I was fine because I was wearing heels and not actively bleeding.

Anton was nowhere.

That should have made it easier.

It didn’t.

The room kept filling. Music swelled. Conversations layered over each other until the whole club sounded alive in a way I couldn’t quite join. I stood near the main display wall while a journalist asked me about scaling strategy.

Anton had just walked in.

He was in black, of course. Tailored, severe, and infuriatingly composed. No tie. His jacket sat perfectly on his shoulders, and his expression was the kind he wore when he wanted the entire room to understand that none of it could touch him. Two men from the investment side fell into step with him almost immediately, but he barely seemed to notice. His attention swept the room once.

When it found me, it stopped.

No smile. No movement toward me.

Just that look.

Then he turned and continued walking as if he hadn’t just shifted every beat in my body off rhythm.

The journalist in front of me asked another question. I answered it. I had no idea what I said.

Anton kept his distance all night.

If he had cornered me, pressed me, tried to explain, I would have known how to fight him.

I caught glimpses of him across the club.

At the bar with two board members.

Near the private booths with a hotel group founder I vaguely recognized.

By the far wall, listening to a woman in silver speak to him with the kind of effortless familiarity that suggested she was used to men paying attention when she talked.

He barely touched her arm when she laughed at something he said.

It meant nothing.

I knew it meant nothing.

It still landed under my ribs like a blade I had no right to feel.

I turned away too quickly and nearly ran into Lara again.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fine.”

She raised a brow, clearly unconvinced, but handed me another tablet. “Press wants two more minutes with you, then there’s a quick photo at the branded wall. Also, Anton’s team asked whether you’ll stay for the partner close.”

I looked at her. “Anton’s team asked?”

She blinked. “Yes.”

I gave the tablet back. “Then his team can survive uncertainty for once.”

Lara actually smiled at that. “Noted.”

By eleven, the room had tipped into its prettier phase. Less stiff, more intimate. Jackets off. Ties loosened. Investors pretending not to watch each other. Founders pretending not to care who was watching them. The lights had dimmed further, and the bass from the music moved through the floor in a slow, steady pulse.

I should have left.

I even made it to the corridor that led toward the private exit.

Then I heard my name.

Not spoken sharply. Not demanded.

Just, “Melody.”

I stopped with my hand on the brass push bar and turned.

Anton was standing at the mouth of the hallway, half in shadow. The noise from the club reached us muted and distant here, like another world we had stepped beside but not inside.

For a second neither of us moved.

Then I let my hand fall from the door. “You waited a long time.”

His gaze held mine. “You wanted distance.”

“I said I needed space.”

“And if I’d ignored that, you would have hated me for it.”

I crossed my arms. “You’re very suddenly respectful.”

Something unreadable flickered across his face. “Not suddenly.”

I let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t hurt. “That’s almost funny.”

He took one step closer, no more. “You handled tonight well.”

I stared at him. “Did you stop me in a hallway to give me performance feedback?”

“No.” His voice dropped. “I stopped you because you’ve spent the entire night pretending you don’t feel me in the room, and I wanted to know whether that was for my benefit or yours.”

The words hit too hard, too precisely.

I looked away first, toward the dim line of light cutting under the side door. “You don’t get to ask me that.”

“Why?”

Because I didn’t have a good answer that didn’t make me sound weak.

Because he was right.

Because every time I’d sensed him across the room, some traitorous part of me had gone alert and restless and warm with anger.

“Because you don’t get to stand there like this is simple after what happened upstairs.”

His jaw tightened. “I know what happened upstairs.”

“Do you?” I snapped, looking back at him. “Because from where I’m standing, it seems like your threshold for catastrophe is a little higher than mine.”

He absorbed that without flinching.

“You’re angry,” he said.

I gave him a flat look. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“No.” He held my gaze. “I think you’re angry, hurt, embarrassed that I saw too much too early, and more shaken by your stepfather than you want anyone to know.”

The hallway went still around us.

I hated how exactly he could find the center of things.

“You don’t get to say how I feel,” I said quietly.

Anton’s face changed. Not by much, but enough. A darkening. A tightening. “Fine.”

I swallowed and looked past him toward the club, toward the flicker of bodies and glass and gold. “You made me feel handled today.”

That landed.

I saw it in the way his shoulders went still.

“I know,” he said.

I blinked. “That’s it?”

“What do you want me to say, Melody?” His voice stayed low, but something rougher had moved underneath it. “That I’m sorry I stepped in when he spoke to you? I’m not. That I’m sorry I wanted him out of the building? I’m not. That I’m sorry I made choices years ago that kept my family from devouring itself? That’s more complicated.”

I laughed once, sharp and humorless. “There you are.”

He took another step toward me. We were close enough now that I could catch the clean, dark scent of him beneath the club air. “You asked for truth.”

“And you ration it out like medicine.”

“Because most people ask for honesty when what they actually want is comfort.”

I stared at him. “And what do you think I want?”

His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth, then lifted again. “Tonight? I think you want something that doesn’t exist.”

That knocked the breath out of me.

I looked away before he could see it too clearly.

He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter than before. “I kept my distance because you asked me to. Not because I wanted to.”

The music thudded faintly through the walls.

I could still leave.

I should have left.

Instead I stayed there in that narrow pool of shadow and gold, held in place by anger, exhaustion, and the terrible fact that distance from Anton hurt differently than closeness did.

“I read the notes in the file,” I said.

He didn’t pretend not to know what I meant. “All of them?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“And?”

I let out a slow breath. “I don’t know what to do with the fact that you saw me before I ever saw you.”

His expression gave nothing away at first. Then I saw it, something almost careful. “You don’t have to do anything with it.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

That surprised me enough to make me look at him properly.

The hallway light cut across one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow. He looked tired. Not physically. Something deeper than that. Like control cost him more than anyone around him ever guessed.

“Why did you really stay away tonight?” I asked.

His answer came without delay. “Because if I touched you before you chose it, you would never believe I could.”

My heart gave a hard, painful pull.

I should have stepped back then. It wasn’t the best idea to have a taste of champagne tonight.

Instead I said, “And if I never choose it?”

Something in his face closed over, smooth and devastating. “Then I don’t touch you.”

There was no arrogance in it. No challenge.

Just fact.

That was what undid me.

Not the possessive Anton. Not the ruthless Anton from the envelope. Not even the one who had admitted he had noticed me before we ever met.

This version was worse.

This version was standing in front of me offering restraint like it cost him blood.

I was so tired of being afraid of everything.

So tired of wanting.

My voice came out quieter than I intended. “You make it very hard to hate you properly.”

One corner of his mouth shifted, but it wasn’t a smile. “I imagine I make most things hard.”

I should not have noticed the double meaning.

I absolutely should not have felt heat bloom low in my stomach because of it.

“Arrogant,” I muttered.

His eyes sharpened. “Distractible.”

I let out a breath. “You were doing well for a minute.”

“I’m trying very hard, Melody.”

That did it.

Something inside me snapped, not violently, but cleanly, like a thread pulled too tight finally giving way.

Maybe it was the music, the dark hallway the alchol. Maybe it was the fact that for once he wasn’t forcing anything. Maybe it was just that I wanted one moment with him to belong to me alone.

Before I could think myself out of it, I closed the distance between us.

My hand caught the front of his jacket.

And I kissed him.

For one impossible second, Anton didn’t move.

The shock of that nearly stopped me, but then his hand came to my waist, not taking, not dragging, just holding as if he still didn’t quite trust what was happening, and he kissed me back.

Everything inside me lit at once.

Anger. Relief. Heat. Hunger. The sharp, devastating thrill of doing the wrong thing on purpose.

He tasted like whiskey and restraint.

I pressed closer before I could stop myself, and a rough sound broke low in his throat, like I had reached into him and pulled something dangerous loose. His other hand came up, fingers sliding into my hair, not forcing, just cradling the back of my head with a tenderness so at odds with the man himself it almost destroyed me.

The kiss deepened.

Not sweet. Not careful. But not careless either.

It felt like all the things we had not said finding one brutal, breathless language.

When I finally pulled back, I was breathing hard.

So was he.

His forehead nearly touched mine. His hand was still at my waist, burning through the fabric of my dress.

For a moment neither of us spoke.

Then his eyes opened fully, dark and intent and still a little stunned.

“You kissed me,” he said, like the fact itself had rearranged the room.

I swallowed, suddenly aware of what I had done and how impossible it would be to take it back. “I know.”

His thumb moved once against my side. “That was a very poor interpretation of distance.”

I feel so small, breathless and completely unsteady.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I whispered.

His gaze dropped to my mouth again. “I can’t.”

The honesty of it sent another wave of heat through me.

I stepped back before I did something even more reckless.

His hand fell away immediately.

That almost made me kiss him again.

I hated us both a little for that.

The club music pulsed faintly beyond the hallway, reminding me there were still people in the world, still cameras, still consequences, still an entire life outside the two of us.

I smoothed a hand over the front of my dress and forced air into my lungs. “This doesn’t fix anything.”

“I know.”

I looked at him, at the mouth I had just kissed, at the man who could ruin peace just by standing near it. “I’m still angry with you.”

A quieter look came into his eyes. “I know that too.”

I nodded once, more for myself than for him.

Then I moved past him toward the door to the club.

This time his hand caught my wrist.

Not hard. Barely enough to stop me.

I turned back.

His expression had gone unreadable again, but his voice was low and rough when he said, “Melody.”

My pulse answered before I did. “What?”

He held my gaze for one dangerous second. “If you do that again, it won’t end in a hallway.”

Heat flooded my face so fast I was grateful for the dark.

I pulled my wrist gently from his fingers. “Then it’s a good thing that I did it now, and won’t repeat it ever again.”

He looked at me for one long, devastating moment, then stepped aside with a smirk on his face, like he is not believing me.

I walked back into the light of the club with my heart trying to tear itself apart inside my chest.

And for the rest of the night, I could still feel his mouth on mine.