Under Contract

Chapter 16: Nothing to Admit

I woke up with Anton’s mouth still on mine.

That was the first problem.

The second was that I lay there staring at my ceiling for a full minute, not moving, not breathing properly, while my body remembered things my pride wanted erased. The dark hallway. His hand at my waist. The roughness in his voice when he told me that if I kissed him again, it would not end there.

I rolled onto my back and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.

It had been a mistake.

That was the version I chose before my feet even touched the floor.

Stress. Exhaustion. Daniel. Vincent. Too much champagne in the air, too much anger still under my skin, too much Anton standing there looking at me like restraint was costing him something real. None of it had to mean anything. It had been one moment. One stupid, impulsive, reckless moment, and I was not going to let it grow into something bigger just because my body had enjoyed betraying me.

By the time I got dressed, I had repeated that lie enough times for it to sound almost reasonable.

By the time I got into the office, I nearly believed it.

Nearly.

The building lobby was quieter than usual, all clean glass and muted voices, but my pulse still kicked once when I stepped inside. I hated that too. Hated that some part of me was already listening for him before I had even reached the elevators.

I told myself I was not looking for Anton.

I told myself that twice while the elevator climbed.

When the doors opened on my floor, Lara was already waiting outside the office with a tablet in one hand and a coffee in the other.

“You look terrifying,” she said.

I took the coffee from her. “Good. That should help.”

She fell into step beside me. “There’s a problem.”

“Of course there is.”

“One of the outlets that covered Halo Noir this morning framed the partnership as a soft acquisition play.”

“What?”

She winced. “Not officially. Not in direct language. But the headline is ugly.”

I took the tablet from her and skimmed the article.

Vespucci’s New Favorite Founder?

Sources Close to the Deal Suggest Full Integration Could Follow.

My jaw tightened.

There were quotes from two anonymous event attendees, half-informed speculation about Anton’s long-term strategy, and just enough flattering poison about me to make it clear the writer thought I had either charmed my way into a better deal or been chosen for reasons beyond business.

I handed the tablet back carefully, because otherwise I might have thrown it.

“Who approved press access for that outlet?” I asked.

Lara grimaced. “They came in with the revised luxury media group.”

“Perfect.”

“There’s more.”

I gave her a look. “Why does everyone say that like it’s a gift?”

She ignored that. “Legal wants to know whether we’re responding. Your product team needs your sign-off on the revised rollout. And there’s a strategy meeting at eleven with the Vespucci side because apparently this article made two investors nervous.”

“Of course it did.”

I opened my office door and went inside. Lara followed me.

“Who’s coming from his side?” I asked, dropping my bag onto the chair.

She checked the tablet. “Rossi from legal. Sloane from partner operations.”

I nodded once, too quickly.

Lara looked up. “And Anton.”

My face stayed perfectly still.

That, more than anything, told me I was in danger.

“Fine,” I said.

Lara kept watching me.

“What?” I snapped.

“Nothing,” she said, which meant absolutely something. “Just... after last night, the floor feels weird.”

I looked down at my desk while I set the coffee beside my laptop. “Then maybe everyone should try doing their jobs instead of reading atmospheres.”

“Right,” she said lightly. “Very healthy. I’ll tell HR we’re all emotionally hallucinating.”

I almost smiled. Almost.

After she left, I sat down and tried to lose myself in work.

For two hours, I did a decent job of pretending I was made of clean lines and practical thoughts. I edited responses for legal. Reworked the launch language with product. Killed three paragraphs of investor reassurance because they sounded weak. Scheduled a call with marketing. Marked the article for a limited rebuttal instead of a full denial, because denying too hard always made men like that smell blood.

It should have centered me.

It didn’t.

Every quiet second let the memory back in.

The feel of his fingers in my hair.

The shock on his face when I kissed him.

The way he had let me go.

That last part bothered me most.

I had asked for distance. He had given it to me. That should have felt like relief.

Instead, all morning, it sat under my skin like a splinter.

At eleven sharp, I walked into the glass conference room at the end of the floor and nearly turned around.

Anton was already there.

He stood at the far side of the table with a file open in front of him, speaking to Rossi in that low, precise voice of his. He wore dark charcoal today instead of black, which should not have mattered and somehow did. He looked calm. Rested. Entirely composed.

If last night had followed him home, there was no sign of it.

That irritated me on sight.

He looked up as I entered.

His expression did not change.

“Melody,” he said, as if he were greeting me at any other meeting on any other day.

No heat. No private edge. No acknowledgment at all of the fact that less than twelve hours ago my mouth had been on his.

I hated the disappointment that moved through me.

I took my seat across from him. “Anton.”

Rossi nodded politely. Sloane gave me a cautious smile. Apparently they had both already sensed enough tension to decide breathing too loudly was a risk.

Anton looked down at the printed article in front of him. “This piece is opportunistic. It leans on implication, not substance. We contain it by tightening public language and correcting only what affects deal confidence.”

I blinked.

That was it?

No look. No pause. No crack in his voice.

I opened my notebook and forced myself to match him. “Agreed. If we overreact, we turn gossip into a narrative.”

He gave one short nod, as if I were simply competent and nothing more.

Something hot and unreasonable curled low in my stomach.

For the next forty minutes, Anton was flawless.

Professional. Controlled. Efficient.

He guided the conversation without dominating it too obviously, cut through legal noise in half the time Rossi would have taken on his own, and redirected Sloane twice before she wandered into branding language that would have made us all sound defensive. He listened when I spoke. Built on my points. Deferred to me on product-facing questions in a way that was both correct and maddening.

It was exactly how I would have wanted him to behave.

So why did it feel like punishment?

At one point Rossi asked whether we needed aligned talking points in case media pushed the “favorite founder” angle further.

I felt Anton’s eyes on me for one brief second.

Then he answered, coolly, “No. We shut it down by refusing the premise.”

That should have made me feel protected.

Instead it made me feel dismissed.

I spent the rest of the meeting angrier than the situation deserved.

When it finally ended, Rossi and Sloane left with their files and action items, and I stayed seated a moment too long, pretending to review notes while Anton closed his folder.

He gave me no opening.

No private word. No attempt to linger.

Nothing.

He gathered his papers and said, “Send the final draft to legal before two.”

Then he left the room.

I stared at the glass door after it swung shut.

It was ridiculous how much that bothered me.

The rest of the afternoon got worse.

Not because anything dramatic happened. Because nothing did.

Anton stayed visible enough to be impossible to ignore and distant enough to be impossible to read. He never once looked in my direction long enough to count.

By three, I wanted to throw something.

By four, I was irritated at myself for being irritated.

By five, the universe decided to humiliate me properly.

There was a small industry mixer attached to the week’s rollout calendar, hosted in the private lounge one floor below. Normally I would have skipped it, but after the article that morning, visibility mattered. So I went, smiled on command, and let people congratulate me on things they only half understood.

About twenty minutes in, a founder named Adrian Vale cornered me near the terrace doors.

I knew him vaguely, smart, polished, annoyingly handsome in the way men who knew they photographed well often were. He had sold a travel-adjacent startup last year and had since reinvented himself as some kind of advisor-angel-operator hybrid.

“Melody,” he said, offering me a drink I did not want. “I’ve been trying to get five minutes with you all night.”

“It’s six twenty,” I said. “That’s ambitious.”

He laughed. “There she is.”

I accepted the glass just to stop him from holding it out at me. “What can I do for you, Adrian?”

“Depends. Are you in a mood to discuss growth strategy or are you determined to terrify every investor in the room first?”

I gave him a flat look. “I’ve always found fear efficient.”

“That tracks.”

He leaned against the railing beside me, easy and charming and far too comfortable. Under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed the conversation. He was clever. Fast enough to keep up. Not intimidated by directness.

Today he just felt like noise.

Still, I let him talk. I answered when needed. We traded a few sharp comments about bad expansion habits in European platforms, and eventually I even laughed once, genuinely this time, when he told me one founder had described his post-acquisition role as “corporate witness protection.”

And of course that was the moment I looked up and saw Anton across the room.

He wasn’t alone. He stood with two partners near the bar, one hand in his pocket, drink untouched on the counter behind him. His expression was unreadable from this distance, but I knew him well enough now to feel the force of his attention even across a room full of people.

Adrian noticed my glance and followed it. “Ah,” he said. “The emperor.”

I looked back at him. “Please don’t.”

He lowered his voice. “He’s impressive. Intense, but impressive.”

I took a sip of my drink and said nothing.

Adrian’s mouth curved slightly. “You know what the room thinks, right?”

I went very still. “I do not care what the room thinks.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

I stared at him until he had the decency to look almost apologetic.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m not gossiping. I’m observing.”

“Then observe something else.”

He lifted a hand. “Fine. For the record, I’m only here because I wanted to ask whether you’d ever consider sitting on a founder panel I’m curating next month.”

The shift was so abrupt I nearly laughed.

“A real invitation?”

“Devastating, I know.”

I took the card he offered. “Send details.”

“Gladly.” His eyes flicked over my shoulder. “Though I should warn you, I may have just ruined my chances of ever getting Anton Vespucci to return a call.”

I turned before I could stop myself.

Anton was gone.

Not moved.

Gone.

An absurd drop of disappointment hit me so hard it made me angry.

“Excuse me,” I said to Adrian.

He stepped back immediately. “That bad?”

“You have no idea.”

I left him there and went straight for the hallway leading back to the executive elevators, furious for reasons I could not have explained to another human being.

I had wanted distance.

I had demanded it.

And now I was storming after a man because he had the audacity to give me exactly what I’d asked for.

I was halfway down the corridor before I realized how insane that was.

I slowed.

Then stopped completely.

What exactly was I doing?

Running after Anton to what, accuse him of not looking jealous enough?

The thought was mortifying.

I turned toward the quieter side passage that led to the service lift instead, intending to salvage what remained of my pride, and nearly walked straight into him.

Anton stood at the far end of the corridor beside a recessed window, jacket unbuttoned, one hand braced lightly against the ledge behind him.

He looked up as if he had known I was coming.

That only made me angrier.

“Were you hiding?” I asked.

One brow lifted. “No.”

“You disappeared.”

“I left a conversation.”

I folded my arms. “How mysterious.”

His gaze flicked over my face once, taking in more than I wanted him to. “You seem upset.”

I laughed softly and without humor. “Do I?”

He straightened from the window ledge. “Should I ask why?”

There was something almost unbearably calm in his tone.

That calm did exactly what it had been doing to me all day: it sharpened every edge inside me.

“You know why.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

He waited.

That infuriated me too.

I took a step closer. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Doing what?”

“This.” I made a vague, furious motion between us. “Acting like nothing happened.”

His face stayed unreadable. “You said very clearly that the kiss changed nothing.”

I went still.

The hallway seemed to contract around us.

I had not realized until that second how much I had been hoping he would challenge me on that. Push back. Contradict me. Make it difficult.

Instead he had taken me at my word.

And there was no graceful way to tell him now that I hated it.

“That doesn’t mean,” I started, then stopped.

His eyes sharpened slightly. “Doesn’t mean what?”

I hated him.

I hated how still he could stand and make me feel like the unstable one.

“It doesn’t mean you have to behave like I imagined it.”

A beat passed.

Then, very evenly, he asked, “How exactly did you imagine I should behave?”

Heat rose up my neck so fast I could feel it.

“That’s not the point.”

“It appears central to the point.”

I looked away, jaw tight. “Forget it.”

“No.”

The single word was quiet.

Not forceful. Not loud.

Still, it landed with the weight of command, and something in me reacted before I could stop it.

My eyes snapped back to his.

Anton pushed away from the window fully and took one measured step closer. He still wasn’t crowding me. If anything, he was being infuriatingly careful. But I felt the shift immediately. The focus of him. The attention.

“Say it properly, Melody.”

My heartbeat stumbled.

This was the problem with him. Even when he was holding back, there was something in the way he spoke when he wanted truth that made the air change around him.

I should have walked away.

Instead I said, “You don’t seem affected.”

His expression did not change, but the silence after my words felt different.

Longer.

More dangerous.

“And that bothers you,” he said at last.

I crossed my arms tighter. “No.”

He looked at me for a full second. “That’s a lie.”

“I’m not doing this with you.”

“And yet you came looking for me.”

The accuracy of that hit like an insult.

“I was not looking for you.”

“Melody.”

It was just my name.

Nothing more.

And still I felt my pulse jump.

I looked past him toward the end of the corridor. “I came out here because I needed air.”

“Through the hallway.”

I said nothing.

Anton watched me in that unbearable way of his, seeing too much and saying too little. Then his gaze lowered briefly to the card still in my hand.

“Who gave you that?”

I glanced down. Adrian’s card. I had forgotten I was still holding it.

“Nobody important.”

His eyes came back to mine. “That answer suggests the opposite.”

The faint edge in his voice should not have pleased me.

It did.

I hated that too.

“He invited me to a panel,” I said.

“And?”

“And nothing.”

Anton’s jaw shifted once. “Good.”

The word was so controlled it took me a second to hear what was underneath it.

A tiny, ugly flare of satisfaction moved through me.

So he did care.

Not enough to lose control. Not enough to show me much. But enough.

I should have let it go there.

I didn’t.

I looked at him and said, “You could have at least acknowledged it.”

His gaze narrowed slightly. “Acknowledged what?”

“That last night happened.”

Something passed through his face then. Fast enough that someone else might have missed it. I didn’t.

“I did,” he said.

“When?”

“When I kept my distance after you asked for it.” His voice stayed quiet. “When I treated you exactly as you said you wanted to be treated. When I didn’t use one impulsive moment to pressure you into explaining feelings you’re clearly refusing to examine.”

That shut me up.

Not because he was wrong.

Because he was exactly right.

I looked down at the card in my hand and flattened its edge against my palm. “You make everything sound clinical.”

“No. I make it clear.”

I laughed once under my breath. “That must be nice for you.”

His expression shifted, almost imperceptibly. “Not particularly.”

For the first time all day, some of my anger loosened enough to let something else through.

Tiredness.

Embarrassment.

That awful, vulnerable ache of wanting more from someone than you had any right to ask.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I said quietly.

His answer came just as quietly. “Today? Honesty.”

I looked up.

He held my gaze steadily. No games in his face. No mockery.

Just that same impossible restraint.

“And if I don’t have it?” I asked.

“Then we wait until you do.”

A beat passed.

Then I said the thing I had been clutching all day like a shield.

“The kiss was a mistake.”

The words came out flatter than I intended.

I expected them to hurt him.

Some cruel part of me may even have wanted them to.

Anton didn’t flinch.

He stood there, looking at me with infuriating composure, and for one terrible second I thought he might simply agree.

Instead he said, “Then we don’t repeat mistakes.”

The hallway went silent.

There it was.

The sentence I had wanted all day and dreaded in equal measure.

He had handed my own denial back to me, sharpened.

My throat tightened unexpectedly.

I had no right to feel wounded. None. I was the one who had asked for distance. I was the one who had called it a mistake.

So why did it feel like he had just closed a door I had only pretended I didn’t want open?

Anton seemed to read enough of that on my face to go very still.

Then, more quietly, he added, “Unless you mean something else.”

I stared at him.

He wasn’t giving me relief. He wasn’t rescuing me from my own words. He was doing something much worse.

He was leaving the choice with me.

And I didn’t know what to do with that.

My pride came to my rescue first.

“I don’t,” I said.

A long pause.

Then Anton nodded once.

“All right.”

That was all.

No pursuit. No argument. No dark promise pressed into the space between us.

He stepped back, giving me room as if the conversation had settled something.

It hadn’t.

Not even close.

But before I could stop him, before I could say something reckless and humiliating and far too honest, he added, “Send the founder panel details to comms before you answer.”

I blinked. “What?”

His mouth shifted almost imperceptibly. “If Vale is curating it, there will be sponsorship crossover. Let the team vet it first.”

There he was.

Anton Vespucci.

Capable of turning emotional devastation into operational advice in a single breath.

I should have been offended.

Instead the absurdity of it almost made me laugh.

“You are unbelievable,” I said.

“So I’ve heard.”

He moved past me then, close enough that the clean scent of him brushed the air between us, close enough that I had to fight the instinct to turn toward him.

He paused beside me for only a second.

When he spoke, his voice was low enough that it felt private despite the open corridor.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “not looking affected and not being affected are very different things.”

Then he kept walking.

I stayed where I was until the sound of his footsteps disappeared.

Only then did I let myself breathe.

My hand was still wrapped around Adrian’s card so tightly the edge had left a mark in my palm.

I looked down at it, then crumpled it slowly and dropped it into the trash near the service lift.

It was a childish gesture.

Pointless.

He would never even know.

But it made me feel marginally less wrecked.

When I finally went back to the office, the floor had quieted and the evening light was turning the windows gold. I closed the door behind me, leaned against it, and let my head fall back.

Nothing had been resolved.

That was the truth of it.

I still didn’t trust him properly. I still didn’t know how much of Anton was strategy and how much was instinct. I still had the envelope in my drawer and too many questions in my chest.

But I also had the memory of his voice in the hallway.

Not looking affected and not being affected are very different things.

I should have ignored it.

Instead I carried it with me for the rest of the night, turning it over and over like something dangerous I could not stop touching.

And somewhere beneath all my denial, something in me had already started to understand that mistakes were only easy to dismiss when they meant nothing.