HIS RING, MY PRISON

CHAPTER FOUR(Cassien’s pov)

She walked into my office like a question I hadn’t meant to ask.

I’d seen hundreds of people cross that threshold, men who wanted something, women who thought they could charm something out of me.

But none of them looked the way she did.

Liana Delacroix.

The name had been nothing more than a signature on a document until that moment.

But then she stepped into the light, and for one suspended heartbeat, I forgot how to look away.

Emerald eyes.

Not the soft, timid green of spring, but something stormier, like they’d seen too much and still refused to dull.

They were the first thing I noticed, and the last thing I could forget.

She didn’t belong in my world, and somehow, that was the first thing that made her dangerous.

I’d expected fear, trembling hands, downcast eyes, the kind of submission that made these arrangements tolerable. But she didn’t flinch when she saw me.

Didn’t stumble over her words. Her voice trembled, yes, but her spine didn’t bend.

She had no idea what that did to me.

“Miss Delacroix,” I said, keeping my tone level, detached.

It was easier to be cold than curious. “You’re punctual. I like that.”

The words were nothing. Routine. But the way she looked at me when she answered , steady, defiant, it pulled something in my chest taut.

“I wasn’t aware I had a choice,” she said.

A lesser man would’ve smiled. I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Not when her honesty hit harder than most lies I’d ever heard.

There was a time I might have admired that kind of courage.

Now, it only reminded me of everything I’d learned to kill in myself.

When I told her she was a convenience, I meant it.

I wanted to mean it.

But the truth is, the words burned on their way out.

Because even then, even when I told her what she was supposed to be , something in me already knew she wouldn’t fit neatly into any plan.

Her beauty wasn’t the polished kind, not the kind tailored for the parties and power plays of Wall Street.

It was raw, quiet, the kind that made silence feel too loud.

She didn’t know how to wear her anger, not yet.

It still lived in her throat, trembling to be released.

And when she turned to leave, I caught the faintest whiff of her perfume, something clean, subtle, like rain after heat. For some reason, it stayed with me long after the door closed.

I told myself it was nothing. That I didn’t care.

But as the elevator descended with her inside, I found myself standing there, glass in hand, staring at the reflection of my own face, and realizing my pulse was too fast.

What the hell was that?

I poured another drink, just to stop thinking.

But the whiskey didn’t help.

Because when I closed my eyes, I could still see her, those green eyes cutting straight through the ice I’d spent years perfecting.

And worse, I could still hear her voice when she said, “I wasn’t raised to surrender.”

No one had ever said something like that to me and meant it.

Which is exactly why she couldn’t stay a mystery.

I needed to know what her father hadn’t told me.

I needed to know why her defiance felt familiar, like something I’d once lost.

And most of all, I needed to remind myself that this was a deal.

Not fate.

Not attraction.

Just another transaction.

At least, that’s what I kept telling myself,

Until the phone on my desk buzzed, and my assistant’s voice came through the intercom:

“Sir, there’s something you should see. It’s about the Delacroix account.”

A pause.

“And her father isn’t the one behind it.”

The glass slipped slightly in my hand, whiskey splashing over my knuckles.

For the first time in a very long time, I felt something I didn’t recognize.

Not anger. Not surprise.

Something colder.

Something that felt a lot like the beginning of a war.