Kneel For Me

The Threat

The email arrived at seven forty-three.

I saw it before he did. Four words in the subject line that made my stomach drop.

Re: Voss Enterprises — Hostile Action.

I called his direct line without sitting down.

He answered on the first ring. “What.”

“Ashford & Klein. Hostile action filing. You need to see it now.”

Two seconds of silence. “Come in.”

He was already standing when I pushed through his door, phone in hand, jacket still on. I crossed to his desk, turned his laptop toward me, and pulled up the email myself.

He leaned in beside me to read it — shoulder almost touching mine, the dark scent of his cologne cutting through the early morning air. I focused on the screen.

“Calder Group,” I said. “They’re alleging IP theft on the Vantage acquisition. Claiming the Halcyon structure was derived from proprietary analysis they conducted in 2020.”

“I know what it says.” His voice was flat. But I could feel the tension radiating off him — hotter underneath the usual controlled stillness.

“The claim is thin,” I said. “The Luxembourg filing predates any Calder analysis by fourteen months. March 2019 versus their 2020 timeline. If I can pull the original timestamps—”

“You’ve already read the full attachment.”

“In the lift.”

He turned his head. We were close enough that I caught the exact moment something shifted in his eyes — not the cold recalibration. Something sharper. More immediate.

“Pull the timestamps,” he said. “Everything. 2019 filing, the full Vantage chain, every Luxembourg cross-reference. Greer needs it before the board convenes.”

“When does the board convene?”

“Ten.” He straightened. Moved to the window. “I need it by nine.”

“Then I need to start now.”

“Then start.”

I turned toward the door.

“Sera.”

I stopped. The word hit me somewhere below the ribs — my name, not my title, said like he hadn’t meant to say it at all.

I turned back slowly.

He was at the window, back half-turned, jaw tight. “Marcus Webb runs Calder Group. We were partners. Seven years ago.” A pause, weighted with something I wasn’t meant to see. “He’s not filing this because he has a case. He’s filing it to cause disruption. Board confidence. Press. The acquisition timeline.” His eyes lifted. Dark, direct, completely unguarded for three seconds. “He’ll come at everything adjacent to me. Deals. Reputation.” A beat. “People.”

The word landed carefully. Deliberately.

People.

“He’ll come at me,” I said. Not a question.

Lucian held my gaze. “He’ll try to use you. Same way Dominic tried — but Webb is less charming and considerably more dangerous.” His voice dropped. “I need to know you understand what you’re walking into.”

“I understood what I was walking into when I signed the non-compete.”

Something moved through his expression. Complicated. Almost raw.

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” I agreed. “But my answer is the same.”

The room was very quiet.

“Nine o’clock,” he said finally. Back to the armour. But underneath it — something different. Something that looked, dangerously, like relief.

I had the full Luxembourg chain on Greer’s desk by eight fifty-one.

The board meeting ran two hours. I sat outside and managed what became a small storm — seventeen calls, two journalists who’d somehow already heard, three board members’ assistants fishing for details, one very persistent paralegal from Ashford & Klein who I redirected to Greer with professional pleasantness and zero information.

At eleven forty, Lucian came out of the boardroom.

He stopped at my desk. Looked at the call log — every entry, every redirect, every carefully worded non-answer I’d given the press.

“Webb’s lawyer called twice,” I said. “I told them your schedule didn’t permit contact before Friday and all communication goes through Greer.”

He kept reading.

“The FT called. I said no comment, statement to follow. I’ve drafted the statement — one paragraph, confident not defensive. It’s on your screen.”

He looked up. “You drafted it already.”

“Twenty minutes ago.”

A silence. He looked at me with an expression I hadn’t seen before — not assessment, not the careful recalibration. Something more unguarded. The look of a man who had spent years expecting people to do less than required, and was still not entirely sure what to do when they didn’t.

“It’s good,” he said, after reading it. “Send it.”

“Already scheduled for two PM unless you want changes.”

The corner of his mouth moved. Almost nothing. Almost.

“No changes,” he said.

He turned toward his office.

“Lucian.”

It came out before I could stop it. His name — no title, no professional distance — just Lucian, dropped into the air between us like something breakable.

He went still.

Turned back slowly. His eyes found mine across the desk and held them with a weight that made the whole floor feel smaller.

“The board,” I said, recovering. “Do they know about the Luxembourg timestamps?”

A beat. Two.

“They do now.” His voice was quieter than usual. “Because of you.”

He looked at me for a moment longer — that unguarded look, the one that lasted three seconds before the shutters came down.

“You did well today,” he said. Not adequate. Not good. Well. With the full weight of a day that had required something real.

Then he walked into his office.

The door clicked shut.

I sat back down, pulse unsteady, and stared at the sent folder where the press statement was queued.

Lucian.

One syllable. Out loud. His name in my mouth, real and reckless and unretrievable.

And he hadn’t corrected me.

He hadn’t looked away either.

I pulled up the next file, forced my breathing even, and told myself that surviving Marcus Webb’s attack on Voss Enterprises was the priority.

Not the way Lucian had said “people” like it meant one person specifically.

Not the way my own name in his voice had felt like the beginning of something I couldn’t afford.

Not any of that.

I started working.

Outside, London moved in its indifferent way, forty-three floors below.

Inside, something had shifted.

And neither of us was going to say so.