Kindness was a weapon I hadn’t known how to wield against him, and it was breaking us both.
The penthouse was a gilded cage, but the air had changed. It was no longer just charged with the threat of external danger or the cold calculation of their initial arrangement. Now, it was thick with a tension so potent it felt like a third person in the room, breathing with them, watching them. The fragile truce, the shared vulnerability of his confession and the desperate passion that followed, had shattered the old rules of their war. What was left was a terrifying, uncharted territory.
It had been three days since he’d fallen asleep at his desk. Three days since she’d draped a blanket over his shoulders and he’d gripped her wrist, his eyes dark and unguarded, and asked, “Why are you being kind
