Chapter 191
Serena
The truth hit me in waves.
Standing in Lance's office—the real one, sixty-five floors above the chaos I'd just escaped—I listened as he systematically dismantled everything I thought I knew about the past forty-eight hours. Felix's plan. Wesley's rebellion. The warehouse. The rescue that wasn't a rescue.
Every single piece had been choreographed.
Including my terror.
My face must have cycled through a dozen expressions as Lance explained—shock melting into numbness, numbness hardening into something cold and furious. By the time he finished, my hands were shaking. Not from fear. From rage.
"You—" I started, then couldn't find words adequate to the scale of my anger.
So I hit him instead.
Not hard. Not really. Just enough to make contact, my fists connecting with his chest in a series of ineffectual thumps that probably hurt my hands more than they hurt him. He didn't stop me. Didn't even try to catch my wrists. Just stood there, absorbing each blow with that infuriatingly calm expression, like he'd expected this and decided he deserved it.
"Serena—"
"Don't." Another hit. "Don't you dare 'Serena' me right now."
"I know you're angry—"
"Oh, do you?" I shoved him, hard enough that he actually took a step back. "Do you have any idea what the past two days have been like? Do you?"
"I can imagine—"
"No. You can't." My voice cracked. "Because you knew. The whole time, you knew it was all staged. You knew Felix was playing into your hands. You knew how it would end—" I hit him again, and this time he caught my wrists gently, his grip firm but careful. I tried to pull away. He held on.
"I know," he said quietly. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't—" I stopped, because Vincent had moved toward the door, his expression carefully neutral in that way that meant he was absolutely laughing at us internally.
"I think," Vincent said, his tone professionally detached despite the amusement dancing in his eyes, "this is my cue to give you two some privacy."
Lance's head snapped toward him. "Actually, Vincent, you could stay. Maybe help me explain—" His grip on my wrists loosened slightly as he addressed his assistant, a note of something almost like panic creeping into his voice. "Ms. Vance is clearly... emotionally compromised right now, and I think—"
"Oh, I'm emotionally compromised?" I yanked my hands free. "You manipulative son of a—"
"See?" Lance gestured at me as if I'd just proven his point, then turned back to Vincent with an expression that was almost pleading. "A little backup here would be appreciated."
Vincent's smile widened into something genuinely gleeful. He was already at the door, one hand on the handle. "Of course, sir. I'll leave you to it." He paused, then added with devastating timing: "Oh, and Ms. Vance? I should probably mention—that conversation you had with Marco in the car? The one where he questioned whether Lance would actually come for you?"
I froze. "What about it?"
"Lance told him to say all of that." Vincent's grin was positively wicked now. "Every word. He was listening to the whole thing on comms."
The door clicked shut behind him before I could process that information.
Before Lance could do anything but stare at the closed door with an expression of absolute betrayal.
"Vincent!" he shouted after him. "You absolute—"
But Vincent was already gone, and I was left standing in the middle of Lance's pristine office with my hands on my hips, staring at the man who'd apparently orchestrated my emotional torture for the past forty-eight hours.
"Lance. Fucking. Lawson." Each word came out sharp enough to cut. "You think this is funny? Playing games with people's feelings?"
"That's not—"
"You didn't just manipulate Felix. You manipulated Wesley. You manipulated me." I took a step toward him, and he actually backed up. Good. He should be afraid. "You let me think I was in danger. You let me think Wesley was going to get himself killed trying to save me. You let me think—" My voice broke again, and I hated it. Hated that he could still affect me like this. "You let me think you weren't coming."
"I had to." He ran a hand through his hair, disheveling it in a way that would have been endearing if I weren't so furious. "If I'd told you the truth, Felix would have seen through it. He would have known you were faking. And Wesley—" He paused, his jaw tightening. "Wesley needed to believe it was real. Needed to choose, of his own free will, to break away from Felix's influence. If he'd known it was all theater—"
"Well!" I cut him off, my voice rising. "I'm so glad my genuine terror served such a noble purpose!"
"You were never in danger," he said, and there was an edge of frustration creeping into his tone now. "I literally just explained this. Marco alone could have taken out Felix and every single one of his men if things had gone sideways. He's former SEAL Team Six. The other three operatives embedded with you were Rangers. At any given moment, you had more firepower protecting you than most heads of state. If Felix had so much as bruised you, they would have—"
"That's not the point!" I closed the distance between us in three strides, grabbed his tie, and yanked him down to my eye level. His hands came up instinctively to steady himself against my shoulders, but he didn't try to pull away. "The point is that I didn't know that. The point is that I spent the entire time thinking I was going to die. Thinking you'd decided I wasn't worth the risk. Thinking—"
My voice caught, and I had to stop. Had to breathe. Because admitting the next part felt like peeling back layers of skin.
"I thought you were going to abandon me," I said quietly. "And after Felix was done with me, I thought he'd come for you next. I thought—"
I swallowed hard. "I thought I'd gotten you killed."
Something shifted in his expression. The frustration bled out, replaced by something softer. More dangerous.
"You were worried about me?" His voice had gone low, almost wondering.