Chapter 67 The First Lap of War
Rhys shook Damon’s hand again, his grip tight but brief. The smile he offered was plastic, the kind he reserved for rival team principals.
“Damon,” Rhys said smoothly. “Good to see you. We’re just heading over to the private dining room. The family’s starving, and Ellie needs to brief me on a potential security issue before the seating.”
He released Damon and turned to me, cutting off any possibility of further conversation. The switch was instant: his gaze was heavy and judgmental, but when he spoke, the low tone was layered with polite, undeniable authority, masked by a surface of familial concern.
“Ellie, your brother Owen specifically pulled me aside this morning,” Rhys lied with flawless delivery. “He was worried about you being overwhelmed by the old crowd, and he explicitly asked me to ensure you remained within the family radius while we’re here. He knows how stressed you are balancing this Vance Racing crisis with the personal demands of the engagement.”
He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a knife blade grazing my skin.
“And you know Owen’s rule: I answer directly to him regarding your safety and reputation management. I wouldn’t want to give him a reason to doubt my commitment to my duties, or force him to ask me to explain why your focus has suddenly drifted off-track.”
It was infuriatingly perfect. He wasn’t saying no; he was outsourcing the refusal to my most protective, authoritarian older brother. He wasn’t acting as a jealous man; he was acting as a dedicated, rule-following employee managing a CEO’s unpredictable assets. He had used my own family’s hostility toward my independence as a shield for his control.
My rage tightened into a dangerous knot. “You’re a terrible liar. Owen didn’t say anything.”
“Perhaps not in those words,” he conceded, his grip clamping down on the small of my back as he started steering me toward the dining room entrance. The pressure was heavy, a silent assertion of ownership. “But I assure you, my action is entirely in line with the expectations of your family—and my contract. You are not going to the firefighter’s ball, Ellie. We have a role to play. I suggest you remember it.”
We walked three feet, his hand burning against my skin, before he finished the sentence, his voice dropping so only I could hear the sheer, cold menace of it.
“Otherwise, I’ll be forced to explain to your family that my job managing your corporate risk now extends to managing your personal reputation, and that involves explaining exactly what kind of temporary physical relief you needed last last night that required me to break our non-contact clause. Think about the headlines, Ellie. Vance CEO caught in family drama, contract breach, sexual misconduct allegations. Is the firefighter’s ball worth jeopardizing the entire investigation into the deepfake threat?”
He had sealed the perimeter. He had used the one weapon I couldn’t fight in public: family reputation. The immediate shock of the threat left me momentarily breathless. It wasn't just embarrassment he was threatening; it was a structural threat to the entire Vance Racing mission. He knew the AI sabotage was the only thing that mattered to me professionally right now, and he was using the need for corporate stability as his shield. He was using the mission as a weapon against me.
A sickening wave of realization washed over me: he wasn't just shutting me down; he was treating the intense, emotional bond we'd forged over the last year as nothing more than a tactical weakness to be exploited. He was willing to use our intimacy as leverage, confirming that to Rhys, I was just another asset in the game—a highly valued one, perhaps, but ultimately controllable.
“You’d expose yourself just to stop me?” I whispered back, my voice trembling with suppressed fury.
“I’d stabilize the asset,” he corrected, the term making my blood run cold. “And right now, Ellie, you are dangerously unstable. Your priority is to identify the source of the deepfakes and stop the erosion of Vance Racing’s reputation, not to initiate a hostile takeover of my personal life. I am simply enforcing the rules you established.”
His logic was flawless, devastatingly so. He was right. Everything—the contract, the engagement, the holiday—was camouflage for the real work. And I was letting my pride over a rejected hookup compromise our ability to achieve the ultimate objective: uncovering the identity of the person trying to destroy Rhys and his company.
We reached the entrance to the dining room. Rhys stopped, turning toward me just enough for his body to block me from the view of the incoming traffic. He lifted the hand that was gripping my back, and his thumb brushed the exposed skin above the cranberry dress’s neckline—a gesture so tender it felt like another betrayal.
“Your strategy was clear this morning: treat it as a cold transaction. Mine is clear now: enforce the transaction’s terms to protect the greater investment,” he murmured, his blue eyes intense and unreadable. “If you want to win this war, Ellie, you need to be focused. You can't be drifting into the pit lane for emotional repairs. Now, smile. We are going to be the perfect, dutiful couple. You are going to focus your considerable strategic energy on solving this sabotage, and I will maintain the façade of your devoted fiancé. Understood, CEO?”
I met his gaze, my lips stretching into a perfect, empty smile. “Loud and clear, Mr. Vance. The operational parameters have been updated.”
I took a deep, steadying breath. Rhys had drawn a line in the sand, using our night together as leverage. He was trying to enforce the old, cold terms of our contract. But by revealing his possessiveness, he had just given me my new pit wall strategy. The contract was over. The game had changed. This wasn't corporate governance anymore; it was war, and I was going to push him off the track at the first available turn, no matter how much heat it generated between us. I would make him break his own rules.