Chapter 139
Chapter 139
Alina's POV
The knock came again. I tightened my grip on Lowell's arm and pushed him back, then called toward the door: "What is it?"
It was one of Adams's people. Through the door panel, I heard her voice — careful, probing: "Mr. Adams sent me to check on you, Miss Alina. You've been away from the banquet for a while now."
I drew a slow breath and steadied my voice. "I'm in the shower. I'll be out shortly — tell him I'll be back in a few minutes."
A pause on the other side. Two seconds, maybe three. Then the voice returned, and the softness had gone out of it. "Miss Alina, Mr. Adams asked me to confirm your situation in person. Perhaps I should wait until you come out?"
I gripped the edge of the vanity. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat. I met Lowell's eyes across the room. If she came in and found him here, I had no idea what would be done with him — and whatever happened to me wouldn't be pleasant either.
I let the irritation into my voice, cold and flat: "I told you I'm in the shower. Are you having trouble understanding that? Or are you planning to stand there and watch?"
The response came back smaller this time — the sound of someone retreating. "Of course not. I'll go and update Mr. Adams."
The footsteps moved away. I stood at the vanity and listened, holding very still, until I opened the door and confirmed the hallway was empty. Only then did I let myself breathe again.
Before I could turn around, Lowell was already behind me — his breathing ragged, his mouth finding mine, both hands closing around my waist as he pressed me back against the sofa. His hand moved to the hem of my dress.
I fought back immediately. He was too strong — my wrists were pinned and I couldn't get any leverage — but I kept pushing, kept pulling away.
"Stop — let go — Lowell — let go of me—" I was gasping against his mouth, but he stayed where he was, his full weight bearing down on me.
"I said let go of me!"
The harder I fought, the more desperate I became, until I got one hand free and slapped him across the face.
That landed.
He went still. His hands released my waist.
The suite went quiet.
I looked down. I pointed at the door. "You need to leave."
"Alina—"
"Go." I had no patience left — not with him, not tonight, not with everything his father's name now carried. I cut him off without softening it. "We're done. We were done the moment I said I was leaving. You being here doesn't change anything. Go."
The line of his brow pulled together. He didn't move. When he spoke, his voice had dropped to something quieter — stripped of its usual authority, asking rather than stating. "You didn't leave just because of what happened in the family, did you? I know there's something else. Whatever it is — I don't want to lose you. Give me one chance. Please."
He reached for my arm.
I jerked back and hit the sofa cushions.
"There is no chance. Get out of my sight. Now."
My voice was shaking.
His cheek still held the clear shape of my hand against it — vivid, undeniable. The sight of it did something to me that I couldn't quite name, and my palm was still stinging, and my breathing was all wrong. I looked at the mark I had left on his face and felt the emotions crowding my chest go somewhere past what I could contain.
"What you just did — how is that any different from the person I despise most?"
Something in Lowell's expression broke apart. Whatever composure he had been holding onto dissolved in the moment those words hit him.
I dropped my gaze and said nothing more. Silence was the only wall I had left to put between us.
I heard the door open. Then close.
When it was quiet again, I closed my eyes and focused on keeping everything inside where it belonged.
---
By the time I left the hotel that night, the story had already detonated.
The notification alerts on my phone didn't stop once the entire drive back to the estate. Any social platform I opened was saturated with coverage of the signing ceremony — and it hadn't taken long for the framing to shift. What had started as Charlecross Group Introduces New Senior Executive had evolved, within hours, into pieces with headlines like Alina Charlecross: From the Wadarishi Family to the Charlecross Family — accompanied by side-by-side photographs: me on the red carpet with Adams, my hand in the crook of his arm, set against photographs from months earlier of me at Lowell's side. The comment sections beneath each article were already flooded — shock, outrage, mockery — every post another nail being driven in.
Back in my room at the estate, I turned the phone face-down on the nightstand and left it there. The stories didn't stop existing just because I stopped reading them.
Adams was waiting for me. He brought me into the study the moment I arrived, and the look he gave me had nothing idle in it — calculating, precise, the look of a man who had already worked out how this conversation would go.
"I assume you've seen what's circulating?" He had let the media cycle run deliberately, and now he was watching to see what I would do with it.
I glanced at the screen he gestured toward. The front page was still dominated by last night's ceremony — the photograph blown up large, my face sharp and clear in the light.
"I've seen it."
"Good." Adams leaned back in his chair, his hands folded together on the desk. "Given where things stand, I need you to cooperate with the next step. I want you to go public — as a victim. File a lawsuit."
My chest tightened. I looked up at him before I could stop myself, trying to work out what form this particular move was going to take.
"Sue Lowell Wadarishi." Adams's expression didn't shift. "On the grounds of coercion and unlawful detention — frame the night he took you from the auction as an abduction. He bought you out of a sex trafficking auction; that's your basis. Add to that his use of you as a public face for the boxing business, and you pull the entire Wadarishi boxing operation into the litigation."
He held my gaze as he finished, the pressure in it deliberate and unambiguous. "That's the only way we make sure the Wadarishi family's boxing empire doesn't survive this news cycle. We bury them before they have a chance to respond."