Chapter 46: The Wolf in the Glass
Chapter 46: The Wolf in the Glass
CALEB'S POV
The city below my window was a geometry of indifferent lights… glitter without warmth, pattern without meaning. The streets looked like diagrams of lives I'd never touch, and yet they seemed to move with more purpose than I felt in this moment. My world had narrowed to the envelope in my hand… ordinary manila, unremarkable, harmless until you knew what was inside.
The PI's report.
I held it as if it were something alive, the weight deceptive… heavy with meaning, light in my hand.
The moment my skin warmed the paper, an image detonated… Ava. Not the one who wore Julian's orbit like polished glass, contained and untouchable. The other. The one who had broken in the estate and again in the silence afterward… tremors in her hands, the quiet of one who's been pursued by something invisible.
And worse than that was the afterimage… her mouth on mine in the estate studio, a sloppy, actual thing that had tasted like salvation and theft at once. It was wrong and actual, unintentional and unreproducible, and recalling it now burned where I didn't want to touch.
My pulse quickened. My grip on the envelope tightened. And then, because I couldn't trust myself for the next decision, I shoved it into the drawer. The wood-on-wood creak was abrupt… a gavel drop, a verdict I wasn't entirely sure of. It only moved danger out of sight, not out of reach.
A knock startled me back.
Daniel entered, file in hand, with that guarded expression he had when he was debating whether or not to push.
"You wanted the revisions rush?" His voice was casual, but his eyes held a beat too long.
"Later," I said, too quickly.
He didn't leave. He closed the door, trapping the office in a smaller space. "You hear about Ava Thompson?" His voice dropped. "Victoria's been talking. Framing it as concern, but the message beneath is poison. That Ava didn't merit the job… that Marcus manipulated… that she's unstable, especially with her mother's illness."
Indignation flared hot and immediate. "That bitch.
My hand pounded onto the desk, the report crackling like a whip. Daniel didn't flinch… years of working with fires had him used to random sparks.
"It's not merit around here," he answered dully. "It's control. Victoria spins tales. If she paints Ava as a troublemaker, the rest will take it as gospel. That leaves her vulnerable.".
Vulnerable. The word settled in my chest like a bruise pressed too hard.
I thought of how her laughter had fallen silent when Julian's shadow fell across her. How she'd appeared in that estate… a stillness so sharp it could cut. Vulnerable.
It was something that I desired to protect. And something that I knew I had to protect myself from desiring to protect.
When Daniel finally left, the air was thicker. I pulled open a second drawer and pulled out a sketch… charcoal lines of her laughing, head back, unguarded. My finger brushed the paper, smudging the line of her jaw. The smudge was like proof… that I had looked at her when others made a habit of omission.
The estate light came back to me. The silence. The estate studio. The weight of her body, the taste of her mouth… a map I'd wanted to claim as my own. That moment had spread out in my head since, ballooning into something I both wanted to relive and feared I'd already ruined.
I dreamed of taking her out of Julian's shadow altogether. Denying Marcus his cautious, measured touches. Making her surrender means only me.
It was a fantasy, ugly in its claiming, disguised as protection. A personal appetite I did not want to examine too closely.
And then… the mirror.
Julian's self-reflection in my own head. Not his suits or his polish, but the workings underneath. His presumption that to protect was to possess. That control and care were the same face.
The thin line between protect and take seared right through me.
I told myself I was not like him. I had always told myself that. But looking at my own hands now… the same tension in the tendons, the same readiness to clench… I noticed the resemblance. Desire, it seemed, could be inherited like you inherit legacy.
Julian's cruelty was never noisy. It was neat, surgical, relentless. He had a way of making people feel seen in a way that hid how inconsequential their agency was. You accepted his kind of beneficence because it came wrapped in competence and stability. It was a trap you were thankful for while it sprang shut.
I slammed the drawer shut. The one containing the other envelope was heavier for it. It wasn't ammunition now. It was a detonator. And a shot like that wouldn't just hit Julian… it would shatter into the people standing around him.
Ava most of all.
I permitted myself to imagine the domino effect: headlines, hallway gossip, elevator whispers. Victoria feeding the spectacle like it was an art. Painting herself as righteous. Painting Ava as collateral damage.
Power was a currency that consumed its bearer from the inside. I was aware of that. I had learned it in smaller conflicts… in the cold pride of my father's battles, in the joy of prevailing at any cost. Maybe that was why my first impulse had been to use the paper… not for justice, but because striking first felt like being alive.
Being alive for me, though, could be ruin for her.
I did the very least, most cowardly thing I could do… I closed the drawer again. Not from honor, but to quiet the shrieking in my head long enough to draw breath. My palm rested on the wood, as if my weight would keep the fallout contained. It couldn't. But it gave me seconds.
In those seconds, I recalled Ava's laughter… rare and radiant… and how easily it could be snuffed out in a storm not of her making. I recalled the hunger that curled low in me when I thought of her, and the wolfish part that did not care if the hunger was akin to Julian's.
The line between predator and protector ran through my hands.
I turned from the window. The city still blinked, cold and unconcerned. My choices hadn’t been erased. I’d only delayed them. The envelope and the sketch remained buried. The hunger did not.
For now, that uncertainty would have to do.