Chapter 1: Caged in Glass

The first thing I did when the helicopter's rotors finally died was bite the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood.

Not because I was scared. Because if I didn't, I'd start screaming right there on the helipad carved into the side of this godforsaken mountain.

My sequined gala dress from last night clung to me like a bad decision, the hem torn from where I'd paced the floor of my apartment at three in the morning. Brown skin prickled with gooseflesh under the thin fabric. Colorado morning air had teeth this high up. Or maybe that was just the man waiting for me at the edge of the glass-and-stone monstrosity that pretended to be a house.

Andrei Harrington didn't move as I approached. He never did. Just stood there in a black sweater and jeans like some kind of mountain god who'd decided to dress down for the execution. His dark hair was still cropped military-short, those deep brown eyes tracking every swing of my braids like he was calculating the exact torque needed to snap my neck. Or maybe my resolve. Same difference.

"Margaret." His voice carried that faint accent, thicker now, like the altitude had stripped away his city polish. "You look... rumpled."

I stopped three feet away, close enough to smell the cedar and something sharper underneath. My hands curled into fists at my sides. "And you look like a man who just spent twenty million dollars on revenge. How's that sitting with your board, Andrei?"

He didn't smile. Men like him rarely did. Instead he turned on his heel and started toward the massive glass doors that made up most of the estate's front. I had no choice but to follow. My heels clicked against stone like gunshots in the thin air. Each step felt like signing my own warrant.

Inside, the place swallowed sound. That's what hit me first—the way our footsteps echoed down hallways that seemed carved from the mountain itself. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed nothing but jagged peaks and endless pine. I hated how my architect brain cataloged it all: the passive solar design, the cantilevered sections defying gravity, the way light poured through like it owned the place.

Just like he did now.

"My company," I said to his back. My voice cracked on the last word despite my best efforts. "Tremaine Designs. You bought it. Overnight. While I was... while I was still celebrating the fact that I'd finally told the world what a parasite you are."

Andrei paused at the threshold of what had to be his office. The room jutted out over a cliff like it wanted to dive into the abyss. He gestured me inside with two fingers, the way you'd summon a dog.

"Sit."

I remained standing. The braids I'd spent forty minutes twisting last night before the gala now hung heavy down my back, one loose strand tickling my collarbone. I tucked it behind my ear without thinking, then cursed myself for the tell. He noticed. Of course he noticed.

"The acquisition was legal," he said, moving behind a desk that looked like it had been sliced from a single slab of obsidian. "Hostile, yes. But your shareholders seemed quite eager once they saw the offer. Especially after your little performance at the gala made Tremaine stock plummet twenty-three percent."

My cheeks burned hot enough to melt the snow outside. Last night I'd stood on that stage in front of three hundred of the city's most powerful people and laid out exactly how Andrei Harrington's latest development had gutted my father's historic preservation work. I'd had documents. Photos. The tremor in my voice when I mentioned the building my dad had died trying to save. People had actually applauded.

And now here I was. In his house. Wearing yesterday's war paint.

"You can't just—"

"I can. And I did." He slid a tablet across the desk. The screen glowed with dense legal text that made my head throb. "Six months, Margaret. You live here. You work here. You develop the sustainable retrofit technology your firm pioneered under my direct supervision. Or you lose everything. The IP rights. The company name. Even that sad little brownstone your father left you."

I snatched the tablet, scrolling too fast, the words blurring. This couldn't be real. Contracts like this didn't exist outside of nightmares and bad fanfiction. But there was my signature line, waiting. And his, already initialed in that precise, arrogant scrawl.

"You're insane," I whispered. "This is kidnapping with extra steps."

Andrei leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking under his weight. For the first time I noticed how tired he looked. Not that it softened me. The man had destroyed my family's legacy and then bought the right to watch me drown in the wreckage. Still, something in the set of his jaw made my skin feel too tight.

"Elena will show you the rest of the terms." He nodded toward the doorway where a compact woman in dark clothes had appeared like smoke. Elena Vasquez. I'd seen her photo in the background of enough paparazzi shots to recognize the sharp features and the way she seemed to take up less space than physics allowed.

"Terms," I repeated, tasting bile. "Like I'm some kind of... asset."

"You are." His eyes flicked over me, slow and deliberate. Not leering exactly. More like he was memorizing the exact places where my dress clung and where it gaped. My breath hitched despite myself. "An extremely valuable one. Your designs could save my new eco-district project billions. And after last night, I decided I wanted you where I could see you."

The words landed heavy between us. I stepped closer to the desk, close enough to see the faint scar cutting through his left eyebrow. Close enough to watch his pupils dilate when I planted both hands on the cool surface and leaned in.

"You think you can cage me here and I'll just... what? Roll over? Produce pretty little blueprints for you while you watch?"

His gaze dropped to my mouth for half a second. When he spoke again, his voice had gone lower, rougher around the edges. "I think you'll fight me every single day. And I think we'll both be exhausted by the time those six months are over."

Elena cleared her throat from the doorway. "Boss. The chopper's refueling. Pilot says another storm's coming in tonight."

Andrei didn't look away from me. "Give us the room."

She hesitated only a fraction of a second before slipping out. The door closed with a soft click that sounded final. I straightened up, heart rabbiting against my ribs. The office suddenly felt smaller, the glass walls pressing in with all that empty sky and stone.

"I won't sign it," I said.

"You already have."

The words landed like a slap. I grabbed the tablet again, scrolling back to the last page. There it was—my digital signature, timestamped at 2:47 a.m. While I'd been stress-sketching on my bathroom mirror with dry-erase marker, someone had been forging my consent.

"How?"

"Your chief financial officer has power of attorney for emergency acquisitions. You gave it to him last year when your father got sick." Andrei's mouth curved in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Desperate times."

I wanted to throw the tablet at his head. Instead I set it down with deliberate care, the way my father had taught me to handle fragile things. My hands shook anyway. The braids swung forward as I bent my head, curtaining my face.

Six months. Jesus.

I lifted my head. He was watching me with that predatory stillness, but there was something else flickering behind his eyes. Not triumph exactly. Hunger, maybe. The kind that had nothing to do with money or revenge and everything to do with the way my chest rose and fell too quickly under this stupid dress.

"I hate you," I told him. The words felt good. Clean. "I hate everything you stand for. The way you bulldoze history for profit. The way you smile while you do it."

"Good." He stood up, and suddenly he was too close, the desk no longer a barrier. I could see the faint pulse beating in his throat, smell the coffee on his breath. Black, no sugar. Of course. "Hate keeps things honest."

My back hit the glass wall before I realized I'd been retreating. Cold seeped through the thin fabric of my dress, raising every hair on my arms. Andrei didn't stop advancing until there was barely a breath between us. Not touching. Not yet. But the heat rolling off his body made the mountain air feel like a lie.

"Don't," I whispered.

"Don't what?" His hand came up, hovering near my face like he wanted to tuck that stray braid behind my ear himself. The almost-contact made my stomach clench. "Touch you? Or remind you that last night, while you were tearing me apart in front of all our peers, you looked alive for the first time in years?"

My mouth went dry. Because he wasn't wrong. The rage had felt like oxygen after months of drowning in grief and paperwork and the slow death of everything my father built. But admitting that to him felt like betrayal.

"This isn't about us," I managed. "This is about you needing to control everything that challenges you."

His laugh was soft, almost gentle. It scared me more than shouting would have. "Everything I own, I protect. That includes you now, Margaret. Whether you like it or not."

I turned my face away, staring out at the impossible view. Snow had started falling, fat flakes drifting past the glass like the world was trying to bury us. The helicopter was still visible on the pad, rotors still now. My last connection to anything resembling freedom.

"Show me the suite," I said. "Or whatever gilded prison you've prepared. I need to change out of this dress before I do something we'll both regret."

Andrei stepped back. The loss of his proximity felt like surfacing from underwater—I hadn't realized how hard I'd been breathing. He gestured toward the door with that same two-finger command, but his eyes had gone distant again. Calculating.

---

Elena was waiting in the hallway, arms crossed, that small notebook already in her hand. She took one look at us and her mouth twitched like she was fighting a smile. "This way, Ms. Tremaine. Your... accommodations are ready."

I followed her down another echoing corridor, feeling Andrei's gaze on my back the entire way. The dress whispered against my thighs with each step, a reminder of everything I'd lost in the last twelve hours. My phone. My apartment. My choice.

The suite they gave me was bigger than my entire brownstone. Windows on two walls showed the same heart-stopping drop into wilderness. A king-sized bed dominated one corner, draped in slate-gray linens that probably cost more than my car. There was a drafting table already set up by the largest window, complete with every expensive tool a designer could want.

And in the center of the bed, neatly folded, was a weighted blanket. Deep burgundy. My exact preferred weight. The one I'd special-ordered after Dad died because regular blankets felt like lies.

My knees went weak.

"How did he—"

"Mr. Harrington is thorough." Elena's voice was dry as bone. She leaned against the doorframe, watching me with those sharp eyes. "There's a studio down the hall with better light. He'll expect you to start work tomorrow. Today's for... settling in."

I sank onto the edge of the bed, fingers tracing the blanket's soft edge. It felt like surrender. Like he'd already mapped every weakness and decided exactly how to exploit them. My throat tightened around the panic I refused to let out.

"Does he do this often?" I asked without looking up. "Buy women and wrap them in luxury until they forget they're prisoners?"

Elena snorted. "You're the first. And between you and me, I think he's regretting how well he planned this."

That startled a laugh out of me. Short and bitter. "Regretting? He looked pretty damn satisfied back there."

"Satisfaction and regret aren't mutually exclusive with him." She tapped her thigh where I now saw the faint outline of a holster. "Just... don't burn the place down on your first night. The fire suppression system is a bitch to reset."

She left me then. The door closed with another one of those final-sounding clicks, but when I tried the handle it turned easily. Not locked. Not physically anyway.

I stood at the window for a long time, watching the snow thicken until the helicopter was just a ghost shape against the white. My reflection stared back at me—tall and disheveled, braids coming loose, eyes too wide. The woman who'd publicly destroyed Andrei Harrington less than twenty-four hours ago now looked like she'd been dropped into someone else's nightmare.

The sound of footsteps in the hall made me tense. Heavy. Deliberate. Andrei didn't knock before entering, just pushed the door open like he owned every molecule of air inside. Which, technically, he did.

He'd changed too. Dark gray henley that stretched across shoulders I didn't want to notice. Bare feet against the heated floor. The casualness of it felt more dangerous than the suit he'd worn to the gala.

"Dinner's at seven," he said. "Elena made mole. Don't be late."

I didn't turn around. "I'm not hungry."

"You will be." He came closer. I could see him in the glass now, a dark shape behind my shoulder. Too close again. Always too close. "And Margaret?"

My name in his mouth shouldn't have affected me. It did anyway—a traitorous warmth low in my belly that I immediately hated myself for.

"What?"

He reached past me to touch the glass, leaving a faint print that slowly faded. His arm brushed mine in the process, and I swear the contact traveled straight down my spine like electricity.

"Six months," he murmured, breath stirring the fine hairs at my nape. "Try not to hate me too much by the end. Or maybe... hate me exactly as much as you want to."

The helicopter chose that moment to lift off, rotors whipping snow into a frenzy as it disappeared into the storm. I watched it go until even the sound was swallowed by the mountains. Only then did I let myself feel the full weight of what he'd done.

What we'd both done.

Because even as fury burned through me, clean and righteous, I couldn't ignore the way my body had leaned back toward him. Just a fraction. Just enough to feel the ghost of his chest against my shoulders before he stepped away.

I pressed my forehead to the cold glass and closed my eyes. The weighted blanket waited behind me like a promise. Or a threat. Six months of this—of fighting and wanting and hating myself for the wanting—and I wasn't sure which would break first.

My principles.

Or my heart.