"He's going to kill him."
That's what security tells me later. Not "fire him." Not "destroy him professionally." Actually kill him.
But I don't know that yet as I walk into the conference room on Monday morning with a diamond ring on my left hand and absolutely no idea I'm about to detonate my entire life.
The ring catches the light—brilliant, impossible to miss, screaming with a message I've been trying to hide for three years.
I belong to someone else now.
Except I'm about to learn that I've never belonged to myself. Not since the moment Dominic Ashford hired me fresh out of university and decided I was going to be his obsession.
I don't know this yet.
I'm walking into his conference room like I do every Monday—heels clicking against marble, tablet in hand, professional smile in place—completely unaware that by the time I walk out, everything will be burning.
Dominic is sitting at the head of the table, reviewing quarterly reports with the intensity of a man who doesn't just run companies—he owns them, controls them, bends them to his will with nothing but the force of his mind and the weight of his presence.
He doesn't look up when I enter.
That's the first sign something is wrong.
He always looks up. Our eyes always meet for that split second—the one I've convinced myself is just boss acknowledging assistant, even though we both know it's so much more.
But today he's studying those reports like they contain the secrets of the universe.
Today, he's forcing himself not to look at me.
I place the tablet down in front of him, and our fingers brush—accidentally, professionally, the way it happens a thousand times in offices across the world.
His entire body goes rigid.
And then his eyes flick up to my left hand.
To the ring.
Everything stops.
The room holds its breath. The thirty board members, the investors, the CFOs—they all sense it. The shift. The moment the atmosphere in the room changes from professional to dangerous.
Dominic Ashford's eyes are locked on my engagement ring like it's personally offended him.
Like I've personally offended him.
"What is that?" His voice is quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that precedes violence.
The conference room goes silent.
I try to keep my voice steady. Professional. Like I'm not about to announce that I'm leaving the man who's been obsessed with me for three years without ever saying it out loud.
"What is what, sir?"
"Your hand. The ring."
There's no way to hide it. The diamond is massive, brilliant, impossible to miss. It's screaming the truth I've been running from: I said yes to someone else.
I chose someone else.
I chose away from him.
"I got engaged. This weekend. His name is Marcus. We're planning—"
The sound he makes isn't human.
It's feral. It's the sound of something breaking inside a locked box. It's the sound of a man whose control is slipping and he knows it and he doesn't care anymore.
He stands up, and the chair doesn't just move—it crashes backward into the wall with enough force to sound like a gunshot.
Thirty people flinch.
"Everyone. Out. Now."
His voice is ice. His voice is certainty. His voice is the voice of someone who doesn't ask twice.
They leave without question, without discussion, because you don't challenge Dominic Ashford. You don't stand between him and what he wants. You don't watch when he's about to consume something.
The door closes.
And I hear it—that sound I'll hear in my nightmares for years to come.
The lock engaging.
The entire floor sealing.
The windows tinting dark.
We are alone.
He is alone with me, and I am trapped.
Dominic doesn't look up immediately. He's reviewing the quarterly reports, his dark eyes scanning numbers that most people couldn't understand even if they spent hours studying them. His expression is the controlled mask he wears in public—cold, calculating, untouchable.
He's wearing a navy suit that costs more than Bella's monthly rent. His tie is silk, Italian, the kind of detail that matters to men like him. His fingers are strong as they flip through documents, and there's a predatory grace to his movements—the kind of presence that makes everyone in the room sit a little straighter.
But then he looks up.
Their fingers brush as she places the tablet down. It's a routine motion, practiced a thousand times over three years. A simple, professional touch that happens in every office across the world between assistants and executives.
Except Bella feels the electricity of it. She always does. And she knows Dominic does too.
He glances at her face first—probably expecting her to say something about the merger files or the CEO from Singapore who's flying in this afternoon. But his gaze drops, falls, zeroes in on her left hand like a predator spotting wounded prey.
The diamond catches the light again. It's unavoidable. It's brilliant and massive and impossible to miss.
His entire body goes rigid.
It's the kind of rigidity that happens right before violence. The kind of stillness that precedes a storm. Bella's seen him like this before—when a competitor undercut his bid. When a board member questioned his strategy. When someone challenged his absolute authority.
But she's never been the target of that fury before.
"What is that?" His voice is quiet. Dangerously quiet. The kind of quiet that makes every person in the conference room hold their breath without understanding why.
The table goes silent. Thirty people stop breathing simultaneously.
Bella's pulse quickens. She knows this tone. She's heard it before when competitors made mistakes. When employees failed to meet expectations. When someone forgot that Dominic Ashford doesn't tolerate mediocrity or betrayal or anything less than absolute loyalty.
She tries to keep her voice professional, neutral, the way a good secretary does when she's about to report on logistics. "What is what, sir?"
But they both know she's lying. She knows exactly what he means.
His dark eyes move from the ring to her face, and there's something in them that wasn't there a second ago. Something primal. Something possessive. Something dangerous.
"Your hand. The ring."
The board members are exchanging confused glances now. They don't understand why the CEO is fixated on Bella's jewelry. They're important people—venture capitalists, CFOs, board members of Fortune 500 companies. They have their own problems, their own power plays. This should be beneath their notice.
But Bella's mouth is suddenly dry.
She holds her hand steady, refusing to hide the ring. "I got engaged. This weekend. His name is Marcus. We're—"
The sound Dominic makes isn't quite human.
It's like something breaking inside a locked box. Like a animal recognizing a threat. It's a sound that doesn't have a proper name in polite society because polite people don't make sounds like that.
He stands abruptly, his chair rolling backward with such force it crashes into the wall behind him. The impact echoes through the room like a gunshot. The sound is violent, explosive, and entirely intentional.
The message is clear: His control is slipping.
"Everyone. Out."
It's not a request. It's not even a command in the traditional sense. It's the tone of someone accustomed to absolute obedience. The tone of someone who owns the building, owns the company, owns the people in it.
Board members exchange uncomfortable glances, but they stand. They gather their tablets and folders and files. A woman in a Chanel suit hesitates for half a second—she's probably thinking about the merger they haven't finished discussing, about the millions at stake.
Dominic looks at her directly. Not with anger, but with something worse: cold certainty.
She leaves.
One by one, thirty powerful people file out of the conference room like they're being dismissed from an audience with a king. No one speaks. The silence is suffocating. The air is thick with curiosity and concern and the electric sensation of witnessing something that shouldn't be public.
The last person closes the door.
And then—
The lock engages with an audible click.
Bella hears it before she sees him move toward it, before she realizes what that sound means. Security systems lock from the outside by keycard. They don't lock from the inside unless someone has overridden them.
She should be horrified. She should be planning her escape. She should be reaching for her phone to call security or HR or literally anyone.
She doesn't do any of those things.
Instead, she watches as Dominic walks back toward her with the grace of a predator. His steps are deliberate, controlled, each one carefully calculated to take him closer. His suit jacket is perfectly tailored to his broad shoulders, and she can see the definition of his muscles underneath the expensive fabric.
He's thirty-five, twelve years her senior, and he moves like someone who's never been told no in his entire life.
"Tell me you're joking," he says, stopping just outside her personal space. Close enough that she can smell him—that intoxicating mix of expensive cologne and something uniquely him. Close enough that she can see the sharp angle of his jaw, the way his dark eyes are burning with something she doesn't have a name for.
Bella stands her ground. She should sit down. She should make herself look smaller, less threatening. But she doesn't. She holds his gaze and keeps her voice steady.
"I'm not. I'm engaged. We're planning a wedding for June."
His laugh is dark, dangerous, lacking any humor whatsoever. It's the kind of laugh that contains threat. It's a sound that reaches deep into her bones and makes every nerve ending wake up and pay attention.
"No."
"Excuse me?" She keeps her voice professional, but her heart is hammering against her ribs like it's trying to escape.
"No," he repeats, stepping closer. His voice drops lower, becomes almost intimate. Almost like he's sharing a secret with her instead of refusing to accept her reality. "You're not."
Bella takes a step back. She wants distance, space, some kind of barrier between them. But her legs feel uncooperative, like her body is actively refusing her mind's command to retreat.
"It's not your decision, Dominic. My personal life is—"
"Personal?" He laughs again, that dark, dangerous sound. "Bella, nothing about you is personal. You live for this company. You live for—" He stops, and something flashes across his face. Something raw and possessive and terrifying. "You live for me."
The air in the room seems to compress. The space between them feels smaller than it should be, like gravity is pulling them toward each other against their will.
"And you're telling me you're throwing that away for some mediocre man you barely know?"
She wants to defend Marcus. Marcus is good—stable, reliable, kind in the way that nice men are kind. He brings her flowers on Thursdays. He remembers her mother's birthday. He wants to build a life with her in the conventional way: marriage, house, 2.5 children, retirement at sixty-five.
But the words stick in her throat because they're not true. Not entirely. And Dominic knows it because he knows her better than anyone ever has.
"How do you know how well I know him?" She tries to inject some anger into her voice, some defensiveness. She needs to push back against him, against the intensity radiating from him, against the truth in what he's saying.
"Because I know you, Bella." He steps closer, and she doesn't move this time. "Better than anyone. Better than he ever will."
His voice is dropping into a range that makes her nervous in a way that has nothing to do with fear. It's a low, intimate tone. A possessive tone. A tone that's laying claim to something he has no right to claim.
"Better than your mother. Better than your best friend. Better than you know yourself."
He reaches out, his fingers moving toward her left hand, toward the ring, but he doesn't touch it. He hovers there, close enough that she can feel the heat radiating from his hand. Close enough that she can see the vein in his forearm, prominent and pulsing.
"I know the exact way you take your coffee. One sugar, a splash of cream, exactly thirty seconds in the microwave so it's warm but not scalding. You always stir it counterclockwise three times."
She stares at him. How does he know that? She's never told him.
"I know you hate the eighth floor because the fluorescent lights give you headaches. You rub your temples when you think no one's looking. You always schedule your important calls for the lower floors."
"You're just—"
"I know you call your mother every Thursday at 6 PM exactly. You've never missed a call in three years. Not when we were in Singapore for the merger. Not when you were sick. Not when you were with him."
Her throat is tight. This is too much. He knows too much.
"I know you're scared of commitment, Bella. I know you say yes to Marcus because you think it's what you're supposed to do. Because society says that's the next step. Because you're reaching thirty and your mother is asking about grandchildren."
She wants to disagree with him. She opens her mouth to argue, but nothing comes out because he's right. He's absolutely, devastatingly right.
"But you don't love him."
The words hang in the air between them like an accusation.
"That ring?" He finally drops his hand but his eyes stay locked on hers. "It's a mistake. And you're going to take it off."
"I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
His certainty is almost mesmeric. The way he says it like it's already decided, already determined by forces beyond her control, makes something inside her twist uncomfortably.
"Then we have a problem," he says, his voice dropping even lower. "Because I don't share. And I don't lose."
He walks away from her, and for a second she feels relief—space, air, the ability to breathe again. But then she hears the sound of him typing on his phone, and she watches the lights around the conference room flicker.
Every door locks simultaneously.
Every entrance seals.
Every window tints to opacity, going dark.
The entire floor just became their private prison.
She rushes to the door on instinct, her hands pulling at the handle. It doesn't budge. "Dominic, what did you do? Open this. This isn't—"
"Professional?" He's back, standing behind her, and she can feel him even though he's not touching her. His presence is overwhelming. "Legal?"
She spins to face him. "Yes. Both. We have thirty people waiting outside. The Singapore acquisition—"
"Doesn't matter." His suit jacket is gone now. He's rolled up his sleeves, and she can see his forearms—muscular, strong, corded with veins that suggest he's used to physical control. "They can wait. Nothing matters right now except you understanding something."
"Which is?"
"Which is that what we have—" He steps closer, and she instinctively steps back until her shoulders hit the glass wall. Trapped. "—this isn't something you throw away for someone like Marcus."
Her breath comes faster now. She's trapped between the glass wall and his body, and he hasn't even touched her yet but she can feel the intensity radiating from him like heat.
"We don't have anything. You're my boss."
"Am I?" His hand rises, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. She should pull away. Every survival instinct is screaming at her to move.
She doesn't move.
"Is that what this is to you? Just boss and secretary?"
His touch is gentle, which somehow makes it more terrifying than if he'd been rough. This is calculated. This is control expressed through softness instead of violence.
"Tell me you don't feel this."
She can't. Because it would be a lie. Because she's been feeling this for three years—this electric connection, this impossible chemistry, this constant pull toward him that she's spent months trying to ignore.
Her breathing quickens, becomes shallow, uneven.
"It doesn't matter what I feel. This is wrong. You're my boss. There's a power imbalance, a hierarchy—"
His other hand grips her jaw, not roughly, but with absolute certainty. He tilts her face up toward his, forcing her to maintain eye contact.
"Fuck the hierarchy." His voice is rough now, raw in a way she's never heard from him in the office. "Tell me you're not in love with me. Look me in the eyes and tell me you don't think about me when you're with him."
She can't.
Because she does.
"Tell me his touch feels like mine."
The silence stretches between them, heavy with everything unspoken.
"The engagement is over," he says with absolute certainty. "Tell me now and I'll make this easy. Fight me, and I'll make sure that man regrets ever meeting you."
There's no humor in his voice. No exaggeration for effect. It's a simple statement of fact, delivered with the certainty of someone who's never been denied anything in his life.
"You can't control my life," she whispers, but the words sound weak, even to her own ears.
His jaw tightens, and she sees something flash across his face—something dark and possessive and utterly terrifying.
"Watch me."