"Say it again." His hand landed flat on the wall beside my head, not touching me, close enough I felt the heat coming off his knuckles. "Say she's not mine."
I didn't move. Moving meant losing an inch, and I'd already lost the whole hallway getting backed into this corner of my own office.
"Get your hand off my wall, Cade."
"It's not your wall. It's the firm's wall. And in about four minutes it's going to be my wall, because I'm about to buy the building out from under Kessler and everybody in it." His eyes dropped to my mouth, then back up, slow, like he wanted me to notice him doing it. "Answer the question."
"There was no question. You made a statement and you want me to cry."
"I want a name on a birth certificate."
"Then subpoena one. Oh wait" — I tipped my chin up, close enough now that his jaw tensed at the movement — "you'd have to admit in a courtroom that you knew a woman named Avery Cole existed five years ago. That might be a problem for the guy who told a room full of investors I was 'nobody, just somebody's assistant.'"
Something flickered behind his eyes. Not guilt. Guilt would've been easier to work with. This was calculation, and it scared me more.
"I want to see her."
"No."
"Avery—"
"No visits. Not this week, not next month, not when hell freezes over and you grow a conscience." My voice cracked on the last word and I hated it, hated that he heard it too, hated the way his hand came off the wall and found my jaw instead, thumb dragging once along my cheekbone like he was checking if I was real.
I should've slapped it away. I didn't.
"You kept a kid from me for four years," he said, quiet now, which was worse than shouting. "You don't get to say no to me."
"Watch me."
His thumb stopped moving. Stayed right at the corner of my mouth. I could feel my own pulse going in my throat, fast, stupid, exactly where his eyes went next.
"You're shaking," he said.
"I'm furious. Different thing."
"Is it."
He leaned in — not a kiss, nothing that clean, just his forehead nearly touching mine, his breath warm against my mouth, close enough that if either of us moved half an inch we'd be past a point I couldn't walk back from. I felt the wall at my spine, cold through my blazer, and his knee shift so it pressed light against the outside of mine, not forcing, just there, just letting me know exactly how little space I had left.
"Cade."
"What."
"Step back."
"Why. You gonna scream? Nobody's on this floor. I checked." His hand slid from my jaw down the side of my throat, slow, thumb resting right over the fast, ugly beat of my pulse, and I hated that my breath caught loud enough for him to hear it. "You used to like it when I checked things first."
"That was five years ago. Before you stood in front of two hundred people and called me nothing."
"I was protecting the deal."
"You were protecting yourself. Same as now." I got my hand flat on his chest, meaning to shove — instead I felt his heartbeat slamming under my palm, way faster than his voice let on, and something ugly and warm twisted low in my stomach at the proof he wasn't as steady as he sounded. "You want to know why there's a kid you never met? Because the last time I needed you, you looked straight through me and told a boardroom I was nobody. So no. You don't get visits. You don't get her name. You don't get to put your hand on my neck like you have any right to what's under it."
His grip didn't loosen. If anything his thumb pressed a fraction harder, right over my pulse, like he was counting it.
"You think a wall and a speech is gonna stop me from finding out where she goes to preschool."
My stomach dropped. "You don't know that."
"I know a four-year-old with your eyes rides a scooter into a building on Bleecker every morning at eight-fifteen, because my driver's been sitting outside the Kessler office for a week and he takes pictures of everything that moves near my targets. I didn't put it together until I saw the one on your tablet tonight. Same jaw as my mother's." His voice dropped even lower, and for the first time all night it wasn't a lawyer's voice, wasn't a predator's voice. It cracked, just slightly, right in the middle. "Her name, Avery."
My throat closed up. He wasn't bluffing. He'd already been circling her without knowing it.
"You don't get to just show up."
"I'm not asking permission for the fact that she exists. I'm asking permission for the how." His other hand came up, bracketing me fully against the wall now, no space left at all, his mouth an inch from mine, and for one long, humiliating second I wanted to close that inch more than I wanted to breathe. "Give me that much and I'll leave tonight without the paperwork."
"And if I don't."
His eyes went hard again, fast, the switch flipping back like it never left. "Then tomorrow morning I walk into that preschool myself, and you can explain to a four-year-old why a stranger's asking for her at the gate."
The door behind him clicked. Someone's key card. Neither of us moved.
"Cade—"
"Her name." His thumb was still on my pulse, and it was hammering so hard now I was sure he could feel every beat of the answer I hadn't said yet.