Ethan had stopped pretending that what he felt was concern.

It followed Alyssa everywhere now—into boardrooms, into corridors, into the silence between messages she didn’t reply to fast enough. It lived in the way his eyes tracked her movements without permission, in the tension of his jaw whenever another man spoke her name, in the restless nights where strategy dissolved into her voice replaying in his head.

He told himself it was vigilance. Protection. Responsibility.

But deep down, he knew better.

Alyssa noticed the shift before he admitted it to himself.

She felt it in the way his presence pressed closer than necessary, how doors were always held too long,...