A beat.
“But now you’re giving it to them for free.”
He might as well have doused me with ice water.
I turned over, facing him. His arm fell across my hip automatically, as if it belonged there. “So, what do I do then?”
“Be as expensive as they fear you are.”
I rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling. “And what? Go to the press like some attention-seeking…” I refused to finish the thought.
“You know what I do for a living, yes?”
“I’m still fuzzy on that, but I know it’s not driving rideshare.”
“I deal in information. Collecting. Selling. Distributing.”
He shifted closer—not pulling me in, not claiming space—just enough that the mattress dipped beneath his weight. I rolled back toward him, and he took my hands in his, turning my palms upward. Then he rotated them slowly until my fingers closed around his wrists.
He didn’t move. Just let himself be held there, bound by nothing but choice.
“Use me,” he said quietly.
My breath stuttered.
“Unleash me. Let me serve you.”
I went still. “To be clear, you’re talking about exposing everything you found on Richard?”
He nodded. “And anyone you choose. I’m sure the executives who fired you have skeletons they’d prefer stayed hidden.”
I tightened my hold on Luka’s wrists. “And when it’s over? What then?”
He didn’t answer.
“They write a check. They make a donation. Someone ‘steps down for personal reasons.’ And I’m left holding the mess.” My voice dropped. “I don’t want blood on my hands for nothing.”
“You’re right.” His expression tightened. “Men like Richard survive scandals. They don’t survive isolation.”
I felt the weight of that settle between us.
“I don’t just release information,” Luka said. “That’s noise.”
I waited.
“I sequence it. I decide who sees what, and when. I strip away the exits before he knows he needs them. By the time the story breaks, every ally he has will already be distancing themselves. Every favor spent. Every exit closed.” He met my eyes. “He won’t buy his way out. He won’t have anyone left to sell to.”
“But where does this leave me? I’m the crazy, dramatic girl on the news that no one believes.”
“You don’t have to martyr yourself, Alex. If you want justice, you take it. If you want peace, you walk away.” He paused, brushing his fingertips over my thumb. The touch was strangely soothing. Grounding. “But if you do nothing, the next woman in that office is less lucky.”
I flinched. Every self-preserving argument collapsed under that single, awful truth.
As I lay there, still holding Luka’s wrists like handcuffs, staring at the bland, spackled ceiling, I imagined the story breaking—Richard’s face in a sidebar, a sprint of anonymous comments, LinkedIn vultures picking the bones clean. Maybe, somewhere in the footnotes, my name—a warning, or a punchline. Or not at all.
And yet. The alternative was nothing. Letting it slide. Waiting for the next woman to get locked in that same office.
“I don’t even know the first step,” I admitted. “I don’t have a whistle. I don’t have a platform.”