Chapter 173
Chapter 173:
The elevator dinged at the fourth floor. He didn’t stop. He walked her backward out into the hallway and across to his door, his thumb finding the keypad without looking. The door to Unit 4A clicked open behind her.
She was home.
The heavy door slammed shut behind them, propelled by the heel of his shoe. The sound cracked through the cavernous, empty living room like a gunshot. Then the lock engaged.
Click.
Silence.
Dallas pulled back — just an inch, just enough for oxygen to rush into the narrow space between their mouths.
“Dallas, wait,” Eliza gasped, her chest heaving. The air in the room felt thin, charged.
He stared at her. His pupils were blown so wide the blue of his irises had been reduced to thin, electric rings around the black. The composed CEO, the cold strategist — gone. In his place was something raw and terrifyingly focused.
“You said you love me,” he said. His voice was raspy, stripped of its usual polish, rough as gravel grinding against glass. “Prove it p>
He didn’t wait for an answer. He reached for her coat, his movements sharp. His fingers grazed her wrist as he moved to slide the fabric down her arms.
She flinched.
𝘉𝘦 pа𝘳𝗍 𝘰𝘧 𝗼𝘶𝗋 сom𝗺𝘂𝘯𝗶𝘁у 𝗼𝗻
It was involuntary — a micro-movement of pain. The bruise Anson had left when he grabbed her was fresh, the tissue beneath still throbbing.
Dallas froze.
The air conditioner hummed. It was the only sound in a world that had suddenly stopped turning. He didn’t push the coat off. Instead, he took her hand — his grip gentle now, terrifyingly so, in contrast to the storm in his eyes. He lifted her wrist. He pushed the sleeve of her sweater up.
The purple marks were stark against her pale skin. Four distinct fingerprints. Anson’s grip, branded into her like a claim that wasn’t his to make.
“He did this,” Dallas said. The temperature in the room seemed to drop. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact, delivered with a lethal calm that was far worse than shouting.
“It’s nothing. Just a grab,” Eliza tried to pull her hand back, panic fluttering in her throat. “It doesn’t even hurt p>
“Don’t lie to me.” He didn’t release her. He drew her closer instead, eliminating the last inch of space between them, and buried his face in the crook of her neck — inhaling slowly, as if trying to memorize something.
Then he went rigid.
Every muscle in his chest turned to stone against her.
“You smell like him,” he whispered.
The tone was dangerous. Not an accusation — a realization that seemed to physically wound him.
Eliza understood with a jolt of cold horror that he was right. Anson’s embrace in the lobby — that suffocating, desperate grip before Dallas had torn him away. Anson wore Santal 33. Distinctive, cloying, the kind of scent that clung to fabric like a second skin. It was on her coat. It was on her neck.
“He grabbed me before you came,” Eliza said quickly, her hands coming up to rest on his chest, feeling the heavy, erratic pound of his heartbeat. “I couldn’t push him off fast enough. It was only a second p>