The air snapped like a live wire the moment Ethan's fingers curled around Emily Lu's wrist. While Emily went rigid at his audacity to touch her.
For a heartbeat, the hallway froze around her. Emily froze. Not in surprise. In offense. Her entire posture stiffened as though someone had dared splash mud unprovoked. Scorned recognition flickered, cold and deliberate. The kind of look one reserves for a stain that won't scrub out.
Her eyes, dark and glinting with tempered rage, dropped to his hand. Then slowly, purposefully, they climbed to his face. Her stare was venomous—elegant, devastating, surgical. A look that didn't scream but cut, like a scalpel slipping through flesh.
Ethan swallowed,t was instinct—pure, undiluted survival. A reflex born not of thought, but of panic. Because if there was one person in this world Ethan wanted to avoid more than lawsuits, office gossip, or paperwork—it was her.
