Keeley's long eyelashes fluttered. She slowly forced her heavy eyelids open.

The soft but bright spotlight above her made her instinctively raise her hand to block the glare.

A sharp prick of pain shot through the back of her hand. That was when she realized she was hooked up to an IV drip.

As her vision cleared, she looked around and realized she was in a ridiculously luxurious hospital room that looked like a five-star hotel suite.

Memories flooded back into her brain. She snapped her head to the side and saw Holland sitting on the sofa next to the bed.

Keeley woke up instantly, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. She struggled to sit up.

Holland immediately uncrossed his legs and stood up. One large hand pressed firmly against her shoulder to keep her down.

With his other hand, he picked up a glass of warm water and brought it to her lips, ordering her to drink.

Keeley stubbornly turned her head away. She reached over with her free hand, trying to rip the IV needle out of her vein so she could leave.

Holland's reflexes were terrifying. He grabbed her thin wrist, his grip so tight she couldn't move an inch.

A violent physical struggle broke out on the bed. Keeley's breathing turned ragged.

With red-rimmed eyes, she furiously demanded to know what he wanted and why he was haunting her life like a ghost.

Hearing this, Holland laughed out of pure anger. A freezing curve appeared on his lips.

He leaned down, his face inches from hers, and brought up how she had run away like a coward four years ago without a single word.

Keeley's heart contracted painfully. She fired back, accusing him of his suffocating, psychotic controlling behavior back then.

They tore at each other's old wounds. The temperature in the room dropped to freezing, the air thick with the smell of gunpowder.

During the heated argument, Keeley swung her trapped arm wildly, trying to push him away.

Thud.

The back of her hand accidentally slammed into the glass of water Holland was holding.

The glass tipped over. More than half of the warm water splashed directly onto Holland's chest.

The water instantly soaked through his expensive custom silk tie and his dark gray tailored shirt.

The screaming match in the room stopped abruptly. Dead silence fell over them.

Keeley stared at the wet mess on his chest, sucking in a sharp breath. Her body froze.

Holland looked down at the wet fabric clinging to his pectoral muscles. His chest rose and fell heavily.

He slowly looked up. A highly dangerous, predatory light flashed in his dark eyes.

Surprisingly, he didn't explode. Instead, he slowly used one hand to pull the ruined tie off his neck.

He tossed the wet tie onto the white bedsheets. His tone was lazy, but it carried an undeniable, crushing weight.

He stated that the tie was a discontinued, handmade Italian piece. As compensation, he demanded Keeley spend the entire day tomorrow acting as his personal assistant.

Keeley gritted her teeth and refused. She said she would pay him back in installments, but she would never sell him her time.

Holland let out a cold sneer. He casually brought up the internship position at Nexus Innovations that she had been killing herself to apply for.

Faced with this naked threat of being blacklisted from the industry, Keeley closed her eyes in pure humiliation. She was forced to agree to the unequal treaty.

Late yesterday afternoon, Holland's driver had dropped Keeley back at her Columbia dorm after her IV finished.

The second she pushed the car door open, her phone buzzed. It was a direct order from HK.

The message stated that her first task as his assistant was to send a photo checking in at a specific coffee shop at exactly 8:00 AM tomorrow.

At the end of the text was a link to a highly precise countdown timer app.

Staring at the ticking numbers on the screen, Keeley felt a suffocating sense of surveillance. It was exactly like four years ago.

She clenched her jaw, didn't reply, shoved the phone into her coat pocket, and practically ran into her dorm.

When she opened the door, Anjelica and her friends were still making maddening amounts of noise.

Keeley didn't have the energy to fight. She dug out her noise-canceling headphones, put them on, and climbed into bed to sleep.

The next morning at 7:30 AM, Keeley's alarm went off right on time.

She groggily opened her eyes and reached for the phone on her nightstand.

The countdown timer HK sent was glaring on the screen. She only had thirty minutes left to make the check-in.

Looking at those bleeding red numbers, the rebellion and resistance inside Keeley reached a boiling point.

Holland's arrogant, threatening face from the hospital room flashed in her mind.

She took a deep breath. She decided right then that she would never again become a puppet on his strings.

Keeley's thumb swiped aggressively across the screen, shutting off the loud alarm.

To make sure she wasn't disturbed, she flipped the physical switch on the side of the phone to silent mode.

She tossed the phone to the foot of her bed like it was a burning piece of coal.

Then, she pulled the heavy wool blanket over her head, closed her eyes, and went back to sleep.

She was going to tear a hole in his rules. Sleeping in was her ultimate display of contempt.

Because her body was still recovering, and the headphones blocked out the world, Keeley actually fell into a deep sleep.

When she woke up naturally, the sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains was blindingly bright.

Keeley rubbed her sleepy eyes, crawled to the end of the bed, and grabbed her cold phone.

The second she pressed the power button, the lock screen exploded with notifications.

There were exactly twenty-seven missed audio calls from HK, and over a dozen text messages that grew increasingly violent in tone.

The final message was sent at 9:30 AM. It contained only two short, freezing words: Consequences await.

Keeley looked at the clock at the top of the screen. It was 10:15 AM.

She hadn't just missed the check-in; she had slept through her first, unimportant elective class.

Looking at Holland's furious digital footprint, a cold smile touched Keeley's lips. She felt a sharp thrill of revenge.

She slowly kicked off the blanket, got out of bed, and walked to the bathroom to wash her face.

She tied her long hair into a messy ponytail, grabbed her backpack, and headed out for her 11:00 AM core advanced computer science class.

Keeley sprinted across the Columbia campus, running as fast as she could toward the computer science building.

The old professor for this advanced algorithms class was notoriously strict. Being five minutes late meant an automatic deduction of participation points.

Panting heavily, she ran up to the third floor and stopped outside the heavy back doors of the lecture hall to catch her breath.

Through the thick wood, she vaguely heard a low male voice. She assumed the professor was taking attendance.

Terrified of being marked absent, she shoved the back doors open and yelled a very loud, "Here!"

Hundreds of heads snapped around. Every single student in the room stared at her.

Keeley stood frozen in the doorway, her hand still pushing the door, her cheeks flushed bright red from running.

She instinctively looked down toward the front podium, ready to apologize to the old professor.

The moment her eyes hit the podium, her stomach dropped.

Standing there wasn't the white-haired professor. It was Holland, dressed in a dark gray bespoke suit.

Right, she thought bitterly. He's the new TA. Of course.

She had known this since the first class. But knowing it intellectually and being ambushed by it—after this morning's scene at the café, after his threat—were two very different things.

Holland had one hand tucked casually into his trouser pocket. In the other, he was spinning a red laser pointer.

He looked down the tiered seating at Keeley standing in the doorway. A dark, mocking smirk curled his lips.

He leaned toward the microphone and spoke in a slow, deliberate drawl. "It seems Ms. Jackson got plenty of rest this morning. Very energetic."

The double meaning in his taunt instantly triggered a roar of laughter from the hundreds of students.

Keeley's face burned so hot it felt like it was on fire. She wished she could evaporate into thin air.

Keeping her head down to avoid the stares, she practically ran to the back corner and dropped into the empty seat next to her friend, Jasmine.

Jasmine immediately leaned over, whispering excitedly about how insanely hot the new guest teaching assistant was.

Keeley's mind was in total chaos. She couldn't hear a word Jasmine was saying. Her scalp went numb.

She knew exactly what this was. This was Holland's revenge for her breaking the rules this morning. He had reached his hands right into her classroom. And now he was using his TA position—a legitimate, semester-long role—to humiliate her in front of hundreds of people.

Fury simmered in her chest. She wanted to text Jasmine, to vent, to call him every name in the book. But her fingers froze over her phone, hidden in her pocket.

No. He's already watching.

She remembered the threat from this morning. The way his voice had gone cold and soft. The man had a control freak's instincts and the platform to act on them. Pulling out her phone now would be suicidal.

So she forced herself to keep her hands on the desk, empty and innocent. She stared at the chalkboard, at the complex dynamic programming algorithm scrawled there, and tried to focus on the lecture.

But Holland's deep, pleasant voice lecturing at the front suddenly stopped.

An unsettling silence fell over the classroom. Keeley kept her head down, her jaw clenched.

Until the steady sound of leather dress shoes stopped right next to her desk. A large, long-fingered hand reached out, his towering frame leaning down so closely that his shadow entirely swallowed her desk. A knuckle rapped violently against the hard surface right beside her elbow.

Keeley jumped in her seat. She snapped her head up and crashed straight into Holland's oppressive, furious eyes.

"Ms. Jackson," he said, his tone terrifyingly cold and professional. "Since you seem to have so much free time that you can't even be bothered to arrive on time."

He straightened his back, turned, and pointed the red laser at the algorithm on the chalkboard. "Why don't you come up and solve this for us? Let's see if your energy this morning translates to actual competence."

Every eye in the room was focused on them again. The tension was suffocating.

Keeley's heart hammered. She hadn't even touched her phone. He was doing this purely because of her entrance—because of this morning. But there was no point in arguing. Not here.

She rose from her seat, keeping her face carefully blank, and walked down the aisle toward the chalkboard.

Fine, she thought. You want to play this game?

She picked up the chalk. Her hand didn't tremble.