Chapter 3

By the fall semester of our junior year at Boston University, survival had become an exhausting routine.

"If this Python script crashes one more time, I am dropping out of the Questrom School of Business," Sophie groaned, slamming her forehead against the library table.

We were drowning in our Financial Data Analytics midterm. The professor had assigned tens of thousands of raw market transaction rows, demanding complex predictive models by midnight Friday. Neither of us could get the syntax to compile.

"Julian could write this in ten minutes," Sophie suggested, peering up through her messy bangs. "He's an MIT CS prodigy. He literally won the national collegiate programming championship last spring."

My stomach tightened. "No. I am not asking Julian for anything."

"Clara, it’s just homework," she pleaded. "Ask Ethan to set it up. They grew up together."

Two nights later, I found myself sitting across from Ethan in the dimly lit corner of a Harvard Square gastropub. The scent of roasted barley and woodsmoke hung heavy in the air.

"Julian?" Ethan chuckled, taking a slow sip of his bourbon. "You want Julian to fix your code?"

"Only if it's not a hassle," I murmured, staring down at my untouched cider.

Ethan leaned across the table, his eyes glinting with an unsettling amusement.

"You know he’s obsessed with you, right? Ever since he saw you play Saint-Saëns on the cello freshman year. He treats you like untouchable moonlight."

I kept my gaze down. "He barely speaks to me."

"That’s because he thinks he owes me," Ethan said, his voice dropping low.

"When we were sixteen at Lake Zurich, I fell through the thin ice. Julian dove in after me. The water pressure ruptured his eardrum before they hauled us out. He lost hearing in his right ear saving my life."

The breath caught in my throat. I looked up, stunned. "Julian did that?"

"I own his loyalty, Clara. Just like I own yours." Ethan reached across the wood and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his thumb brushing my cheek. "Text him tonight. Ask for the help."

That evening, back in the silence of Ethan’s Back Bay apartment, I opened my phone and sent Julian a message: I need help with a Python script for analytics. Ethan said you might look at it.

Three minutes later, Julian took a screenshot of my text and forwarded it directly to Ethan.

Ethan’s reply was instantaneous on the group chain: Go ahead, Julian. I'm giving you the night off with her.

My blood ran cold.

Within twenty minutes, the front door buzzer sounded. Julian walked into the apartment, wearing a black wool coat dusted with light rain. He didn't greet me.

He simply took off his coat, hung it over a dining chair, and sat behind the mahogany desk where my laptop lay open.

I stood beside him, watching his long, pale fingers fly across the mechanical keyboard. His typing was rhythmic, precise, and utterly effortless.

In less than ten minutes, the red syntax errors vanished, replaced by clean arrays and perfect data visualizations.

"Done," Julian said, leaning back in the leather chair.

"Thank you," I whispered, stepping forward to close the laptop. "I can take it from here."

Julian caught my wrist before I could touch the screen. His grip was cool and unyielding.

"You didn't think this was charity, did you, Clara?" he murmured.

He yanked me forward, pulling me onto his lap. His left arm locked around my waist like a vice. Before I could speak, his mouth crashed down on mine in a deep, suffocating kiss. He tasted like black coffee and rain.

I turned my face away, panting against his neck. "Julian, please. Don't."

He pulled back, his dark eyes void of warmth. "Good girl. Now kneel."

"No," I choked out.

Julian's jaw tightened. He shoved me off his lap. My knees hit the thick Persian rug in front of his chair with a dull thud. Physiological tears welled in my eyes, spilling over my lashes and dripping onto the woven silk fibers below.

"Look at me," Julian ordered.

I looked down at the floorboards instead, my chest heaving with silent sobs.

Julian unbuckled his belt and pulled his hard, heavy cock from his trousers.

Seeing my rigid resistance, he stood up, grabbed my arms, and pushed me face-first onto the leather sofa.

He shoved his fingers between my thighs, probing roughly.

"Dry as bone," he muttered coldly. "Still fighting."

He hauled me up by my waist, lifting me off the sofa, and dropped me onto the cold surface of the mahogany desk.

Papers scattered across the floor.

Julian stepped between my legs, grabbed my thighs, and forced them wide.

He leaned down and buried his mouth against my core.

A sharp gasp tore from my throat. His tongue worked aggressively, licking and parting my folds, ruthlessly forcing my body into arousal against my will.

The friction made me shudder, my hips trembling on the polished wood.

Once my cunt was glistening and wet from his saliva, he pulled back, lined the thick head of his dick at my entrance, and drove inside me in one deep, merciless thrust.

"Fuck," Julian groaned, resting his hands flat on the desk beside my head.

He pounded into me with heavy, steady strikes, the wood creaking beneath our weight. I turned my head to the side, biting my inner lip until I tasted iron.

As he drove his hips forward, my eyes landed on the open middle drawer of the desk beside my cheek.

Inside lay a thick, cream-colored dossier. In bold black lettering, the title read: STERLING REAL ESTATE HOLDINGS — OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS & DUE DILIGENCE REPORT.

Right next to it was Julian’s personal external hard drive. As he adjusted his weight, reaching forward with one hand to type a command on his laptop screen, I watched his index and middle fingers strike the keys: Z-U-R-I-C-H-1-9-9-8-!

I burned the title and the cadence into my memory, locking them behind the wall of my grief.

Julian’s pace turned frantic.

He pulled out with a low grunt, pinning my shoulders down, and stroked himself rapidly.

Hot, thick cum splattered across my cheeks, my lips, and my bare chest.

He stood over me, chest heaving.

He pulled his smartphone from his pocket, angled the camera down at my face, and snapped a flash photograph.

Sent to Ethan Sterling.

"Open your mouth," Julian commanded.

I kept my lips parted, tears streaming down my temples.

He dragged his thumb through the mess on my collarbone and shoved it past my lips. "Swallow it."

I swallowed, my throat burning.

"Open," he checked.

I opened my mouth, showing him my empty tongue.

He fed me another mouthful.

I swallowed again, opening wide for his inspection.

Julian stared down at me.

For a fraction of a second, something shifted in his expression—a faint flicker of hesitation, an unreadable crack in his icy armor.

But his face quickly hardened back into a stone mask.

He zipped his pants, collected his coat, and left without saying another word.

When the apartment door clicked shut, I lay frozen on the desk, feeling like a puppet whose strings had been brutally severed.

I closed my eyes and flashed back to freshman year.

I remembered Ethan sitting beside me on his cheap dorm rug, sharing a cardboard box of takeout, wrapping a soft blanket around my shoulders when the radiator broke.

He had treated me like a precious princess.

Now, those same arms had turned me into a currency to share with his best friend.

Ethan returned hours later, smelling of alcohol and expensive cigars.

He collapsed onto the bed and pulled me against his chest.

In the dark, I reached up and gently placed my palm against Ethan's warm cheek. My eyes, wet and doe-like, searched his in the shadows.

"Ethan," I whispered, my voice trembling with raw desperation. "Please. End this. Stop sharing me with Julian. Make it just us again."

Ethan smiled drowsily, catching my wrist and pressing a kiss into my palm. "Just be a good girl, Clara. Obey the rules, and I won't let Julian hurt you again."

The final illusion shattered.

I lowered my hand.

In the cold, suffocating dark, I quietly said goodbye to the boy who had once carried cocoa to a freezing attic.

He was gone. Only a monster remained.

An hour later, Ethan's breathing deepened into sleep.

I slipped out from under his arm.

I pulled my phone from my coat pocket and walked silently into the bathroom.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, I opened a new hidden note in my phone.

My thumbs moved with quiet fury as I typed the first evidence list:

1. Julian's server password: ZURICH1998!

2. Sterling Real Estate Offshore Due Diligence Dossier (Kendall desk/Back Bay).

3. Date/Time: Coerced sexual exploitation orchestrated between Ethan and Julian.