CHAPTER 108: 108

"Honestly, I have no issue with whatever decision you’ve made..." one of the board members finally spoke, sitting upright as though mustering courage from the few breaths he had left. His voice tried to sound neutral but failed. "...I just want to be sure of something."

He adjusted his glasses, eyes narrowing at Elisa before flicking back to Nix.

"What is the guarantee that she won’t lead us down the drain?"

A quiet gasp escaped Elisa before she could stop it. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the table Nyxella’s empty seat beside her feeling too small, too exposed, as if everyone’s scrutiny was sitting there instead.

But before she could speak, Nix stood so abruptly the air itself seemed to shift.

His expression darkened into an icy, and lethal expression almost too calm for comfort.

"The guarantee," he said slowly, each word deliberate,and controlled, "...is me."

Silence hit the room in a wave. He stepped forward, placing Nyxella gently into Elisa’s arms. The movement was slow but charged like placing something precious back into the hands of someone he trusted.

Then he faced the board.

"If she falls, I fall," Nix said, his gaze slicing straight through the man who questioned her. "If she succeeds, we succeed. And if any of you attempt to sabotage her intentionally or otherwise then you will have to answer to me." not just the man that questioned Elisa every other person who had started devising a plot swallowed hard their throat visibly bobbing.

"And," Nix added, "if competence is your concern, you should also know she’s already made two decisions this morning that corrected your department’s errors." The board member suddenly stiffened and Elisa’s eyes flew towards him as she began wondering when exactly she did what he just mentioned but Nix didn’t even spare her a glance instead he tilted his head narrowing his eyes at the board members.

"Shall I list them?" they all quickly shook their heads in disapproval. "That... won’t be necessary."

"I thought so." He smiled but they never reached his eyes and returned to Elisa’s side, standing next to her with no distance, no hesitation, and no room for doubt.

"Now," Nix continued, tone firm and final, "Elisa will review the pending projects and make the necessary calls. Her authority stands. Her signature stands and her decisions stands."

He looked around, daring anyone to breathe out of line.

"Any other questions?"

Not a single hand moved. Not a whisper dared to rise.

"Good."

Nix reached for the folder at the center of the table, snapped it shut, and slid it toward Elisa. His final act of the meeting publicly passed the weight and power she never asked for... but could no longer escape.

"This meeting," he said, voice steady as stone, "is adjourned."

He didn’t wait for a response.

The board members began rising, stiff and silent, each one carefully avoiding both Nix’s gaze and Elisa’s.

As the last board member slipped out, Nyxella tightened her tiny fist around Elisa’s collar, resting her cheek on her shoulder blissfully unaware of the corporate tremor she had just slept through.

Only when the heavy door clicked shut did Elisa’s lungs finally remember how to draw a full breath.

Nix turned toward her.

And for the first time since the confrontation began...

something in him cracked. A fracture in the hard mask he’d worn all morning.

He stepped closer, gently taking Nyxella from Elisa’s arms. For a moment, his features softened as he looked at the little girl softened in a way that made Elisa’s heart twist.

Then he handed the child to the head secretary who had silently been waiting behind them.

"Your mummy and I need to talk," he murmured to Nyxella, brushing her cheek with his thumb. "Stay with him, okay?"

Nyxella giggled and nodded, reaching for the secretary.

But the smile Nix offered her vanished the instant his eyes lifted to the man holding her.

"Get her an apple," Nix ordered, voice cutting. "And make sure she doesn’t cry."

The secretary swallowed hard and nodded before hurrying out with the others, leaving only Nix and Elisa in the suddenly too large and too quiet room.

Nix exhaled deeply. Not a tired sigh but a controlled release, the kind a man uses when he’s wrestling down something violent inside himself. He didn’t want to scare her and she could see that. But the angrier he became, the harder his hands trembled at his sides.

Every second his mind replayed her words "Nyxella isn’t his daughter" his jaw tightened further.

Elisa took a step forward, needing to anchor the moment before it spun out of control.

"Why did you lie about what you said at the meeting?" her voice cracked in spite of her effort to steady it. "I never went through any documents. And you said you’d put me through everything yet you disappeared in the middle of the night without... " She stopped when she realized...

he wasn’t hearing her.

Or rather he was hearing her, but his mind had drifted somewhere else entirely.

There was a look in his eyes she remembered far too clearly.

A look she had seen in dimly lit rooms...

in whispered conversations...

in the kind of silence that trembles between two people when their walls fall for the first time.

His gaze wasn’t cold. It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even distant.

It was haunted.

As if the memories of the nights they’d shared.. nights stolen in forbidden tenderness, nights where he’d touched her like she was the only certainty he had left were replaying behind his eyes with a sharpness that hurt.

His expression held that mixture of longing and accusation unique to a man who had once been in love and now didn’t know what to do with the pieces.

And Elisa understood, painfully, that he was not angry because of the meeting but something else entirely.

"Nix..." she whispered.

Her voice pulled him back into the present.

He blinked the storm, swallowing the softness that had briefly surfaced.

"Don’t," he said quietly, his voice deeper than before. "Don’t try to soften this."

He took a slow step toward her.

"We’re going to talk about why you left," he continued, the anger restrained but shaking through every word.

"And we’re going to talk about why you made the entire world believe..."

Another step.

Close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath.

"...that the only family I had left wasn’t mine."

Rising to her feet, Elisa delivered the cold truth. "I’m not your wife."

Nix’s pleasant delusion shattered in an instant; everything he’d said had existed only in his imagination. She tried to continue, voice tightening. "It would be inappropriate for you to.."

A sudden, sharp ache pierced her chest, stealing the rest of the words. Nix said nothing. He simply stepped forward one measured stride that brought him close enough for his presence to swallow the air between them. His gaze locked onto hers, searching, burning, and demanding to know what she was hiding beneath her composure.

"...to claim to be my husband and my child’s father."

But she never finished the thought. In a heartbeat, Nix closed the final inches between them, hauling her against him. Her breath vanished as his mouth crashed onto hers with a force that stole every coherent thought from her mind but beneath the impact lay something far more dangerous than heat. There was desperation in the way he kissed her, as if he were trying to prove something to her, to himself, to the memory he thought she had lost.

His hand slid to the back of her neck, not rough, but firm, as though anchoring her in place before she could slip away again. The warmth of his touch bled through her, undoing the walls she’d held up so fiercely. Her breath faltered, caught between resisting him and responding to the raw ache threaded through every movement.

For all his intensity, there was a tremor in him, an edge of uncertainty that softened the kiss, turning it unexpectedly tender. He tasted like someone afraid he’d imagined her, someone terrified this moment would vanish if he didn’t hold on.

Her fingers curled into his shirt despite herself, drawn in by the gravity of him, by the truth pulsing between them stronger than any words she’d tried to speak. The kiss was chaotic and searching, a tangle of longing and denial, and somewhere in the middle of it, she felt her resolve crack.

Because this wasn’t just a claim it wasn’t a demand either but a plea. A silent plea filled with a silent ache that she couldn’t possibly ignore but she found her strength to push him away but before she could even do a thing he pulled her into a hug holding her close to his chest

"Please.. please don’t leave me again" he begged but she didn’t hear a word he said neither did she see the tears that trailed down his face as he muttered those words

"Oh my goodness!"

They broke apart at the startled exclamation jerking away from each other as if the very air between them had become scalding. The space that opened up was abrupt, sharp, and far too wide, yet the echo of their closeness clung to the room like a held breath refusing to release.

Elisa staggered back a step, fingertips brushing her lips as though trying to erase the memory and failing. Nix’s chest rose and fell unevenly, his gaze still fixed on her, stunned and raw, like he’d been yanked out of a dream he wasn’t ready to leave.

Silence swelled between them, thick and electrified, carrying the ghost of what had just happened. The walls seemed to close in around the unspoken emotions hanging heavy in the air, and neither of them dared to move or speak, afraid that any shift might shatter the fragile balance holding them apart.