Chapter 301: All Stress, No Money

The line connected, and Gracie did not waste a second on greetings.

"Why the hell do you never pick up when I call?"

Her voice came out sharp, low, and already heated. She had one hand pressed against the restroom door to keep it shut, the other clamped around her phone so tightly her fingers ached. The corridor outside was quiet for now, but that could change at any moment. Durnik was waiting. She had promised to go to him. And instead of immediate backup from the one person who pushed her into this mess, she had spent the last stretch of time listening to unanswered ringing like some desperate side character in her own life.

On the other end, Lucas sounded calm. Too calm.

"I was handling something."

Gracie let out a short, ugly laugh.

"You’re always handling something. Every fucking time. I call once, no answer. I call twice, no answer. By the third time I’m standing in a company restroom rehearsing how not to get groped by an old man with too much money and too little shame, and you’re still ’handling something.’" She paced the small stretch of tile hard enough that her heels clicked against it. "Do you understand where I am right now? I am inside that bastard’s company. I just spent the morning smiling at him, dodging his hands, and sitting in a chair he bought because he can’t stop thinking about my ass. A chair, Lucas. Two hundred thousand for my ass to sit comfortably while he stares. And when I need you to answer, you’re busy?"

There was a short pause.

Lucas was tired. He had just finished helping his school win their first cup, then come home to Mia injured and spent the time after that healing her.

The last thing he wanted was another girl problem on top of the day. But this one was his problem. He was the one who put Gracie in that company, so he forced the fatigue down and did not rise to her anger.

"Are you safe?"

The simple question only frustrated her more, because it was practical, and she was not in the mood for practical.

"That depends on your definition of safe," she muttered. "He hasn’t touched me the way he wants to. Yet. But it’s not from lack of trying. If effort counted, that man would have medals."

She turned toward the mirror, checking her own reflection out of habit. Her face still looked composed. Her clothes were still in place. Outwardly, nothing was wrong. Inside, she was wound tight enough to snap.

"I had to use the restroom as an excuse just to get out of that office," she continued. "Do you know how close he was getting? He kicked the renovation workers out the second he arrived, locked the room down with his eyes, and started coming around the desk like the only reason I came here was to end up under him. I was doing laps around office furniture like a damn obstacle course."

"And you handled it," Lucas said.

Gracie let out a hard breath. "Yes. I handled it. With sweet talk and distance and promising him I’d come over after. That promise is still active, by the way. So if you have instructions, now would be a very good time to give them before I have to go back in there and act like I’m lucky to be desired by a walking midlife crisis."

Another pause, shorter this time.

"You’re in," Lucas said. "That’s the important part."

"I know I’m in," she replied. "I didn’t put on this whole performance just to admire the furniture. Tell me what you want."

Lucas’s voice stayed steady, controlled, the complete opposite of the heat in hers.

"First, get access to his private schedule. Not the public one. The real one. Who he meets, when he moves, which appointments never appear on the official calendar."

Gracie’s eyes narrowed slightly as she listened.

"Second, identify who around him handles money and contracts. Especially anything involving streamers, external payments, or quiet transfers."

"And third?" she asked.

"Any plan against Switch," Lucas said. "If he’s still moving people, money, or pressure against it, I want to know how."

Gracie leaned her free hand against the edge of the sink, processing the list. None of it was simple. All of it made sense.

"And if he pushes harder?" she asked. "Because he will. That old bastard is not going to keep accepting excuses forever."

She already had her own answer forming under the question.

If this kept going the way it was — all stress, no money, no real return, just her body and nerves being used as tools in Lucas’s war — then she would leave. She was tired of it. Tired of smiling. Tired of dodging. Tired of putting herself in rooms with a man she found disgusting for a plan that had not paid her a dime.

Lucas did not hear any of that.

"Keep him obsessed," he answered. "Let him think he’s winning. But don’t sleep with him."

Her mouth twisted. "I wasn’t planning to."

"Good."

The certainty in his tone should have reassured her. Instead, it made her irritation flare again. He still sounded like a man giving orders from a safe distance while she stood in the middle of the danger, and worse, he had completely missed the real meaning behind her question.

"You make it sound easy," she said. "You’re not the one smiling at him while he stares at your chest and talks about ownership."

"No," Lucas replied. "I’m the one who told you this would require control. If you can’t hold the line, tell me now."

Silence stretched for a second between them.

Gracie looked at herself again in the mirror, jaw tight, eyes harder than before. He thought this was about whether she could handle Durnik. She was starting to wonder whether she still wanted to handle any of it at all.

"I can hold it," she said at last.

Not because she felt loyal.

Because she was already inside, and walking out empty-handed would make the whole morning even more humiliating.

"Then stay close enough to be useful," Lucas said. "Not close enough to lose the advantage."

Gracie ended the call without answering that.

She slipped the phone away, took one slow breath, and forced the soft expression back onto her face before opening the restroom door.

She did not get far.

Durnik was already in the corridor.