“What else am I supposed to think?” I snapped, holding my ground despite every instinct screaming at me to run. “You don’t know me! You’ve ordered black coffee from me twenty times! You don’t know my name, you don’t know my life, and you certainly don’t care about my feelings! You did that to assert power over that idiot Tyler!”

Vincent stopped inches from me, just as he had inside. The city lights reflected off the sharp angles of his face, casting deep shadows beneath his cheekbones.

“I wasn’t trying to save you from him,” Vincent said quietly.

“Then why kiss me?” I demanded, tears finally spilling over my lashes, hot against my cold skin. “Why touch me like that in front of everyone?”

“Because they believed humiliating you made them important,” Vincent said, his voice dropping so low I had to lean in to hear it over the street traffic. “And because no one in that room was smart enough to realize that the man insulting you was standing in the presence of something he was far too small to ever understand.”

“That’s just poetic nonsense!” I choked out. “It was pity!”

Vincent leaned down, his face inches from mine. His storm-gray eyes were ablaze with a quiet, terrifying fire.

“If pity were the reason, Emily,” he whispered, his breath warm against my ear, “I would have shot him where he stood. And I certainly wouldn’t have spent the last six months waiting for an excuse to do what I just did.”

My throat locked. The breath left my lungs all at once.

Six months.

Before I could process his words, a man in a dark suit hurried out of the restaurant’s side entrance, holding an iPad in a leather case. “Boss,” he said nervously, his eyes darting to me briefly before fixing on Vincent. “We have a situation. The video from Table 6… it’s already been uploaded to a local blog. It’s went viral on X and Facebook. It’s hit two million views in twenty minutes.”

Vincent didn’t even glance at the tablet. His eyes remained locked on mine, steady, unreadable, and devastatingly intense.

“Delete the server backups,” Vincent commanded casually to his assistant, without breaking eye contact with me. “Leave the internet uploads alone.”

“Boss?” the assistant asked, surprised. “You want it to stay up?”

“Let them watch,” Vincent said smoothly.

He stepped back, opening the car door himself this time. He looked at me one last time, his gaze lingering on my lips before rising to meet my eyes.

“Get in the car, Emily,” he said softly.

“Was? Nein!” Ich machte einen Schritt zurück. “Ich steige nicht in dein Auto! Ich habe eine Schicht zu beenden—”

“Marcus hat dich vor drei Minuten gefeuert”, unterbrach Vincent, sein Ton völlig sachlich. “Er mochte die Publicity nicht. Deine Sachen sind schon in einem Müllsack neben der Küchentür. Und die Krankenhausrechnung Ihrer Mutter in St. Jude’s wurde heute Abend um 19:45 Uhr vollständig bezahlt.”

Mein Herz blieb stehen. “Wie… Woher weißt du von meiner Mutter?”

Vincent antwortete nicht direkt. Er stand einfach an der offenen Tür und hielt ihm die Hand entgegen – nicht als Befehl, sondern als Opfer.

“Du kannst in der Kälte nach Hause laufen und dich um den Medienzirkus kümmern, der gerade in deinem Wohnhaus wartet”, sagte Vincent leise, “oder du steigst ins Auto, lass mich dir ein richtiges Abendessen geben und ich erkläre, warum dein Leben nie wieder dasselbe sein wird.”

Ich sah auf seine ausgestreckte Hand. Die Hand eines Mannes, den die ganze Stadt fürchtet. Die Hand, die gerade sanft mein Gesicht gehalten hatte, während er mich vor den Menschen küsste, die mein ganzes Leben lang gesagt hatten, ich sei wertlos.

Ich erinnerte mich daran, wie er mich jeden Dienstagmorgen angesehen hatte – nicht meine Uniform, nicht meinen Körper, sondern mich.

Mit zitterndem Atemzug streckte ich die Hand aus und legte sie in seine.

Hier sind die verbleibenden fünf Kapitel deiner Geschichte, die all das fortlaufende Drama, die hochriskanten Romanzen, intensiven Konflikte und das befriedigende Happy End liefern, das du dir gewünscht hast