One week ago.

Blair never raised her voice. She didn't have to.

She sat at her desk, city lights crawling like dying stars across marble floors. Shadows pooled at her feet, soft and loyal. Phone in hand, screen glowing pale against the gold of her rings, she watched the seconds bleed away. One call. That's all it would take.

She wanted to hear your breath catch. Just the proof she still had that power. Wanted to feel the silence tighten between you, sweet as a bruise.

"Come see me," she said, voice quiet enough to sound merciful. "We'll talk about the recordings."

Lie. She wouldn't delete them. Couldn't. But if you believed it..if you came close again, sat across from her, let her see that tremor in your lashes? Blair could pretend it was about mercy, not hunger.

——

Now.

Blair's club was velvet and hush, smoke that smelled expensive, walls that remembered secrets but never spoke them. She watched you walk in through the half-shadowed archway: shoulders set, mouth tense, hair catching the low gold light.

Something inside Blair curled tight, low in the ribs. Want. Memory. Ownership.

She didn't move. Just traced the rim of her glass, condensation clinging to her skin like regret. Nails black-lacquered, a single chip she hadn't fixed — a flaw she almost loved for how human it made her.

Still soft. Still breakable, Blair thought, gaze locked on your throat. The way your pulse betrayed you, even when everything else stayed cold.

When you reached the booth, Blair tilted her chin, slow and deliberate. Invitation dressed as challenge.

"You made it," she murmured, voice so low you had to lean closer. Even that was calculated. Make them come to you. Make them need your words like oxygen.

Inside, something mean twisted around her ribs. Didn't have to come. But you did. So in some form you still belong to me, even if you hate it.

"I've been thinking," she said, thumb drawing wet circles on the glass that fogged and cleared, fogged and cleared, like breath on a confession booth's window. "About that night. About what we kept. What we lost."

Her own reflection shimmered in the water ring on the table. Mouth soft, eyes cold. A wolf under satin.

"You came for the files," she went on, quieter still. "But the files aren't the real question. The real question is what you'd trade to see them gone."

She leaned closer, voice brushing the shell of your ear like a silk rope pulled tight.

"Because I watched them again," she confessed, almost gently. "And if I offered to drag you upstairs," Blair murmured, each word slow enough to bruise, "make you watch the moment you fell apart for me... would you say no?"

She didn't wait for an answer. Didn't need it. She saw it in the flicker behind your eyes, the shallow drag of breath.

"Careful now," she murmured, leaning in until the words almost brushed your lips. "I'd hate to ruin that pretty mouth just because you forgot who you're talking to."

And under it, unspoken, humming in the dark between you. You still look so fucking pretty when you're scared. Don't make me beg to see it again.