He pulled his phone from his pocket, tapped the screen twice, and turned it toward her.

The footage showed the cafe interior in high definition. The angle came from near the counter, capturing Cixi’s face in clear detail.

In the video, Ronny walked through the door, approaching her. The camera caught the exact moment Cixi’s body noted his presence. It showed all how her shoulders seized, her spine locked, the colour drained from her face so fast it looked like someone had pulled a plug. Her eyes widened, and the way her hand gripped the mob.

"What would you call that, after watching the video?"

Cixi saw Ronny’s face. She saw her own body’s response. She rose from the couch in anger. "You are violating my privacy."

"When it comes to keeping you safe, there is no privacy anymore." Cassian lowered his phone and placed it on the table. His dark eyes tracked her standing form. "My pregnant fiancee. Or did you forget the contract clause? If I fail to protect you, I serve you forever. It is I who protects you. It is me saving myself from serving you." He leaned back deeper into the sofa cushion, while his eyes remained glued to hers. "And did you not want my protection? Was that not precisely why the clause was written?"

The words hit Cixi like a series of punches she could not block.

If she had known. If she had known that one day Ronny would walk into her cafe. If she had known that one day Silvia and her gang would surface. She would never have added that clause to the contract. She had written her own trap, built her own cage, and handed the key to Cassian Crown. What will happen now?

He would investigate. He would dig deeper. He would find Ronny, Silvia, Kevin, the entire rotten network of people who had made her college years a living hell. He would discover that Cixi McLore had been their punching bag. A weak, defenceless girl who took beatings, who swallowed humiliation, who tried to fight back but ended up getting beaten. So she chose to stay quiet most of the time.

And if he met Silvia’s group, if he dug deep enough, he would find the video. The deepfake....The pornographic footage with her face....

Why was this happening to her? Why could life not give her one problem at a time? Why did everything have to arrive in bundles, stacking on top of each other, crushing her?

Her fingers curled into fists at her sides.

Cassian’s gaze dropped to her fists. He studied them for two full seconds before lifting his eyes back to her light grey irises.

"Why do I get the distinct feeling that I need to investigate this matter more thoroughly?" His voice carried no slyness this time. His expression shifted into something far more calculating and astute, his dark eyes narrowing with the shrewd focus as if he had identified a discrepancy and intended to pull it apart thread by thread until every secret spilled onto the floor.

Cixi’s heart nearly stopped. "There is nothing to investigate."

"I am more intrigued now, the way you are reacting and trying to stop me. I am very curious about what I am going to find."

"I left college!" Cixi gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached. She did not like Cassian invading her personal life. Yes. Her personal life! A personal life she needed to keep buried from everyone. "That is why I was embarrassed. I do not want to meet people from my college and keep explaining to each of them why I dropped out in the middle of the year." She held his stare, refusing to break. "I was broke, I had no money, so I had to find a full-time job to make a living..... Are you Happy now?! Now that you know my whole story?... Would you like me to go digging into everything about you? Would you enjoy that?"

The retort came sharp and fast, but Cassian’s answer stripped the victory from her mouth before she could taste it.

"You are welcome to do so." One corner of his lips lifted. "At least that might motivate you to join my company and become one of us."

There was no winning against Cassian Crown. Cixi’s mind screamed the realisation while her face tried to hold its composure.

"Please." She pressed her fingertips against her temples. "I do not want you looking too deeply into my personal life. Can’t you simply trust me?"

"After declaring you are carrying my child, do you expect me to stay quiet and not find out if anyone is a threat to you?"

"You know there is no child!"

Cassian held her eyes for three silent seconds. Then his gaze dropped to her flat stomach, visible now without the silicone belly, and rose back to her face languidly.

"So do you prefer we make a real child?"

Cixi’s jaw dropped.

She stared at Cassian with eyes so wide the whites showed around her grey irises. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Her brain stuttered, tripped, and crashed into a wall it had not seen coming.

Where did he get this idea? When did she talk about a real baby? At what point in this conversation did the trajectory shift from surveillance footage to reproduction? Why was this man an unhinged, incorrigible, irredeemable scoundrel who turned every conversation into a minefield and then stood in the middle of it grinning while she scrambled to find safe ground?

Did he have to win every single verbal battle with her? For once, just once, could he not simply listen to what she was saying without twisting it into something that made her want to hurl her empty glass at his devastatingly handsome face?

"What will you do to actually listen to me?"

The moment the words left her lips, she knew she had made a catastrophic error.

One corner of Cassian’s mouth curled upward. His dark eyes caught the chandelier light and shone with a mischievous gleam so intense that Cixi’s stomach dropped before he even opened his mouth. She could feel the regret building in her chest. Could she take the words back? Could she physically reach into the air and grab the sentence before it reached him?

Too late.

"A lap dance." He let the two words sit in the air between them. "It has been a long time since I have been with a woman."

Cixi’s regret solidified into something she could practically hold in her hands. She would never make him take her seriously. Wherever his prodding was not required, wherever his presence was unnecessary, wherever the situation called for calm and cooperation, he inserted himself with a man whose sole purpose was to keep her off balance.

And the moments that truly mattered, the moments that required his genuine attention, he treated with the same dismissive ease that made her want to scream until her throat bled.

But if agreeing bought her time, then she would agree.

"Give me one month." She crossed her arms over her chest, chin lifted, voice tight. "One month and I will give you a proper lap dance."

She prayed. She prayed with every fibre of her exhausted, battered soul that within that month, Cassian would become so busy, so consumed by his underworld operations, so occupied with whatever dark business kept him in Demond City, that the lap dance would evaporate from his memory.

She also feared that if she rejected the offer outright, he would demand the lap dance tonight. Right here. On this sofa. In this room. With that grin on his face and those black eyes burning through her.

But then something clicked in her mind. Before she could speak, Cassian got there first.

"Not one month. One week." He held up a single finger. "I have patience for a week only."