"How dare you tell her about what we shared together!"

"Shared?" Dominic rose from his chair and planted his hands on his desk as Karina stormed into the room. "There is nothing between us to share. I have stated it before and I will state it again for the last time. I am your employer and you are an employee. That is it. If you don't like that arrangement, you are free to break your contract and forfeit 50% of your payment. Those were the terms, walk if you want."

"You think threatening me with money will get me to forgive what you did?" She stopped just short of the two chairs arranged in front of his desk. She glared at him with her chin high and her arms crossed.

"I'm not threatening you. You are coming to me with concerns about your employment and I am reminding you of how you can leave this contract with rather minimal consequences. Most of my contractors have a lot more hoops to jump through to end their relationship with my company."

"What you did was wrong. It was not right for you to expose me like that to her. Why was it even her business?"

"It was wrong," said Dominic as he circled around his desk, "to expose yourself like that to me in the first place. We are not together. Not as lovers, maybe not even as friends."

"You are cruel, Dominic Cramer." Despite the pain in her words, Dom knew she would never shed a tear in front of him, or anyone, for that matter.

"I have killed five different Fortress elites. Cruel seems like a very fair word to describe me."

"And I could tell them that, you know?" She drew forward, stepping into the space between the two chairs that separated them. "I know all your dirty secrets."

"Oh, Karina," he said with a cock of his head, "you've only scratched the surface of my dirty secrets."

"Perhaps, I should just go then." The words hissed out from between her clenched teeth as she retreated to the center of the room where she had room to wave her arms around with exasperation. "Clearly you aren't as afraid of Fortress as you say you are."

"You can tell them, but they already have their suspicions. What they need is solid proof."

"I'll let their telepath scan me!" She spat the words, but they lacked the fire of her initial conviction.

"Not permissible in court and they know they can't half-ass an assault against me." He then stepped away from his desk, entering the center of the room and standing within arm's reach, so she felt the full extent of his height. "Do it, Karina. You'll just end up as another note in their file against me, but you won't be the one that seals the deal for them. You've never seen me in a mechanical suit, nor have you ever seen one in this house. Now, have you heard me talk about it? Absolutely, but at the end of the day, I might just be full of shit. To the court, I'm another narcissistic billionaire with delusions of grandeur. What will the telepath really find in there?"

"You, I've definitely..." She paused, her eyes going back and forth as she shifted through her memories.

"I'm careful, Karina, and though I was initially enamored with you, I also knew you were a loose cannon. That being said, you still wriggled your way into my weaker sensibilities. I should have never confided in you about Catalyst. I should have remained the billionaire with a soft spot for Gifted avoiding Fortress."

For a moment, they stood there. Karina's mouth twisting and contorting as she considered her next line of attack and Dom standing at ease, believing she was out of ammunition.

He should have known better than to drop his guard around her.

"So what about her then?" she asked after silent deliberation. "Elaina calls you Cat. Took me awhile to realize it was short for Catalyst. She already knows your secret, doesn't she?"

"Yes." He didn't see a point in denying it.

"And how is it she knows already? I only found out because you came to bed one night covered in bruises."

He didn't answer immediately. She didn't know the full extent of his relation to Mir. Karina, like everyone else in the country, knew that a hell beast emerged during his charity gala. She knew Shockwave was present at the party and had spoken with Mir right before the creature manifested. She knew that Dom was very concerned about Fortress connecting Mir to what happened there. Karina, however, didn't know about the days he spent broken and bloody on Mir's floor. She didn't know that her student had that solid proof Fortress wanted to connect him to Catalyst. Mir may not have the armor Shockwave was so desperate to find for their legal efforts against him, but she did have the mental imprint of that night. That would be enough to mobilize the entire might of the Fortress against him to retrieve the physical evidence they needed for a very public execution.

That was a problem. One that kept Dominic up at night. However, a fresh worry had emerged and weighed on him like concrete around his feet, dragging him beneath the water. If they got a hold of Mir, she would never leave the Fortress. She'd either become their pawn or be dissected — death would be a welcome reprieve that they'd only grant after they'd taken all they could from her.

As he shifted through his thoughts and debated the best angle to offer Karina, the jilted lover took her own stance on the matter.

"She's poisoned you, hasn't she?"

"Pardon?"

Karina crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "You don't even know why you told her. Probably because you didn't do so willingly." With a huff and a shake of her head, she relaxed her stance like the world suddenly made sense. "I am constantly bombarded with her emotions — anger, fear, sadness, frustration. She's getting better at concealing it, but she still has work to do. And this is considering the times she wants to suppress her abilities. Now imagine she sees you, this handsome, wealthy savior that protected her from the Fortress after she unleashed her monster on Shockwave. If she wanted you to fuck her, all she had to do was let her own attraction seep into you. Then you'd be at her mercy."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"She has you wrapped around her little finger." Karina waved his assertion away with her hand. She turned her back to him and paced the room with slow, thoughtful steps. "I wonder who else she has poisoned in her life. She said she had been 'projecting her angst' when she first came into power as a teenager..."

"She isn't poisoning me," said Dom, unwilling to let Karina excuse away his disinterest in her. "I'm away from her right now and my feelings are no different from what they are when she's next to me."

"I wonder," she said, tapping her finger against her lip, her words trailing with her thoughts. After a moment, though, she turned on her heel and headed towards the door.

"Hey! We're not done here."

"I am. I have research to do for my next class."

"Your next class will not have any more physical assaults. Civic had to stitch Mir's lip together after what you did."

"Yes, yes, okay." She kept walking, only acknowledging his demands with a wave of her hand.

"I mean it. You will not throw things at her, nor will you throw her into things. You understand?"

"Yes." She stopped at the door and turned to face him from over her shoulder. "I understand, and you don't have to worry. I have different plans for my dear student."

With that, she left. Dominic stood in the middle of the room, wondering what evil he had unleashed upon his innocent ward.