Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 112

Adrian’s POV

The meeting drags into its third hour.

Five men sit around a polished table in a building with no signage, discussing the "restructuring" of a shipping company that owes money to people who don't accept late payments.

Crisis consulting, they call it. Debt resolution. Asset recovery. Clean words for dirty work.

I'm barely listening.

Six months ago, I would never have been here. I was Professor Lewis—published, respected, untouchable in my ivory tower.

Now I'm banned from every university in the country, my academic career is a smoking ruin, and the only people willing to hire a disgraced professor with my particular skill set are the ones who knew my father.

Viktor Alexeev sits at the head of the table—old guard, one of my father's former associates who survived the collapse I caused fifteen years ago. When the scandal broke and my name became unhireable, he reached out with an offer I couldn't refuse.

Not quite the organization I escaped, but adjacent. Consulting for clients who need problems solved quietly. Using the skills my father's world taught me—reading people, finding leverage, understanding the pressure points that make powerful men fold.

I told myself it was temporary, just until Sophie recovered, until the baby came, until I figured out another path.

I'm still telling myself that.

"Lewis." Viktor's voice cuts through my thoughts. "Your assessment of the Marchetti situation?"

I deliver my analysis on autopilot—weaknesses in their legal position, which board members can be persuaded, where the real assets are hidden. The other men nod, take notes. They think I'm one of them now. Maybe I am.

My phone vibrates against the conference table. I glance at the screen. Lolita's name glows back at me—a name I haven't seen in weeks.

"Excuse me." I push back from the table, ignoring the annoyed glances from the other attendees. "I need to take this."

The hallway is empty, private. I answer on the fourth ring.

"Adrian, darling." Lolita's voice is honey-laced with venom. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything important."

I step away from the conference table, excusing myself with a gesture that brooks no argument. The hallway is empty, private. "What do you want?"

"Nothing at all. I'm calling to give, not take." She pauses for effect—Lolita has always loved her dramatic timing. "Consider it a gift. Information I think you should have."

"I don't need your gifts."

"No? Not even when they concern your pregnant girlfriend?"

My hand tightens on the phone. "What about Sophie?"

"She's been busy, your little submissive. Digging into your past with remarkable determination." Lolita's laugh is silk over steel. "She came to me, actually. Asked for help finding answers you wouldn't give her."

The words land like ice water.

"And you helped her."

"Of course I did. She was so desperate, so determined. How could I refuse?" Another laugh, sharper this time. "She owes me a favor now. Nothing specific—just a debt to be collected at my discretion. You understand how these things work."

I understand exactly how they work. I understand that Lolita never does anything without purpose, never gives without taking, never moves without calculating three steps ahead.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I find it amusing. Because I thought you'd want to know." A pause. "Because watching you try to control everything while your world crumbles around you has always been my favorite entertainment."

"Lolita."

"Keep better track of your women, Adrian. This one's clever. Might actually be worthy of you, if you don't destroy her first."

The line goes dead.

I stare at the phone in my hand. The rage builds slowly—not hot, not explosive, but cold. Calculated. The kind I learned from my father, the kind that doesn't burn out but freezes everything it touches.

Sophie made a deal with Lolita.

Behind my back, without telling me. She went to the one person who knows how to weaponize information, who collects favors like currency, who shaped me into the man I am today—and she put herself in debt.

For answers I wouldn't give her.

I cancel the rest of my meetings, drive home in silence, my thoughts churning beneath a surface of perfect calm.

***

Sophie is in bed when I find her, propped against pillows, laptop beside her. She looks up when I enter, a greeting forming on her lips—then her expression shifts.

"Adrian? What's wrong?"

I close the door behind me. "Did you make a deal with Lolita?"

The question lands like a blade. Sophie's face goes through several emotions in rapid succession—surprise, guilt, defiance—before settling on something hard.

"Yes."

"Yes." I repeat the word flatly. "You went to the woman who trained me in manipulation and made a deal with her."

"What choice did you give me?" Sophie's chin lifts, that stubborn tilt I know so well. "I asked you directly. Multiple times. You shut me out, refused to answer, fed me fragments and expected me to be satisfied."

"Because some things…"

"Don't." Her voice cuts through my excuse before I can finish it. "Don't tell me some doors should stay closed. Don't tell me you're protecting me by keeping me ignorant."

"But that’s the only truth, I’m protecting you."

"From what? From knowing who you are?" She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "I'm carrying your child, Adrian. Your child is growing inside me right now, and I don't even know what kind of man her father really is."

I want to argue, want to explain that the past I've buried would only hurt her, that the details of what I was would change how she sees me, that some truths are too dark to share with the woman you…

The woman you what?

"You won’t understand," I manage.

"Stop deciding what I can and can't handle." Sophie's voice cracks. "Stop treating me like I'm fragile, like I'll shatter if you tell me the truth. I survived a public scandal. I survived Lisette. I survived you—your secrets, your control, your constant belief that you know what's best for everyone."

"Sophie…"

"I'm not asking you to bare your soul. I'm asking you to trust me enough to tell me who you were before you became this." She gestures at me—the suit, the composure, the mask I wear so well. "Because right now, I'm loving a stranger. And I can't do that anymore."

The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating. She's right. I know she's right.

I've spent so long protecting her from my past that I've pushed her directly into Lolita's web. My silence didn't keep her safe—it made her desperate enough to seek answers from the most dangerous person she could have found.

This is my fault.

Sophie's expression softens, the anger draining away to leave something rawer underneath.

"I don't want to fight anymore. I'm so tired of fighting you, Adrian. Fighting for scraps of truth, fighting to understand, fighting to make this work when you won't let me in."

"What do you want?"

"The truth." Her voice is quiet now, almost pleading. "Whatever it is, whatever you did, whoever you were—I can handle it. Because I can't build a life with a man I don't know."

I look at her. The exhaustion carved into her features. The shadows under her eyes from nights of broken sleep. The swell of her belly where our baby grows, innocent of all the darkness that surrounds her parents.

The woman who discovered my past not to destroy me, not to use it against me, but because she refuses to love a stranger.

She deserves better than my silence.

I move to the bed. Sit on the edge, close enough to touch but not quite touching. Sophie watches me with those warm brown eyes, waiting for me to choose trust over fear.

"What Lolita told you," I say slowly. "What you found in your research. It's all true."

"I know."

"There's more. Things that aren't in any records, things I've never told anyone."

"Then tell me."

I take her hand. Her fingers are cold, trembling slightly, but they grip mine with fierce determination.

"After Lolita left my father saw an opportunity." The words come harder than I expected, dragged from somewhere deep. "He'd always wanted me in his world—I'd always refused. But when she broke me, I didn't have the strength to refuse anymore."

Sophie squeezes my hand. Silent. Present.

"I did things, Sophie. Terrible things. Not because I believed in them, but because I was hollow and my father needed a weapon." I force myself to meet her eyes. "By the time I realized what I'd become, I was in too deep to walk away cleanly."

"But you did walk away."

"I burned everything down to do it—my family, my name, everything I was." I take a breath, steadying myself. "Bellamy was part of that world too. He's here because I got him out, and the debt between us is complicated in ways I can't fully explain without telling you everything."

"Then tell me everything."

"It's a long story."

"I'm not going anywhere." She gestures at the bed, at her belly, at the prison of pillows surrounding her. "Literally."

Despite everything, I almost smile.

"All right." I shift closer, still holding her hand. "But you need to understand—the man I'm about to describe isn't who I am now. He's who I was. Who I'm trying never to be again."

"I understand."

Do you? I want to ask. Will you still look at me the same way after you know what I was capable of?

But Sophie is waiting. Patient and ready.

I take a breath and begin.