Phantom: Hello, lovely readers! I hope you're all doing well. Here is the next instalment of A Conflict! I provide a little backstory to Lex in this one—to clear up anything that may have confused you in the beginning. I hope you enjoy it. Warning—this chapter contains some fluff! :D

A Conflict of Interest

Chapter 13

Deliberation

xXx

God-damned rain… I grumbled under my breath, hurrying inside. Why am I always getting wet in this office…

I halted mentally in my tracks, realising how crudely inappropriate that sounded. I chuckled, a snort rippling in the back of my throat at my own inadvertent pun. Thank goodness I hadn't said that out loud, where a certain frosty-eyed CEO might have overheard me.

I had just about made it back from a client meeting, when—for reasons unknown—the skies decided to open and unleash a deluge of godly velocity down on me. By the time I'd made it back to the office, I was soaked to the bone.

Sighing exasperatedly, I kicked off my heels, snapped the blinds shut and closed my office door, advancing toward my filing-cabinet-come-wardrobe, rooting around for a dry shirt (I really wasn't kidding, when I mentioned that my office was like my second home). Peeling off my wet blouse and tossing it onto the back of my chair, I started unbuttoning the clean silk shirt, standing only in my bra, skirt and stockings. I didn't have any spare skirts or pants on hand, unfortunately, so I was rather hoping that the rest of my clothing would merely dry out, on its own.

"Looking for this?"

Startled, I whirled around on my heel, only to see half of Kaiba's face, smirking at me through the crack in the door. Infuriatingly, he had a KaibaCorp umbrella, in-hand.

"Haven't you heard of knocking!?"

"Why would I need to do that?" he queried in that saccharine tone he often liked to use, when he was mocking someone. "Unless you were doing something…inappropriate."

His eyes then left mine, wandering downward. I followed his gaze, down toward my breasts—bursting as they were out the top of my bra, being that it was only a few days before my period—and rashly covered them with the dry blouse that I was holding.

"In your wildest dreams, Kaiba."

"Not my wildest, I can assure you."

"I might have had a client in here, for all you know." I retorted. "And—just for the record—where I come from, people don't need umbrellas in summer!"

Blue eyes rolled toward the ceiling. "Welcome to Domino, Senpai. I did warn you about the summers here, did I not?"

My mind drifted momentarily back to Christmas Eve last year, in Sapporo, when Kaiba and I had first had a meeting, of the non-business variety…

"What is it with you and this place, anyway?" Kaiba grumbled. "It's a dump."

"I'm not really a warm-weather kind of a person."

"Huh. Well, you'd better get used to it. Domino during the summer is going to be your idea of hell."

"Hmm, I guess you did."

"Hey, Lex-senpai!" Out of nowhere, a Kaiba mini-me also appeared at the door.

"Mokuba—!"

"Nice rack!"

"Argh! Get out! Both of you!" I seethed, my face turning scarlet, and slammed the door in their face.

"Hn. Nice one, Mokuba."

Kaiba's insane laughter, together with Mokuba's cheeky giggling, echoed down the hallway as he departed my office, and what I thought was the sound of them high-fiving. I bit down hard on my lip and shrugged on my dry blouse, vexed.

Why do those two get so much enjoyment out of teasing me? My flummoxed brain queried. If past experience is anything to go by, boys who tease or bully others, do so to mask their true feelings…

Truth be known, I hadn't had a lot of experience with boys—at least, not in my younger years. Between the ages of twelve and seventeen, I had been far too wrapped up in my studies to be concerned with that kind of thing. I did, of course, have the odd crush—but anything of a serious nature, was not to occur until my late teens. Furthermore, the boys at my high school had been, for the most part, horrid to me. In fact, the girls had actually been a breeze to deal with, compared to the boys. Among the milder offences committed against me was kicking the back of my chair in class, calling me unrepeatable names, stealing my glasses or teasing me about my flat chest.

I had been a late-bloomer, and it was not until I graduated from Yale at the age of seventeen that heads began to turn—in a more or less favourable way, depending on how you looked at it. I had been plucked out of high school just shy of my fifteenth birthday, due to the phenomenal grades I consistently achieved. My teachers were often so dumbstruck by my test scores, that they assumed I was cheating, but when it became apparent that I was not, they notified Mensa.

Passing the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales test with a score of 149, I was accepted without delay into my university of choice—being closest to my home in upstate New York, I chose Yale. With the aid of my delighted parents, I made the move to Connecticut and into the halls of residence, and so began my law degree, with a focus on contractual law. Mere weeks into my studies, I was thriving in my new environment, being surrounded by like-minded peers who were on the same wavelength as me, intellectually, and finally being able to sink my teeth into something that both challenged and stimulated me.

Flourishing as I was, my world came crashing down around me, halfway into my second year. I remember the exact time and place that it occurred. I had been invited to a Halloween party; my birthday also happened to be on Halloween, but I hadn't let anybody know that, at the time. I had gleefully dressed up as my favourite childhood cartoon character—a white mouse known for his superior intelligence and quest for world domination—and was probably drinking more than I probably should have, at that age, when I received the call.

It was my father, calling to say that my older sister—who had recently wed and moved to Japan of all places, with her new husband—had suddenly died, under mysterious circumstances. We were all clearly devastated—but most of all, I felt betrayed. I had not once trusted the man who came to take my sister's hand in marriage, and had been appalled when she had agreed to move across the Pacific Ocean, with him. My parents and I, together with my younger sister, Essie—who had been nine at the time—flew out to Japan, a few days later.

The whole ordeal had been shady from the outset, right from the moment my family had received the call from Pegasus' PR agent. That's right—Pegasus hadn't even bothered to call us, personally, insisting he had simply been too torn up, to speak to anyone. He had been somewhat accommodating when we'd arrived in Japan, but we were apparently too late for Cecelia's funeral, which had been performed the day before we had arrived. This was apparently due to religious custom, in that the wake must be performed as soon after death as possible, followed by the funeral and cremation on the day-of. We did not even get a chance to see her face again, one last time.

Instead, we were taken to her burial place, located on the mainland—rather than the island where Cecelia had lived—in the warmer southern climes of Kumamoto prefecture. Pegasus had hastily had a shrine and tombstone made for her, where her ashes now rested. My parents—as traumatised as they were by the nightmare that they could seemingly not wake up from—had made the decision to let Cecelia's remains lay undisturbed, in Japan.

We returned home with heavy hearts, but little did they know, that I had been receiving letters from Cecelia, in secret. She told me everything, about her life on the island, the isolation she was starting to feel, and how Pegasus was apparently "changing" toward her. Indeed, I had only been a teenager and had no experience of the kind, at that time, but it was not difficult for me to comprehend what was going on. Pegasus' true colours were emerging—into the monster that I always knew he was. I knew, in my heart, that he had killed her.

So began my obsession for crucifying Pegasus, in the most legally plausible manner, possible. I wasn't about to stoop to his level and get blood on my hands, tempting though that idea was.

Upon my return to the States, I changed my degree to majoring in criminal justice, with a minor in corporate law, since I was already halfway through it. It did not take me long to catch up to the other students in my curriculum, who had already spent eighteen months studying criminal justice. It came to me naturally, and since I now had a burning ambition to study such a topic, I was nailing every assignment and exam paper the same way I intended on nailing Pegasus to the cross, when I was qualified.

In between studies and my part-time job waitressing, I developed an unhealthy obsession for Pegasus himself, learning all I could about him—including his past, and his company, Industrial Illusions. My interest was piqued even further, around the time of my graduation. Pegasus had released a new product on the market, which was soon to become known as the biggest phenomenon the gaming world had yet seen—Duel Monsters.

Oh, the irony, I thought, of now residing in a job at a company with a focus on Duel Monster gaming technology. I would never have dreamed that I would have ended up working at a place like this—not as a seventeen-year-old law graduate, working her first official job as an assistant district attorney, in New York city. My decision to move to Japan came when duel monsters became wildly popular, there. I was grossly obsessed with watching Pegasus and his gaming tournaments, and now—having been building my deck and practicing the game, myself—I knew I had to get closer to the action. If I was going to have any chance at all, at bringing Pegasus to justice and exposing him as the murderer that he was, I had to at least be in the same country, as him.

With my newly-honed duelling skills and a year's experience working as an attorney, I felt like the time was ripe for my intercontinental move. Landing a job at a small practice in Sapporo—not ideal, but, it would do—I left the states and began my new life abroad.

Four years later, I was still working and living in Japan—much to my parents' dismay—and tragedy once again befell me. During the first two years of living in Sapporo, I fell hard and unexpectedly, for a man that I had met through mutual friends. Little did I know, his fate would be sealed a year into our relationship, one bleak winter night when his motorbike hit black ice.

From that moment forward, I was more determined than ever to see Pegasus brought to justice. The whole reason I had moved to Japan had been because of him—and now I had lost someone else that I cared deeply for. I became more reclusive, honing my duelling skills, tracking Pegasus' every move, and working myself ragged—any kind of distraction had been welcome, at that point in my life.

Enter Seto Kaiba.

Of course, I had heard all about his step-father's multi-billion-dollar corporation being converted from an arms manufacturer to a gaming technology company. I had even met Kaiba himself, a couple of years before, at a European duel monster tournament, when he was barely an adolescent. But what had really got my attention was when Seto Kaiba himself usurped the throne as company president—Gozaburo having met a mysterious—and likely sticky—end. It had been quite the scandal.

The boy—hailed to be a child prodigy and practised player of Pegasus' creation—became my newest obsession. To challenge someone of his superior skill, made my mouth water with longing. Unbeknownst to me, I would get my wish in less than a year's time—when Pegasus announced his Duelist Kingdom Tournament in Kumamoto—and he had extended me an invitation.

To say I was dumbstruck that Pegasus even knew of my residing within Japan, would have been putting it mildly. I figured he probably had spies all over the show, however. What floored me more was that he had enclosed a number of as-yet-unreleased duel monster cards, among them being Toon World—and the Blue Eyes White Dragon.

Kaiba's signature card.

It was almost as if I had been destined to go to that island, and duel him.

Alas, Pegasus had got me right where he wanted me—and, well, you know the rest. All that had transpired after I set foot on that island, had been for nothing. My whole reason—my quest—for moving to Japan in the first place, to try and bring the nightmare to an end—was rendered void, by Pegasus' suicide.

"Have I really been here for six years, now?" I asked out loud, shaking my head in disbelief.

It had only seemed like yesterday when I had stepped off the plane for the first time, in the snowy northern lands of Hokkaido. Now, it seemed like my purpose for being here had been fulfilled—despite not being rewarded with the outcome that I had strived so hard, to achieve.

The only question that remained now, was…what was I still doing here?

You know why, my brain promptly bitch-slapped me out of denial.

I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose and turned away from the window, reaching for the same distraction that I always had. "Gotta work."

xXx

"Onee-chan, what is this?"

I glanced up from my task of rinsing dishes, only to see my sister standing there, with a dark blue tie dangling from her fingers. She stood with one hip jutting out, giving me all-out sass with one eyebrow perfectly raised. She was trying to pin me for something; my mother always gave me the exact same look, whenever I tried convincing her that I was fine.

"Uh…looks like a tie, to me?"

"This is a Domino High boy's school uniform tie!" she cried, more dramatically than necessary. "What was it doing in our laundry basket?"

Crap. That tie was Kaiba's! He'd left it here last week, when he'd taken me home, due to my migraine. Alright, think fast, Lex.

"Are you sure it's not just one of yours?"

"Girls ties look nothing like the boys' ties, sis." Essie dropped her hand back to her side, shifting her weight onto the other foot.

"Well, maybe I got it mixed up with one of Kaiba's, at work." I uttered nonchalantly, hoping she'd buy it.

"You don't even wear ties!"

"I do if I'm going to Court." I replied, mentally noting to go and buy some ties to stash in my closet, at work. "Can I have a look at it?"

Essie handed me the object in question. Unmistakably, it was Kaiba's—it even had the residue of my eye makeup on the back of it.

"I'll take it in to work tomorrow, and ask him if it's his."

"That won't be necessary," Essie quipped, snatching the tie back off me. "I have something else to tell you—oh my goodness, I don't even know where to begin! You're not going to believe it!"

A fortnight had passed, and Kaiba's 'Battle City' tournament was now well underway, advancing full-throttle into the final stages. As he had predicted, floods of duellists from all over the world had descended on Domino, morphing the city into a 24-hour duelling zone—not that I had any time to enjoy or partake in any of it. I had barely seen anything of Kaiba, lately, or—to that end—my sister, given that she had been devoting every waking moment between school and sleep, to watching her friends—and maybe even Kaiba, himself—duelling. He was taking part in his own tournament, after all, which I found both strange, yet admirable.

On the contrary, Kaiba and I had been like ships in the night, in terms of our work schedules. Now that the Hopkins case had finally wrapped, I had been inundated with new work—mostly of a contractual nature—and had essentially ceased working for Nobita Associates, altogether. Kaiba Corporation was keeping my hands full enough, as it was. In fact, I was almost back to the point of stress that I had been a few weeks ago, before I'd gotten that sucker-punch of a migraine, and the flu, but it was of a different nature—the kind of stress that caused you to run on adrenaline and sometimes, forget to eat. The turnaround time for commercial work was much faster-paced, and I'd had to pull all-nighters on more than one occasion, but it was nowhere near as energy-depleting or emotionally-sapping as being in the throes of a litigation dispute, that had dragged out for months—or, sometimes, even years.

Together with the tournament and my heaving work schedule, school was about to break up for the summer, and the oppressively hot, wet season had arrived in all its ferocity, in Domino City. This meant that I would now have Essie—and, by association, her friends— running amok at a loose end, for the next six weeks. I felt like I had been caught up in a humid whirlwind, being blown from one place to the next, between clients, siblings and certain other frosty-eyed teenagers, in a giddying kamikaze.

"Two things!" Essie sat me down forcibly on the sofa. "Firstly, Bakura saved Yuugi from a warehouse fire, today! And secondly, Kaiba asked me to the summer dance!"

My eyes bulged right out of their sockets. "What?"

"Oh, Lexie, I can't believe it!" she fell dramatically onto the couch in a mock-faint, as I felt all the blood start to drain from my face. "I'm the envy of every girl in school! It's going to be the best night of my life, I just know it…"

"Wait, wait, wait—back up the truck, for a minute." I stammered. "Bakura saved Yuugi from a warehouse fire? What in the name of—"

"Some creep in a hooded robe took off with Yuugi's puzzle on his way to school, this morning!" Essie interjected. "He forced Yuugi to duel him in some abandoned old warehouse, to get it back. They think the nutjob set it on fire, and Bakura was the first one to show up! Jounouchi and Honda broke down the door to save them!"

I suddenly felt lightheaded. As I had predicted, some shady shenanigans had been going down since the beginning of the tournament, and now it was starting to feel a little too close to home. I had already lost one sister to a criminally insane, Duel Monsters-obsessed psychopath, and I wasn't about to lose another one.

"Is everyone alright? Did Yuugi get his puzzle back?"

Essie nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, they're all fine! Bakura was such a hero; he really did save Yuugi's life! I mean, Jou and Honda-san were the muscle, but Bakura was the first one to find out what was going on, and alerted everyone."

I pondered the quiet, slightly socially awkward British boy that hung around on the fringes of Yuugi's posse. He seemed like a nice enough kid, but there was something about him that I just couldn't put my finger on. The thought of him rescuing Yuugi from a burning building sounded a little far-fetched, but sometimes, the inexplicable occurred.

"And…this dance?"

Essie bit down on her lip and opened her school satchel, handing me an envelope with her name on it. "Open it!" she tittered excitedly, so I did.

Dear Estee
Will you do me the honour of accompanying me to the end-of-term dance?
Sincerely,
Kaiba

God.

Fucking.

Damn it.

There could be no mistaking his perfect handwriting, that I had seen a thousand times before.

That little prick…

"Aren't you happy for me!? You know I've had a crush on him for ages, now."

"If by 'ages' you mean two weeks." I retorted dryly. Then I realised, that two weeks actually was 'ages', in a teenager's world.

"It's been longer than that," she muttered dismissively. "Anyway, I knew there had to be a reason for us moving to Domino. Kaiba was behind all of it, wasn't he?!"

I faltered. "Well, kind of, but—"

"I knew it! He wanted to see me again, after he came to visit us in Sapporo, didn't he? That's why he got you to come down here to work for him, and so we would end up going to school together! Eee! It all makes so much sense, now!"

Oh, God. No. Nonononono.

Why do teenagers have to misconstrue things, to suit their own agendas? Ugh…

"Umm…Essie…" For the first time in my life, I almost couldn't lie on demand. "Before you go declaring your undying love for him—try to think about this, rationally. I was likely going to be moving to Domino anyway—Kaiba aside—because I was working on a case for a client, here."

"You are such a killjoy, sis."

"I'm just trying to make you see clearly."

As soon as the words left my mouth, I couldn't have felt more like a hypocrite. Kaiba had been clouding my own judgement, the moment his lips had first touched mine, over six months ago.

Essie merely smirked at me and bounced up off the couch. "'It is a truth universally acknowledged," she began, theatrically. "that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.'"

At that, my eyebrow arched so high, it just about abandoned my face, altogether. "Are you really quoting Jane Austen at me, right now?"

"Damn straight, I am!"

"You cannot seriously be comparing Kaiba to Mr. Darcy, Essie!"

"Why not?" she sniffed. "He's a single man and in possession of a good fortune. Am I right?"

I gave her a dry look. "You've got me there."

"According to Anzu and the others, I'm the only girl they've ever seen him show a remote interest in." she sighed dreamily, and then added, as an afterthought, "Everyone thought he was gay."

I just about pitched backwards. "Erm…I'm pretty sure he's not."

"This could be the start of something wonderful between us," Essie continued on her saccharine monologue. "'Estée Kaiba'. It has such a nice ring to it, don't you think?"

I swallowed a few times, trying to get my thoughts in order. It was imperative that she knew nothing of the sort that was my own…'relationship' with the man in question. Detach, Lexus. Detach!

"I guess we'll need to get you an outfit, then." I mused, declining to comment on her previous assumptions.

"Oh, onee-chan!" Essie squealed, pulling me into an asphyxiating embrace. "This is going to be just like prom! But BETTER!"

Just like prom, indeed.

xXx

"Kaiba."

"What?" he barked, without looking up.

I stepped into his office, high-heels clip-clopping on the hardwood floor. "Toei Technology settled, today." I stated, slipping a document of title under his nose. "No more supplier contracts; it's officially yours."

He glanced at it fleetingly, then went back to typing at a neck-breaking speed, apparently ignoring me. I turned to go, my stomach twisting anxiously. In disappointment, I realised. Fuck it all.

"Lexus."

I turned back. "'What'?" I mimicked his tone.

He beckoned me toward the leather chair opposite his desk, one that I had come to know well over the past seven months. "Sit down."

I did so, crossing my arms and legs.

"Spit it out."

How in damnation was he always so quick on the uptake, like that? I had been intending to broach the topic of whatever the frig was going on between him and my deluded sister for a few days, now, but I could never hold him down long enough, to ask. He was always either coming or going from a duel, tinkering with his duel disk in the lab, or out getting up to God-knows-what, at all hours of the day night. I wondered when he'd actually last ate or slept, or the last time he went to school, in fact. To add to that, I hated to think what those kids were actually getting up to at all, when I wasn't around.

"You and Estée."

Kaiba finally met my eyes. "Took you long enough."

"You haven't been around."

"What about it?" he quipped, sounding much more irritable than usual. He was in a dangerous mood, I realised, but I was in no mood for it, myself.

"This little stunt you're pulling with her, asking her to this end-of-term dance." I stated, deadpan. "What exactly is it that you're hoping to achieve?"

He stopped typing momentarily and sat back, studying me. "What does it look like? I'm humouring her."

I glared at him. "You're clearly not being genuine with her."

"Well, obviously."

"She's my baby sister, Kaiba. My only living sister, now, in fact. She means as much to me as Mokuba does to you. You understand that, don't you?"

His eyebrows furrowed in their usual way, before he rose and walked to the window behind his desk, surveying the city from above. This was a habit I had become accustomed to, when he needed a few moments to gather his thoughts.

"My relationship with Estée is none of your concern—so I politely ask you to butt out!"

Angrily, I got up and joined him. "Actually, it is my concern, since I'm her legal guardian while she's in Japan." I reminded him. "She adores you, Kaiba, that much is obvious… If you're trying to hurt me—fine. I have a thick skin. I just ask that you don't hurt her. She's too naïve to know better."

"It's an infatuation." he replied, using my own words back on me. "It will pass."

"You're stringing her along!" I retorted. "You're giving her hope where there is none."

Kaiba turned to me, his expression dark. "Don't play dumb with me, Senpai. You know very well why I'm doing this."

I scanned the floor, hoping to evade this particular topic during this conversation, but now, it was unavoidable. Kaiba charged on before I even had a moment to defend myself.

"The one thing I've wanted these past few months, has been so close—and yet so far—from reach." Kaiba uttered in a sinisterly quiet tone.

"Kaiba, please, can we not—" I began, fearing the onslaught that was coming, but was quickly cut short.

"The only reason I'm doing this," Kaiba whirled around to face me, his voice rising in anger. "is because she is the closest thing I can have to you!" he gave me an accusatory, hateful look, one that I had seen many times in the courtroom, over the years.

"Leave her out of this!" I yelled. "It's not fair on her. She doesn't know."

"Not fair on her? It's not fair on me!" he retaliated, clamping his hands around my shoulders and pressing me against the window. I felt very weak all of a sudden, my skin clammy against the cold glass. Don't look down. Don't look down. Don't look down.

"Every time I look at her, it's you," he growled lowly into my ear. "Every time I touch her, it's you. Every time I close my own fucking eyes, it's you, Senpai!"

"Let me go!" I choked, paralyzed against the window. "You know I can't stand heights."

He only pressed me harder against the glass, his hand creeping up to my throat and closing around it. "Do you know how it feels, when that one thing you can't have, is dangled in front of you every day?" he paused for effect.

I could feel a lump rising in my throat, now, as I fruitlessly suppressed the terror and frustration and anguish of my own rising emotions. "How does it feel?"

"So tantalizingly close," I felt the rough stubble of his unshaven face brush against my cheek. "and yet…forever unobtainable. Like a doll put in a glass box, never to be touched, or played with, or loved…by anyone."

He pulled back to look down at me, trembling pathetically against the window, my heart in my mouth.

"It's like the wolf at the door," he whispered, lowering his mouth closer to mine. "and every passing day, the wolf gets hungrier."

He finally released his hold on my neck and our lips crashed together, rough and aggressively. He caught me at the small of my back, right as my sweaty palms slipped against the glass and lurched for the lapels of his coat. Kaiba kissed me both with reckless abandon and without restraint, uttering a low, guttural groan as his fingertips found the bare skin of my back, my shirt having come untucked. I clutched onto his coat, giving into him, my senses dulled into submission by the raging lust that had taken over my body.

Once he'd had his fill, Kaiba pulled back, looking like nothing short of a tiger that had just brought down a kill. "Do you know how badly I want to fuck you, right now?" he growled lowly.

I shot him a mildly appalled look and pushed myself away from the window. "Are you insane? We're at work! Anyone could have just walked in, right now! What if Mokuba had seen us!?"

"I think you're the only one who cares about that, Senpai." He snarled. "As I said from the beginning—I'm not remotely concerned about what other people think."

"You're not exactly doing yourself any favours!" I clapped back, tucking my shirt back in. "This ends here and now, or…I will report you for sexual harassment. Do you understand?"

He levelled my gaze. "Do that, and I will ruin you." He warned in a tone more poisonous than I'd yet heard. "You will never see the light of day in the profession of law, again."

"I'd like to see you try."

He looked thwarted. "Are you challenging me to try and ruin your life? For someone who graduated from Yale at seventeen, you're more of a fool than I first thought."

"You know nothing about me, Kaiba." I sighed in exasperation. "Look; you need to get over this, for both of our sakes. Nothing good is going to come of it."

"So you keep saying." he grinned in a catlike way at me. "It's getting old."

"Then at least stop using Essie like she's some kind of proxy! She doesn't deserve to be caught up in this."

"Give me what I want, then, and I will." He resounded coolly. "And you know it's not legal advice I'm after, senpai."

It didn't take much to guess exactly what it was, that Kaiba wanted. He turned back to the window, his arms folded across his chest, and I knew I had to be methodical about how I was going to deal with this. Kaiba would have made a crack-banging litigator, I thought mildly. But, to my advantage, I was one, too. Bargaining with him was one idea, but he wasn't the type to take kindly to negotiations; it was his way, or the highway, as I had come to know well. Steamrolling parties on the other side of contracts, upon Kaiba's request, had become part of my day job.

I massaged the bridge of my nose. "You know I can't do that. For you to assume that I even want that is arrogant and presumptuous, Kaiba. And even if I wanted to, I could be disbarred, Kaiba—you know that."

The thought of my career ending in tatters—before it had even really began—due to some lovesick teenager trying to manipulate me, made my stomach flip over.

"So your career is more important to you, than love?"

"Oh, and I suppose yours isn't?"

Kaiba whipped around, a ferocious sneer on his face, and banged his fist down on his desk in frustration. "I know you feel something for me, Lexus! Why won't you just admit it?!"

"I cannot and will not put my career on the line, just to indulge your teenage fantasies!" I shot back. "You'll be the death of me, Seto Kaiba!"

In two quick, long strides, Kaiba was inches from my face. "Look me in the eye and tell me you feel nothing for me."

Look him in the eye, I did, but I was mute. For reasons that had suddenly left me, I couldn't bring myself to lie to him, as I had done hundreds of others. To even try would have been fruitless, anyway. I might have been able to bend the facts in the courtroom, but this was personal. His cold, cobalt gaze was unnerving, and I found myself to be the first to break away.

"Very well, then." he sneered. "It's either you, or her. The choice is yours."

"That's blackmail, Kaiba."

"And I am not above it, if it means getting what I want—and getting you to admit the truth!"

I swished my head to one side, as if I had just been slapped. "Then I will have to cease acting for you. Our professional relationship can't continue this way."

Kaiba leaned on the edge of his desk, crossing his ankles. "The way I see it, you have three options. One:" he held up his index finger. "you resign as my attorney. Two:" another finger. "you breach your contract and comply with my requests. Or three:" third finger. "do nothing. I will continue to use Estee as I see fit, and when I grow tired of her, I will tell her ev-e-ry-thing—including the real reason behind your other sister's demise."

I tightened my jaw. "That will crush her."

Kaiba cocked his head to one side. "Isn't that why they call it a 'crush'?"

"This isn't a game! You can't just toy with people's hearts, like this, you manipulative bastard!"

Blue eyes rolled. "Don't contradict yourself. Isn't that what you do, for a living?"

I went on the back-foot. "Hmm, touché."

He smiled arrogantly at me. "Estee will do anything I say. Manipulation is a skill that I happen to be well acquainted with, Senpai, and I've grown very fond of using it to my advantage. I've been toying with her this whole time. Like you said, she adores me. If I asked her to jump off a bridge—she would."

At that, I slapped him. He looked more stunned than anything, but made no move to retaliate, as his cheek started to redden. The palm of my hand prickled with the resounding impact, and I felt blood rush to my face in anger.

"Your logic is flawed." I hissed. "For someone who yearns for something so badly, you're certainly going about it the wrong way."

"That might be how you see it," Kaiba replied, raising a hand to cradle his cheek. "But I can wait. And as that old saying goes, 'good things come to those who wait'. It's only a matter of time, Lexus, and the longer you keep procrastinating, the worse it's going to be for her."

"You're delusional. She goes back to the States in five months. What then?"

He shrugged carelessly. "That's five more months for her to fall in love with me, before I discard of her. She's simply collateral damage."

I crossed my arms and walked across the office, pacing as I often did, to gather my thoughts. I was beyond riled up at Kaiba's audacity, my blood boiling like a lava pool, but I had to be objective about how best to handle this predicament. What if my sister was my client, I thought. What would I do to help her? I had been in tighter spots than this before, that was for sure—but nothing on such a personal level, as this. I was dealing with a mastermind, and apparently he wasn't completely clueless when it came to relationships of the sexual kind, as I had initially speculated. His lack of feeling, however, was questionable.

"Let's say, hypothetically, I give in to your demands." I stated, turning back to face him. "Then what?"

"Then nothing." he replied, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug. "You get what you want, I get what I want—everyone's happy."

I laughed bitterly. "Rose-tinted glasses, huh? No, Kaiba. You get what you want, Essie gets her heart ripped out and stomped on, and I am left humiliated and jobless!"

"Who has to know?"

"Oh right, like I'm supposed to trust that you wouldn't try using it against me." I jabbed a finger at one of the cameras in his office, silently capturing everything. "Do I look stupid to you?"

Kaiba folded his arms, amused. "You do realise that's the reason I like you, right? You're the least stupid person, I know…and I know a lot of people."

My breath caught in the back of my throat, the compliment catching me off guard. "Like it even matters, at this point." We're in too deep…

"It's your mind that turns me on," he added, coming closer to me. "Your emotional aptitude could use some work, though."

"That's rich, coming from you."

He closed his eyes demurely. "I'm more in-touch with my emotions, than most people like to believe."

"If you insist." I cleared my throat. "Getting back to Essie. If you break it off with her, she will be devastated. She's completely convinced that…" I trailed off. "Never mind."

"She'll be even more devastated if she knows the truth about us."

"And what, pray tell, would that be, Kaiba?" I queried, putting him on the spot.

He blushed uncomfortably. "Is it not obvious, at this point?"

"You keep asking me to admit the truth," I hissed bitterly. "when you can't even admit it, yourself."

He gazed at me reflectively, through half-lidded eyes. "Quite the predicament we're in, isn't it, Senpai?"

Protecting Essie in this situation was paramount, I realised. He wasn't going to give her up, until he had me. He was playing us both like pawns, to get what he wanted. Just like I had protected Essie from the truth behind Cecelia's death, now I had to lie to her about the man she thought actually cared about her. There was no other way, though. Even if it meant sacrificing myself, and risking my career, I had to protect her by any means necessary. Kaiba could be a manipulative snake, when he so chose, and nothing good could become of Essie being with him. Not only was she too innocent to know better, she deserved better.

"I thought you were better than this." I spoke quietly. "You disappoint me, Kaiba."

"I could do a lot worse, Senpai." He replied with a grin. "It's too bad that you've got feelings for me, now, isn't it?"

I squared my shoulders. "Break it off with her," I demanded. "and if you breathe even a ghost of the truth to her—about us or Cecelia—you will never see me again. Is that perfectly clear?"

"Your empty threats are cute."

I could have sworn a blood vessel just burst in my brain. "Kaiba, I am this close to—"

"Do I have your word?"

"Yes!" I exploded. "For Christ's sake, you have my goddamned word!"

"Good, then this conversation is over."

And, just like that, he went back to work, seemingly unfazed. I decided not to question it, and exited his office, feeling rage like no other, and like I had just sold my soul to the devil.

xXx