Viola tilted her head slightly, lips curling into a faint smirk. "Well…" she rolled a shoulder lazily, "I'm here for business too, I guess."

Xavier raised an eyebrow. "Business, huh? That sounds serious."

"It is." She shifted her weight, gaze sharpening a little before she added, "But before I say anything… I want to know something first."

Xavier watched her, pretending not to care. "Yeah? What's that?"

Viola leaned forward slightly, resting her elbows on her knees. "Do you actually trust me, Xavier? Or are you just testing me like everyone else does?"

For a second, Xavier didn't answer. He just looked at her — calm, unreadable. Then he gave a light chuckle. "Testing you? You think I've got that much free time?"

Viola frowned, searching his face. "You left fifty billion with me. Just like that. No questions, no trackers, no strings. You don't even seem to care that I could vanish with it… or worse, make a deal with Ethan and actually betray you."

"I have never thought anything even close to what you are worrying about," he said in a calm voice.

Her breath caught — not out of doubt, but from how matter-of-factly he said it. Xavier leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees now, voice low but steady. "I don't doubt you. And I don't need to keep tabs on you either. You've got too much to gain by staying on my side."

Viola didn't say anything for a moment. Something flickered in her eyes — something softer, faintly curious, faintly dangerous. She had always flirted, toyed, pushed him to see what he'd do. But this time, it hit differently. The trust, or maybe the audacity behind his words — it got under her skin.

"...You're strange, you know that?" she murmured, almost to herself.

Xavier leaned back again, letting out a slow breath, almost smiling. "I've been told worse."

Viola's lips parted just slightly, her mind looping back to what he'd said. For the first time, her teasing faded, replaced by a quiet fascination she hadn't felt before. Maybe it was trust. Maybe attraction. Maybe both.

Xavier, though, wasn't thinking about any of that. He was just watching her reaction.

'Even if she ran away with the money, I wouldn't care,' he thought. 'I've got more than enough. Ten million a day's still rolling in, and honestly, if she really wanted to stab me in the back, she had her chance long ago — when she was still supposed to kill me.'

"So," he said finally, breaking the silence, "about that business you mentioned…"

Viola blinked, pulling herself out of her thoughts. The faint spark in her eyes lingered as she looked back at him. "Right… the business."

Viola folded her hands on the table like she was folding a map shut. "Seven days," she said. The words were small but they carried weight. "Ethan's clock runs out soon."

"Yeah."

"I don't know what plan you have in mind, but I have also thought of a plan."

She gave him that practiced shrug — the one that said she knew more than she let on. "I feed him hope. Tell him I've found a chance to take you down clean. But I will also tell him that I have another opportunity where I can bring you to him, unconscious, and helpless. So he can kill you with his own hands. And once he has accepted that deal, we call him somewhere safe." She paused and let the image sit. "You have to pretend to be unconscious. But then, when the moment comes, I hand him a corpse that wakes up and turns the blade back on him."

It was theatrical. Viable in the movies. Dangerous in real life. Xavier let a slow, quiet laugh out. "You want to bait a man who eats bait for breakfast." His voice had no heat — only the kind of cool that can freeze people on bone. "Not bad in theory. Garbage in execution."

"Explain." Viola's tone flipped from jokey to tight. "What's wrong with it? It's dramatic. It's exactly the kind of thing that would make him show up."

Xavier pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking. He kept it blunt. "You're offering fantasy for a man who trades in proof. Ethan doesn't chase theatrics unless he can smell the blood first. You can't just promise him a show and expect him to walk into the trap. He needs bait with weight—something that feels real enough to make him brave."

She tilted her head, testing him. "So what, I give him a promise that stinks of victory?"

"You give him taste," Xavier said. "Not the whole meal. Let him feel the hunger. Make him think the knife will be his. Let him believe the revenge is real. Don't hand him directions on how to get it." He let the words sit then added, quieter: "He wants satisfaction, not a how-to."

Viola's laugh was low, real this time. "You sound like you already thought this through."

Xavier shrugged. "I thought it through enough. I won't walk into something sloppy. If you want to play this, you play it clean."

He leaned forward, voice lower. "When you call Ethan, you call me first. I'll be on the line. I'll tell you how to sell it—tone, timing, where to plant the hope. But I'm not giving you a script that teaches murder."

Viola's laugh was small and genuine this time. "Always the puppet master."

"Someone's got to pull strings so the idiots don't handle the stage." He shrugged like it was nothing. "And don't get soft—say I trusted you. Say I let my guard down. Piss in his ear a little: call me naive, gullible, say I gave you a window. Make him feel like he's walking into the moment he's been dreaming about."

Viola closed her hand into a fist and tapped it on the table. "Alright. I'll call him. I'll tell him there's a clean shot. I'll tell him you trusted me and basically talk crap about you. I'll hang up before he can smell the set." She looked at him, almost challenging. "You sure you want to be on the line?"

Xavier's smile was small, sharp. "I'll be on the line. I'll feed you what he needs to hear and what he doesn't. You sell the pain, not the map. Don't teach him anything he can follow."

She nodded once. "I'll do it your way. For now."

He watched her stand, watched the light in her change into that flirtatious armor she wore like jewelry. She was playing. She was sincere. He wasn't sure which, and he didn't need to be.

When Viola left the room, Xavier didn't move right away. The plan was loose enough to string someone along, sharp enough to draw fools in, and risky enough to make his blood sing. That was the kind of game he preferred—danger dressed up as theatre, friends who could bluff, and enemies who thought they knew the script.

He folded his hands and hummed under his breath. "Good," he said to the empty air. "Make him believe he wins. We'll see who's laughing last."

Whatever game they were about to play, he wanted to be the one writing the lines.

"Now, time to find the stone so I can hit both birds in one shot." He grabbed his phone and called Kane Medical Tower.

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