Chapter 4: Paper Dolls And Italian Pasta

Emma honestly couldn’t stop thinking about him. It was entirely wrong, highly inappropriate, completely unethical, and infinitely complicated.

David Vance was her demanding professor. He was Aiden’s wealthy father. He was a ruthless man twice her age with deep shadows in his past and ice running in his veins. And yet, when Wednesday’s lecture finally arrived, she found herself sitting confidently in the fourth row instead of hiding in the back.

When David aggressively asked a complex question about inherent power imbalances in democratic systems, Emma raised her hand high. She boldly argued that modern democracies were essentially just oligarchies with significantly better public relations teams.

He actually smiled. A real, genuine smile. “An incredibly interesting theory, Miss Rossi. Prove it to me.”

And she did. They engaged in ten electric minutes of rapid-fire argument. She confidently cited dense historical sources entirely from memory, expertly building a solid case that had half the class nodding in agreement and the other half looking ready to fight her in the parking lot.

When she finally finished her point, David’s dark eyes held hers completely captive. “Very well done,” he praised her softly. “You are factually wrong on at least three major counts, but very well done.”

“I am absolutely not wrong.”

“Then prove it in your upcoming paper.”

“I absolutely will.”

The intellectual challenge hung heavily in the air between them, undeniably electric.

After class ended, Emma quickly packed her bag and headed straight for the campus library. Her phone buzzed with a text from her roommate, Mia, asking if she wanted to grab cheap dinner later. Emma was rapidly typing a reply when she forcefully collided with a solid chest in the hallway.

“Sorry, I—” She looked up, the apology dying in her throat.

Aiden stood aggressively blocking her path, looking like he hadn’t slept a wink in days. “Emma, please. Can we just talk?”

“No.”

“Just five minutes. That is all I am asking.”

“You absolutely cannot have it.” She moved to step around him.

He violently grabbed her upper arm. “I made a massive mistake.”

“Let go of me right now.”

“But just listen to me!”

“The lady explicitly said no.”

David’s commanding voice cut through the noisy hallway like a sharpened blade. He stood ten feet away, his suit jacket casually draped over one arm, his expression carved from absolute, terrifying granite. Students who had been milling around them instantly stopped talking to stare.

Aiden’s hand dropped immediately from Emma’s arm like he had been burned. “Dad.”

“Aiden.” David’s tone could have instantly frozen fire. “I strongly believe you are needed somewhere else.”

“This is completely between me and Emma.”

“This is entirely between you and the fundamental concept of basic consent, which you clearly seem to be struggling with today.” David moved deliberately closer. Even though he wasn’t unnaturally tall—maybe six-foot-two—his sheer presence seemed to dominate the entire hallway. “She explicitly told you no. Walk away.”

Father and son locked eyes in a silent, violent standoff.

Emma had never once seen Aiden back down from anything. He was always charming, endlessly confident, and completely used to buying his way out of trouble. But standing right there in front of the immovable force of David Vance, Aiden looked incredibly young and deeply uncertain.

“We’ll talk later,” Aiden muttered under his breath. He shot Emma one last look—pleading, angry, she honestly couldn’t tell—and quickly left.

The tense hallway slowly returned to its normal buzz. Students moved on. Gossip resumed. David turned his full attention back to her.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Emma’s hands were shaking with adrenaline. She shoved them deep into her pockets to hide it. “Thanks.”

“Has he aggressively approached you like this before?”

“A few times. Tons of texts, calls. I officially blocked him.”

“And your sister?”

“Same.”

David’s strong jaw tightened. “If either of them ever bothers you again, you tell me immediately.”

“Why would you possibly care?” The defensive question came out much sharper than she had intended.

David’s expression didn’t change, but something warm flickered deep in his eyes. “Because someone absolutely should,” he said simply. He turned and walked away before she could even form a response.

---

The next week blurred entirely together. Emma threw herself completely into her grueling work, spending fourteen-hour days buried in the library, surviving entirely on cheap coffee and pure spite.

David’s class quickly became the sole highlight of her miserable week. He was undeniably brilliant, absolutely ruthless in his critiques, generous with his praise when students truly earned it, and completely uninterested in anything resembling excuses. He pushed them all harder, expected significantly more.

And he always watched Emma. It wasn’t obvious, and it wasn’t inappropriate, but she felt his heavy attention like a physical, magnetic weight every single time she spoke.

“You are completely wrong about Machiavelli,” she told him boldly after a Friday lecture.

“Am I?”

“He absolutely wasn’t advocating for bloody tyranny. He was just accurately describing what he saw in the world. How raw power actually functions versus how polite society pretends it works. And the only difference is brutal honesty.”

Emma met his intense eyes. “He was entirely honest about the ugliness of human nature. That is exactly what made everyone so uncomfortable.”

David’s expression shifted slightly. “Keep going.”

“People desperately want to believe we are inherently good. They want to believe that love, justice, and fairness matter significantly more than raw power. But Machiavelli intimately knew better. He knew that when push comes to shove, people will choose their own survival over their morality every single time.”

“You sound incredibly cynical for someone so young.”

“I sound heavily experienced.”

Absolute silence stretched between them.

“Your paper analyzing power dynamics,” David said quietly, changing the subject. “It was entirely exceptional.”

“Yet you gave me an A-minus.”

“Because you foolishly buried your brilliant thesis in the third paragraph instead of boldly leading with it.” He casually leaned his hip against his heavy desk. “But the deep analysis was incredibly sharp. Highly personal, even.”

“The assignment explicitly stated we could analyze personal relationships.”

“Most naive students lazily picked corporations or theoretical governments. You bravely picked family.” His dark eyes held hers completely captive. “A very brave choice.”

Emma’s throat tightened. “Or a very stupid one.”

“No. Brave.” He straightened up fully. “Do you have any plans for tonight?”

The sudden, personal question caught her completely off guard. “What?”

“For dinner tonight. Do you have any plans?”

“I…” Her exhausted brain completely short-circuited. “Are you actively asking me out to dinner?”

“Yes.” David’s expression remained perfectly neutral, but a subtle shift in his deep voice betrayed him. Nervousness, maybe. “There is a massive symposium at the faculty center tonight. Guest speakers rambling on about international policy reform. I thought you might actually be interested.”

“A boring symposium… with dinner after? Off campus?”

“Off campus,” he confirmed. “If you’d rather not—”

“No! I mean, yes. I mean…” Emma took a deep, shaky breath. “What time?”

Something that looked incredibly like relief washed quickly over David’s face. “Seven o’clock. I will pick you up.”

“You don’t even know where I live.”

“North Side Apartments. Building C. Third floor.” At her completely shocked expression, he quickly added, “It is clearly printed on your university enrollment forms. I promise I am not stalking you. I am just paying attention.”

He smoothly grabbed his expensive jacket. “Wear something relatively nice. These tedious things tend to be quite formal.”

“David.” She stopped him before he reached the door. “This is an incredibly bad idea.”

“It probably is. You are technically my student.”

“You are just a visiting lecturer. Different paperwork.”

“You are also my son’s ex-girlfriend.”

David’s expression instantly went freezing cold. “Aiden has absolutely nothing to do with this. Does he?”

“No.”

He moved deliberately closer, not aggressively crowding her, but close enough that she could smell his intoxicating cologne. “This is entirely about you and me. Nothing else.”

“There is absolutely no ‘you and me’, is there?”

The air between them felt dangerously electric. Emma logically knew she should have said no. She should have turned and walked away. She should have explicitly remembered every single valid reason this was horribly wrong.

“Seven o’clock,” she breathed out.

David’s smile was small, but undeniably genuine. “I will see you then.”

Chapter 5: Heart Monitors And Shattered Glass

He picked her up in a sleek, black Mercedes that definitely cost significantly more than her parents’ entire house. Emma nervously wore the absolute only formal dress she owned—a simple, thrift-store black gown—and felt painfully underdressed the exact second she saw him.

David wore a pitch-dark suit that fit his broad shoulders like it had been surgically tailored for him. Which it probably had been.

“You look absolutely beautiful,” he said softly as she approached the car.

“I look exactly like I’m going to a funeral.”

“These events usually feel exactly like one.” He chivalrously opened the heavy passenger door. “Ready?”

The lengthy symposium was exactly as incredibly boring as Emma had anticipated. It was two agonizing hours of dry academics and stuffy policymakers loudly discussing economic reform in developing nations with all the fiery passion of people reading out loud from grocery lists.

David sat incredibly close beside her, occasionally leaning in to whisper sharp, sarcastic commentary that made her bite her lip hard to keep from laughing out loud.

“That man is Senator Crawford’s senior aide,” David murmured warmly against her ear during one particularly dry, endless presentation. “He blatantly plagiarized his master’s thesis wholesale.”

“How could you possibly know that?” she whispered back.

“I was sitting on his thesis committee.”

“And you didn’t report him?”

“He was sleeping with the department chair. Politics.” David’s warm breath ghosted against her neck. “Everything in this world is just politics.”

After the torturous symposium finally ended, they completely skipped the stuffy, formal university dinner and drove to a tiny, family-owned Italian restaurant twenty minutes away from the sprawling campus. It had absolutely no corporate polish, just warm lighting and the exact kind of hearty energy Emma’s late grandmother would have absolutely loved.

“How did a billionaire find this place?” she asked in awe as they settled into a secluded, romantic corner booth.

“I have been coming here for long years. The owner’s wife makes a pappardelle that will completely ruin you for every other pasta on earth.”

“You come here often?”

“Only when I desperately need to remember what real, honest food tastes like.”

The smiling waiter quickly brought them an expensive bottle of wine without even asking, clearly knowing David well and having his order perfectly memorized. Emma quietly watched him navigate the comfortable space with easy, relaxed familiarity. It was so completely different from the cold, untouchable professor in the massive lecture hall or the granite-faced billionaire in his dark study.

“Who exactly are you?” she asked softly when they were completely alone again.

David slowly raised an eyebrow. “That is an incredibly complicated question.”

“I have the time.”

He studied her beautiful face for a long moment, then poured them both a glass of dark red wine. “What exactly do you want to know? Everything? Nothing?”

“I don’t know.” Emma took a hesitant sip. It was significantly better than the scotch. Much smoother. “You are Aiden’s wealthy father, but you are absolutely nothing like him. You teach advanced theory at a university, but you aren’t really a professor. You live alone in a house the size of a museum, but you eat happily at local family restaurants.”

“And all of that deeply confuses you.”

“Everything about you confuses me.”

David’s deep laugh was quiet, almost surprised by her bluntness. “Fair enough. Who am I?” He was quiet for a long, heavy moment, turning his wine glass in slow, thoughtful circles on the table. “I am someone who made a lot of terrible, unforgivable mistakes when I was younger,” he said finally. “I built a massive empire on things I am absolutely not proud of. I hurt innocent people, I ruthlessly used people, and I became exactly the monster my father wanted me to be.”

“And what exactly was that?”

“Powerful. Ruthless. Entirely empty.”

The raw honesty in his deep voice made Emma’s chest ache. “What finally changed?” she asked softly.

“My wife died.” He said the devastating words simply, without an ounce of self-pity. “Ten years ago. Pancreatic cancer. And I suddenly realized I had spent two grueling decades building an empire that meant absolutely nothing if she wasn’t there.”

“I am so incredibly sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was a very long time ago.”

“Time never actually makes it hurt less.”

David’s dark eyes met hers, and they shared a profound understanding. “No, it really doesn’t.”

The steaming food arrived. The rich pappardelle for him, and delicate ravioli for her. They ate in comfortable, easy silence for a while, the restaurant’s incredible warmth and joyful noise creating a safe, insulated bubble completely around them.

“Can I ask you a real question?” Emma said. “Not just polite small talk.”

“Alright. Why did you invite me out tonight?”

David slowly set down his silver fork. “Because I desperately wanted to.”

“That is not a real answer.”

“It is the absolute only one I currently have.” He leaned back against the plush booth. “You deeply interest me, Emma. You are incredibly sharp. You never back down from a fight. And you see things that most people completely miss. I genuinely enjoy talking to you. That is all.”

“Is there supposed to be more?”

Yes, her frantic brain screamed. No, her common sense fiercely argued.

“I honestly don’t know,” she admitted out loud.

“Neither do I.” David’s stern expression softened beautifully. “But I would very much like to find out.”

“This is still a terrible idea. You are my professor for three more months.”

“Your son is completely irrelevant.” David’s voice went instantly hard. “Aiden made his selfish choices. So did you. What happened between the two of you is permanently over.”

“What if it’s not?”

“It is.” He reached across the small table, and after a moment’s terrifying hesitation, Emma gave him her trembling hand. His broad palm was warm, calloused, and incredibly steady. “He absolutely didn’t deserve you. I intimately knew that the very moment I met you.”

“You didn’t even know me.”

“I knew enough.” His thumb began tracing slow, agonizing circles on her sensitive palm. “You were crying your eyes out in a stranger’s study instead of making a massive public scene. You politely thanked me when you didn’t have to. You stood up in front of three hundred people and boldly argued with me about oligarchies.” David smiled warmly. “That makes you entirely extraordinary.”

Emma’s heart hammered dangerously against her ribs. “I should really go,” she whispered.

“You should.”

Neither of them moved an inch.

“David, I know.”

He squeezed her soft hand once, then reluctantly let it go. “I will take you home.”

---

The dark drive back to her apartment was incredibly quiet. When they finally pulled up outside her modest building, David surprisingly got out and walked her to the front door, just like they were living in some old-fashioned, romantic movie.

“Thank you so much for tonight,” Emma said softly. “I had a really good time.”

“So did I. Even though it was a terrible idea.”

“Especially because it was a terrible idea.”

She laughed, and he smiled down at her. It was real, genuine, and nothing cold about it. “Good night, Emma.”

“Good night.”

She made it exactly three steps toward the door before violently turning back around. “David.”

He was still standing completely still on the sidewalk, watching her intently. “Yes?”

“What exactly happens now?”

His handsome expression went completely serious. “I honestly don’t know. But I think we should probably find out.”

“Even if it is incredibly complicated?”

“Everything worth having in this life is incredibly complicated.”

Emma nodded slowly. “Okay.” She smiled, the tension breaking. “Okay.”

She went inside, locked the heavy door, and leaned her back against it with her heart racing out of control. Her mind was spinning, and the lingering feel of his warm hand was still buzzing against hers. This was entirely wrong. This was deeply dangerous. This was absolutely going to break her, and she was going to gladly do it anyway.