Chapter 2

Dominic didn’t move. He stood thirty feet away, a towering, dark silhouette against the floor-to-ceiling glass that overlooked the gray skyline of Manhattan.

The unlit cigarette remained trapped between his long, bronze fingers. He was dissecting me. It was the same clinical, predatory stare he used when evaluating a failing competitor before a hostile takeover.

I kept my eyes fixed on his silk tie, refusing to look into his face. I was an intern.

A nobody carrying boxes. If I bolted back into the elevator, I would look guilty. If I walked forward, I risked him hearing the tremor in my breath.

"You're in the wrong corridor, intern," a cold voice cut through the silence.

It wasn't Dominic.

It was Stone, his chief of staff, stepping out from the shadow of the mahogany double doors to the executive suite.

His eyes flicked down to my scuffed flats, his expression hardening into corporate disdain. "The archives are in the south wing. This is the Chairman's private suite."

"My apologies, sir," I said, keeping my chin down. I deliberately pitched my voice lower, tightening my vocal cords to force a dry, monotone gravel into my throat. "Manager Davies told me to bring these directly to the top-floor audit team. I must have taken the wrong turn."

Dominic’s fingers twitched. The unlit cigarette rolled between his knuckles, then stopped. He didn't say a word, but his posture shifted, his shoulders squaring as he took a single, slow step toward me. The heavy scent of oud and bergamot expanded in the narrow space, thick enough to taste.

"Leave the box," Dominic commanded.

Stone blinked, caught off guard. "Sir? These are old operations ledgers—"

"I said, leave it," Dominic repeated, his dark eyes never leaving my face.

I didn't hesitate. Obediently, I dropped to one knee, setting the heavy box onto the marble floor with a dull thud.

"Get out, Stone," Dominic said.

"Yes, sir." Stone retreated without another word, the heavy mahogany doors clicking shut behind him.

The corridor shrank. The click of Dominic’s bespoke leather shoes began again, measured and heavy, stopping exactly two feet from where I knelt. The tips of his polished oxfords gleamed under the halogen lights.

"Look up," he said.

I pressed my palms flat against the cold marble floor to steady my trembling hands.

I raised my chin, forcing my facial muscles into an expression of blank, dull compliance.

I looked at his jaw, then his nose, and finally, his eyes. They were a dark, stormy gray, bloodshot at the edges, surrounded by deep shadows that spoke of absolute exhaustion. He hadn't slept in days.

"What is your name?" he asked, looking down at me.

"Avery. Avery Vance, sir," I said smoothly.

Dominic leaned down, his face stopping inches from mine. His breath was warm, smelling of dark roast coffee and expensive tobacco. His gaze swept over my face like a scalpel, scanning my faint freckles, my un-plucked eyebrows, the cheap plastic frames of my glasses.

He found nothing. I saw the flash of profound disappointment in his eyes, followed by a dark, simmering irritation.

"Your voice," Dominic murmured, his hand rising to trace his own jawline—a micro-habit he had only when deeply unsettled. "Say something else."

"The operations department requires these files processed by five o'clock, Mr. Hall," I said, maintaining the flat, robotic drone of a tired secretary. "If there is nothing else, I should return to my desk."

Dominic straightened up, the intense focus in his eyes snapping like a broken rubber band. He looked away, a cynical, humorless laugh escaping his lips. He thought he was losing his mind. He thought he was hearing his digital ghost's voice in every corner of this building, driven mad by her abrupt disappearance.

"Go," he said, turning his back to me and walking back toward the glass window. "Tell Davies if he sends another incompetent intern to this floor, he won't have a department left to manage."

"Yes, sir."

I stood up, my injured knee throbbing, and backed into the open elevator. I hit the button for the operations floor, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. As the metal doors began to slide shut, I looked through the narrowing gap.

Dominic was standing at the window again, but he wasn't looking at the skyline. He had pulled his phone from his pocket, his thumb hovering over the screen.

Ten seconds later, as I stepped out into the chaotic noise of the bullpen, my personal phone buzzed in my pocket.

I retreated to the safety of the women's restroom, locking myself inside the end stall. With shaking fingers, I pulled out the device. It was a notification from the encrypted messaging app we had used for three years.

MO: 【I saw someone today who sounded just like you. For one second, her voice held the exact cadence. I thought you had finally stopped playing games and come back to me.】

I stared at the screen, tears burning the backs of my eyes.

He was so lonely. He was a monster to the rest of the world, but to the ghost in his phone, he was entirely raw and bleeding.

Before I could lock the screen, a second message appeared.

MO: 【But she was just a calculator with a pulse—a calculated opportunist trying to mimic you to catch my eye. Hearing your voice twisted into her fake corporate flattery made me want to snap her neck. Chloe, stop hiding. Stop using puppets to test my limits. I can indulge your whims, but I will not allow anyone to defile what belongs to us.】

The cold air in the restroom suddenly felt like ice water. I slid down the tiled wall of the stall, clutching the phone to my chest.

He didn't just hate the person who had left him; he was actively hunting with a hyper-alert, terrifying focus, ready to destroy anyone who dared play with his heart.

A sharp knock on the stall door made me jump.

"Avery? Are you in there?" Chloe’s voice purred from the other side of the wood.

"Davies is looking for you. The audit team just called down—they said you left the box of core files on the executive floor like trash, and the Chairman's office is furious."

I wiped my eyes, splashed cold water on my face, and opened the door with a mask of absolute indifference.

Chloe was leaning against the sinks, holding a custom Starbucks cup. She had already touched up her lipstick—a violent, blood-red shade that matched the soles of her shoes.

"You met him, didn't you?" she asked, taking a step closer and blocking my path to the door, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Up there. You saw Dominic."

"The President told me to leave the files and go," I said, locking eyes with her.

Chloe laughed, a cruel, sharp sound that took me straight back to our high school locker room.

She stepped in, her manicured nail poking my cheap blazer lapel, pinning me back against the door. "Let me make something very clear to you, Avery. I don't care how you managed to charm him online for three years. Right now, he thinks I'm the one who wrote those letters. He’s taking me to a private dinner at The Pierre tonight."

Her eyes widened with an erratic, dangerous desperation. "If you say one word to him—if you even look at him again—I will tell Davies that you stole my laptop password to leak proprietary data. My father knows the board of directors. I will have you blacklisted from every firm in this city before midnight."

I looked at her perfect, stolen face. She thought she was holding all the cards. She thought she had trapped me in a corner where I had no choice but to watch her take everything I had built.

But as I looked past her shoulder at the mirror, I noticed something else—something Chloe had been too arrogant to check.

Tucked into the unzipped leather pocket of her designer handbag was a black velvet box, revealing the heavy silver cufflink she had picked up from the floor earlier this morning. Dominic hadn't asked for it back, and she had kept it like a trophy.

She didn't know that Dominic possessed a pathological obsession with personal security. He had casually mentioned to me during a late-night call that every piece of his custom jewelry contained a military-grade micro-tracking chip.

Right now, Dominic’s phone was likely tracking that sapphire right to this restroom.

I smiled, a slow, cold realization washing over me as I gently pushed her hand off my lapel.

Chloe wanted to play the high-stakes game of corporate deception using my rules, but how long could she survive the fire once Dominic realized his angel was hoarding his property like a thief?