Seriously, Astrid. Get it together.
The elevator dings. I step onto the floor and stride toward his office. The reception area is minimal—sleek, dark wood, smoked glass, and that ever-present hush of silence. No gold nameplates or flashy branding. Just quiet, terrifying efficiency.
I knock once, firm and succinct.
“Come in.”
The desk is black oak. The walls are lined with black-and-white photographs—mountains, frozen lakes, a hawk mid-flight. There’s no ego here—just sharpness, precision, and power.
The city stretches behind him through floor-to-ceiling windows. He sits behind his desk like some brooding statue in a Brioni suit.
When he looks up at me, the temperature in the room shifts.
“Miss Jones,” he says coolly. “Have a seat.”
God, he looks hot as hell. How is that even legal?
I lower myself into one of the chairs across from him, smoothing my slacks, trying to pretend I’m not half-imagining him bending me over the desk.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Just studies me like he’s trying to see through my clothes—and my lies.
Then he slides a folder across the desk.
“This is your assignment today,” he says. “I want a full analysis of the quarterly variance reports—look specifically at vendor line items 314 through 409. The labor cost allocations between subsidiaries are inconsistent. You’ll need to reconcile the expense logs with the Q3 and Q4 payment disbursements. Pull the audit trail if necessary.”
I nod. “You want anomaly tracking by source department or by project ledger?”
His brow lifts, then he smiles. Not a full smile. More like a smirk.
But on him? It’s lethal.
CHAPTER 11
ASTRID
Isit at the corner table in Yuri’s office, fingers moving over my laptop keyboard, eyes skimming columns of figures that should make sense but refuse to stick.
The numbers aren’t confusing me. He is.
The disbursement audit sits half-highlighted on my screen. He’s at his desk, head down, posture perfect. Every so often he shifts a file from one stack to another, or types something with those long, elegant fingers—God help me—I still remember tracing down my spine. But he doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t speak unless it’s to hand me another batch of reports or issue a brief, clipped directive.
He could’ve easily told me to work from my assigned office like everyone else. But no, I’m in here. With him. Why can’t I work in my own office.Is this about supervision? Or is it something else? Control, perhaps?
The silence between us is its own language—one I can’t quite decipher. I feel like I’m back in high school calculus, staringat a complex equation where something isn’t balancing. The variables keep shifting. And the answer keeps coming up wrong.
I reach for my coffee cup, almost empty and lukewarm and venture a glance over at him. Yuri hasn’t moved from his seat once in the last couple of hours. He looks like he’s carved out of ice—cool, elegant, untouchable. The man who brought me to orgasm in a locked airplane bathroom almost two months ago is gone, replaced by this immaculately dressed executive with a tie as sharp as a blade.
I remember the way he touched me, like he already knew my body, like he’d dreamed me into existence before I entered his life and he’d finally gotten his hands on me in the flesh.
Now, he barely blinks in my direction.
My stomach twists, not from nausea though that’s never far lately. It’s this unraveling sensation. The way he acts like that encounter on the plane never happened.
He looks up suddenly, and I drop my eyes too fast. I go back to the spreadsheet and try to focus. I highlight vendor line 347. Missing reconciliation note. Possible duplication of payment authorization.
“You’ll want to look at the Q2 approval timestamp,” he says.
I nod stiffly. “Already flagged it.”
