“Oh my God!” she gasps. “Hazel Briggs. You are sleeping with your boss!?”
I laugh, my chest filled with what feels like countless flowers blossoming at once. “Um, maybe?”
I hang up quickly and lean back against the door. I can hear Dominic moving throughout the penthouse, getting ready for bed.
He’s waiting for me. A man with a castle filled with empty rooms and a single photograph of a woman who used to love him.
But there’s so much more now. Now there are two of us.
8
DOMINIC
Marcus cornersme in the parking garage just before seven in the morning.
He’s leaning against a pillar with a coffee in his hand and an expression I haven’t seen on his face since I pulled him out of Rikers. The one he had when he was about to tell me something I did not want to hear.
“Boss, we need to talk.”
“No, we do not.”
I try to walk past him, but he steps in front of me, blocking the elevator. “Yes, we do.” Marcus is the only guy alive with the balls to get between me and my destination. That’s why I hired him as my number two. “You’ve lost your mind, boss.”
Anger flares in my chest. “Get out of the way before I fire you.”
“You think I don’t know what’s going on?” he hisses, his voice low. “You trapped a teenage girl in an illegal contract, did who knows what with herin the office, and last night you took her out to a Michelin-starred restaurant in full view of half the financial industry. But that’s not what worries me.”
“Nothing should worry you.”
“Oh, no? She thinks this was all an accident, Dominic.” His voice drops to a careful and deliberate tone. “She thinks she just submitted a blind resume to my inbox and got lucky. She doesn’t know I pulled her financials before you ever saw her.”
I say nothing.
“She may have seen the contract and decided to stay, but she thinks she just stumbled into all this.” He holds my gaze, giving me that serious look he gives when he wants to be heard. “There’s a difference between a woman who signs a bad contract and a woman who finds out the man she now loves engineered a trap for her.”
He may be my second in command, but his words land like fists. Not because he’s being cruel but because he’s telling the truth.
What if she finds out? How will she react?
“I’ve been with you for every deal, every risk, every decision you’ve made for ten years,” he goes on. “I’ve never questioned you without reason. But this? This could bite you in the ass.”
I want to respond, but I don’t know what to say. After a long moment, Marcus reads my silence correctly and steps aside.
In the elevator, I press the button for my floor and stare at my reflection in the polished steel doors. I don’t fully recognize myself. There’s my pressed suit, my strong jaw, and the aura of my net worth that’s in the billions…
…but my eyes are different. They look—for the first time—afraid.
Not of losing money or harming my business but of Marcus being right. That Hazel finds out none of this was truly fate. That the moment she appeared in my inbox, I targeted her with every resource I had to make sure she wouldn’t slip away.
She thinks the universe just brought me to her, when in reality, I hunted her down before she even knew I existed. If shefinds out that the first step of our relationship was a lie, she’ll hate me for it.
I can’t lose her. Not now. She’s everything to me. The rest of my life is just noise.
She’s sitting at her desk as I enter, wearing the new cream blouse I bought her, hair down just the way I like it, with the smiley face cup from this morning sitting beside her. She sees me, and her face lights up. A smile so genuine it sends a warmth through me I never would have thought possible.
No one hasevermade me feel that. Not once in thirty-four years.
Our fingers brush as I pass her desk. Neither of us visibly reacts. Gotta keep things professional…sort of.
