Page 47 of Mister St. James

Ten floors down, I finally breathe. The walls of the elevator are stainless, mirrored, and I can’t help but check myself in the reflection. Hair still tight, lipstick still unbroken, eyes a little glassy but unbowed. I look like someone who just closed a deal, not someone who just detonated her entire career. The contrast is almost funny.

The car stops twice on the way down. Ken from compliance steps on without looking up from his phone, rides three floors, and steps off still reading. Then two floors after, two women from legal get on mid-conversation and off again at the next floor down, their voices cutting out as the doors close. No one looks at the box. No one looks at me. For once in my life, I am grateful to not be noticed.

Another stop. There’s a hiss, then the doors peel back just far enough to admit a man in a suit. Aiden. He steps inside, fills the elevator with his presence, and lets the doors slide closed behind him. He’s still in boardroom mode, jacket sharp, tie military-straight, the lines of his face as clean as if he’d just gotten back from a commercial shoot for GQ’s hottest nerds. His hair is perfectly in place, but there is a storm in his eyes that the rest of him can’t quite contain.

He doesn’t look at me right away. His gaze drops to the box, then up to my face. There’s a flicker there, an emotion so raw and unfiltered that I almost don’t recognize him. For a second I think he might punch the wall or break something, but his hand shoots out, pressing the “hold” button so hard the panel clicks.

The car shudders, then goes still.

We are alone, suspended in the metal shaft, two bodies and a box of artifacts.

I’m trapped between him and the closing walls, clutching the cardboard box like armor. He steps forward, every inch shrinking the space around me until the only thing I see is him. He takes one step closer, just enough to fill my periphery and block out the rest of the world. He does not ask what I am doing, because the evidence is in my arms and in my posture and in the way I don’t bother to square my shoulders. There is nothing left to say.

Without a word, he reaches out, his fingers brushing mine as he lifts the box from my arms. It’s heavy, but he doesn’t hesitate, setting it gently on the floor at our feet. My heart speeds up, and the air feels too thick.

He closes the distance and takes both my hands in one of his. His thumbs press circles into my palms, and the warmth of him is sudden and insistent.

“I can’t do this without you,” he murmurs, voice low and raw. “Not at work, and not…anything else.”

My breath catches. I want to laugh, defuse the moment with a joke, but my mouth won’t cooperate. I only nod, though my chin trembles.

He slides a step closer, pushing me against the glass walls. “You can walk away if you want,” he says softly, “but this is my company, and I need you here.”

I look at his lips, the way they part when he’s about to say more. Then I lean up, closing the final gap, and kiss him. It starts gentle, his hands cradle my face, mine curl into his shirt, but it grows urgent when I realize how much I’ve missed this, missed him.

He kisses back like it matters, like everything depends on this moment. The elevator hums around us, but inside it feels like the world outside has paused.

When we finally break apart, his breath hitches. I rest my forehead against his. “You don’t get to make all the decisions,” I whisper.

He smiles, a real, shaky grin, and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Only the important ones,” he says. Then he takes a step back, lifts the box again, and sets it by the control panel. His eyes never leave mine.

I tug my hands free and press “36.” The elevator lurches before the numbers start to climb again.

I don’t turn to look at him, but I can feel his relief, his hope. The doors open on the executive suite, and I step forward, knowing I’m staying, because he asked.

Chapter twenty-two

Public Relations

Catalina

Diane is the type of woman who makes apologies sound like subpoenas. “Let’s control the narrative,” she says, stabbing her stylus into the temple of her tablet, her dark-rimmed eyes pinning me with a precision I’d almost respect if it wasn’t trained on my jugular. “Otherwise, someone else writes it for us.” Next to her, the junior nods furiously, already drafting tweets in his head. Across the expanse of glass table, my legal pad is three-quarters full of bullet points and profanity-laced margin notes in Spanish just in case she looks over to read them.

Aiden, of course, is not at the table. He stands at the window, arms folded, chin down, suit jacket still immaculate from the boardroom he just steamrolled. His reflection hovers, ghostlike, in the double-thick pane, a coder in exile, forced to think about anything other than encryption for five minutes. I watch the back of his head, the tension in the slope of his shoulders, and consider what the PR team would do if I threw my coffee at the glass.

“Here’s the sequence,” Diane continues, cutting her palm through the air like a blade. “Statement first, then the interview. Third wave, we seed social with a controlled photo drop, no candid bullshit, only the narrative we choose.”

Aiden turns his face half toward the room, his mouth a line. I jot kill me now in the margin. The junior clears his throat. “The word is already out, Diane,” he says. “Three industry blogs by lunch.” He’s right. The leaks started before the plane even landed. Thankfully none of them have anything to do with the Velvet Stag, but have everything to do with a certain reserved CEO and his illicit affair with his secretary.

“Which is why we move,” Diane says. “Gala’s in forty-eight hours. We do it there. Own it. Make it look deliberate. Celebrated even.”

Aiden’s voice, when it comes, cuts through the room like he’s flipping a master switch. “So we go as a couple. That’s the story.” His eyes are on me now, steel-grey and unreadable, the way they get when he’s running numbers behind his retinas. I meet them, because that’s what I do. I meet things head-on and then set them on fire.

Diane’s head snaps to me, weighing my reaction like a jeweler with a loupe. I purse my lips, pretend to flip a page, but don’t bother hiding my annoyance. “I assume you want a quote from me,” I say. “Or would you prefer to script it, too?”

A ghost of a smile flickers at Aiden’s mouth, but it’s gone before anyone else clocks it. The junior tries for a diplomatic laugh, aborts it mid-chuckle. Diane doesn’t flinch. “We’ll run a draft by you. But optics…“

“If you say ‘optics’ one more time,” I say, “I’ll set your tablet on fire and post the video on Instagram.”