Novel-novel oleh Astral

The rest of Monday was a disaster. Not the kind of disaster with yelling or crying or thrown objects. That would have been easier. This was the quiet kind — the kind where two people share the same fifteen feet of hallway and pretend the other doesn't exist. Emma threw herself into work. She answered emails she had been ignoring for weeks. She reorganized Chloe's filing system. She updated the transition document to 162 pages. She did everything except look at Nick's office door. Nick stayed in his office. The blinds were drawn. The door was closed. He didn't call for her. He didn't walk past her desk. He didn't ask for his coffee. At 11:00 AM, Chloe brought Emma a stack of contracts to review. "Okay," Chloe whispered, setting the papers down. "What happened? He looks like someone cancelled his entire personality." Emma signed a contract without reading it. "Nothing happened." "You're lying." "I'm working." "You're hiding." Emma looked up. Chloe's face was soft — not teas

Nicholas Vance lay awake. He drove home in silence, the image of Emma’s fading taillights still fixed in his mind. He had sat in his car outside his penthouse for twenty minutes, engine off, hands on the steering wheel, staring at nothing. Then he had gone inside. His apartment was too big. Too quiet. Too empty. He had walked to his bedroom, taken off his suit jacket, and stood in front of the mirror. The man looking back at him had shadows under his eyes and a crack in his armor that he couldn't hide. "I never saw you," he had said. "Not really." He had meant it. For nine years, Emma Hart had been a fixture in his life—as constant as his heartbeat, as necessary as air. He had told himself she was just his assistant. A good one. The best. But just an assistant. He had been lying to himself for nine years. He knew that now. At 3:00 AM, he gave up on sleep. He made coffee—bad coffee, too bitter, because Emma wasn't there to make it right. He drank it anyway. Then h

Emma did not sleep.She had driven home from the restaurant in a fog, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles ached. The city lights blurred past her window—neon signs, brake lights, the glow of apartment buildings where normal people lived normal lives. She wondered what that felt like. Normal.She parked her car, walked up three flights of stairs, unlocked her door, and stood in her dark apartment for a full minute without moving.The peonies were still on her kitchen counter.She had forgotten to throw them away.Emma stared at the flowers. White peonies, slightly wilted now, still arranged in the crystal vase Nick had left them in. She thought about the note: You once told me your favorite flower was peonies. I remembered.Four years ago. A passing comment. He had remembered for four years.She walked to the kitchen, picked up the vase, and carried it to the sink. She turned on the faucet. The water ran over her hands, cold and loud in the silence.She c

Friday arrived like a verdict.Emma had spent the past two days avoiding Nick as much as possible—which was nearly impossible, given that her desk was fifteen feet from his door and he had developed a sudden habit of finding reasons to walk past her every twenty minutes. She had also spent those two days telling herself that tonight was just dinner. Just two humans eating food. No different from the hundreds of business dinners she had attended over the past nine years.Except at those dinners, she had been working.Tonight, she was supposed to be a person.At 6:00 PM, Emma stood in front of her closet in her apartment, wearing nothing but a towel and a growing sense of panic. She had tried on four dresses. The first one (black, professional) made her look like she was attending a funeral. The second (red, bold) made her look like she was trying too hard. The third (floral, playful) made her look like someone's sweet aunt. The fourth—The fourth was a deep emerald green, sleeveless, w

Nicholas Vance had never needed to investigate anyone.Background checks, financial audits, corporate due diligence—those were for other people. For competitors. For potential hires. Nick simply existed, and information came to him. He was Nicholas Vance. People volunteered their secrets.But Liam Park was not volunteering anything.And that infuriated him.At 7:00 AM, three days after Emma's resignation announcement, Nick sat in his penthouse with a tablet in one hand and a protein shake in the other. On the screen was a full dossier on Liam Park, courtesy of a private investigator Nick had hired at 11:00 PM the night before.Liam Park. Age 34. Divorced (finalized 14 months ago). No children. Graphic designer at Studio Dot. Hobbies: hiking, photography, craft beer, indie films. Last relationship: ended 6 months ago, amicable. Currently living in a one-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg. Monthly rent: $2,800. Favorite food: tacos. Favorite band: The National. Has a rescue dog named Moc

Emma Hart did not sleep well.Not because she was thinking about Nicholas Vance sleeping in his car outside her building—although she was definitely thinking about that, and definitely not because she cared. She didn’t care. She absolutely did not care that the Vice Chairman of Vance Corporation, a man worth approximately three point eight billion dollars, had spent the night in the back seat of his own Mercedes like a reckless teenager after a fight.She didn’t care at all.Which was why she had checked the security camera feed on her phone four times between midnight and 5:45 AM.At 6:05 AM, she looked out her bedroom window. The Mercedes was gone. A bouquet of flowers—the same ones he had tried to give her last night—was placed neatly against her front door.Emma opened the door, picked up the flowers, and found a handwritten note tucked inside the wrapping.You once told me your favorite flower was peonies. I remembered. —N.V.She stared at the note for a long moment.She had told