🥀Chapter 07🥀

The caller ID read: Unknown.

Selene stared at it for exactly one second, then picked up.

"Hello?"

Silence.

It wasn't the kind of silence where the call dropped. It felt like someone was actually on the line, just choosing not to speak yet. It was way creepier than hearing static.

Then, a voice broke through.

"Morning, Miss Calloway."

She felt a lump in her throat.

She knew that voice. She had only heard it once, out on that dim terrace during that crazy conversation, but it had apparently locked itself inside her brain forever.

She stepped a little further away from her security guard.

"Morning," she said, keeping her voice soft and giving nothing away. "Mr. Leighton."

"So." He paused. It was deliberate, like someone who knows you're waiting on his every word and wants to see you sweat. "I thought about your offer."

She completely stopped breathing.

She didn't mean to, but her lungs just decided to go on strike until further notice. She closed her eyes, stood perfectly still in the morning sunlight, and waited for the bad news.

"And I don't think..." He paused again.

Her eyes snapped open.

Oh. So that was how this was going to go. He was going to reject her proposal.

"...it's a bad idea."

The air rushed back into her lungs all at once.

She turned even further away from the guard, pressing her free hand against her stomach, then she tried to fix her face so her voice would sound completely normal.

"I see," she said, sounding calm, even though her entire nervous system had just gone into total shock.

She heard a tiny sound on the other end that might have been a quiet laugh. He knew exactly what he had just done with that pause, and he clearly wasn't going to apologize for it.

"Getting your phone number was a total nightmare," he said. "Your people are incredibly thorough."

"I'd be concerned if they weren't."

"Mm." He paused for a beat. "Why don't you come over to L.T Corporation? We can discuss the details properly." His voice was businesslike, as if they were scheduling a regular meeting instead of planning a fake marriage to destroy her father. "This afternoon. If you're free."

Selene was already walking toward her front door.

"Of course, Mr. Leighton," she said, using the most relaxed voice she had ever managed in her life. "This afternoon works perfectly."

She hung up.

She stared at her phone for half a second.

Then she ran inside to get ready.

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The lobby of L.T Corporation was the kind of place that didn't even have to try to look cool.

Selene walked through the main entrance at 1:15 p.m. She had her sunglasses on, her hair pulled back into a slick, clean ponytail, and she was wearing a white suit with tailored pants pressed perfectly.

She really meant business. The ceiling was massive, and the floors were made of a pale stone that reflected the lights like a lake. There was glass everywhere, walls.

She pushed her sunglasses up onto her head.

Alright, she whispered to herself. Let's do this.

The receptionist looked up as she walked over. She looked totally neat and gave Selene a nice, professional smile.

"Good afternoon. I'm here to see Mr. Leighton," Selene said.

"Miss Calloway?" The receptionist was already grabbing her desk phone with one hand and standing up. "He told us you'd be coming. I'll take you right up."

Selene gave a small, polite smile and followed her.

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The elevator doors opened on the top floor, and Selene stepped out into a hallway that made the lobby look cheap.

The shiny floor tiles continued up here, catching the light from massive floor-to-ceiling windows. Through the glass walls on either side, she could see the whole company in motion. People were working at standing desks, and others were in meetings giving presentations. It was that quiet, organized vibe of a company built by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

She took it all in without stopping, filing the details away.

This, a quiet, painful voice whispered in the back of her mind, is what my company should have looked like. What it would have looked like if my dad had actually let me run it.

She kept walking.

The office at the end of the hall had a sign right next to the door in clean, dark letters:

FINN LEIGHTON

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

She barely finished reading it when someone spoke up behind her left shoulder.

"Excuse me."

She turned around.

A young guy wearing slim glasses was standing there, looking super efficient. He was holding a tablet with both hands like it was top-secret government info. He gave her a polite, apologetic look.

"The CEO is currently in a meeting," he said. "If you want to wait in the lobby downstairs..."

"I'll wait in here," Selene interrupted.

She turned the handle, opened the office door, and walked right in.

She heard the assistant let out a heavy sigh behind her. He had tried his best, but he clearly decided to just let it go. The door shut softly behind her.

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Finn Leighton's office was completely ash-colored.

It wasn't just grey, it was specifically the color of ash, like a fire had burned everything away and left a clean, final space. His desk was made of dark wood, which stood out against the light walls. The furniture consisted of two modern couches facing each other across a low table, covered in an ash-colored fabric with clean lines. There was zero clutter anywhere. No random papers, just a single cool lamp. Huge windows sat behind the desk, looking out over the entire city like a giant flex.

She dropped her bag onto the closest couch.

She stood right in the center of the room and turned around slowly, checking everything out.

Everything in here was there on purpose. Nothing was random. It was the office of a guy who had very specific rules about what belonged in his space and had the power to enforce them.

She looked at the desk, the view, and the perfect lines of the furniture.

This, that annoying, painful voice in her head whispered again, is exactly the kind of office you would have built for yourself.

She pressed her lips together, forcing the thoughts away, and turned her back on the desk.

Then, her eyes landed on a vase.

It was sitting on a low shelf against the side wall. It was white and deep purple, with beautiful thin threads of gold mixed into the paint that caught the light differently depending on how you looked at it. It was the only object in the entire room that wasn't ash-colored or dark wood. It was the one single thing that actually had color, probably chosen just because it was gorgeous.

She wandered over to it without even realizing she was moving.

It sat right at eye level, and she leaned in slightly to get a better look, wanting to really study the detail.

"Wow," she muttered to herself. The artwork was incredible. The gold lines alone must have taken forever. "This cost an insane amount of money."

She reached out, picked up the vase, and turned it over carefully in both hands. It felt heavy and solid, like it was made to last a lifetime.

"It's beautiful," she said quietly to herself.

Then she heard footsteps.

They were coming from the hallway, getting closer by the second. It sounded like a bunch of people leaving a meeting and heading in different directions.

She scrambled to put the vase back on the shelf.

She moved a little too fast.

Her hands completely betrayed her, She totally misjudged the distance to the shelf by a few inches.

The vase slipped out of her grip.

It hit the edge of the shelf.

And shattered into a million pieces.

The sound was incredibly loud in the quiet room. It was absolutely ruined. White, purple, and gold pieces scattered all over the ash-colored floor like a constellation of expensive trash. The broken edges caught the afternoon light beautifully right as they were completely, catastrophically destroyed.

Selene just stood there, staring at the mess in horror.

Then the door opened.