Boss, Your Ex-wife is Married to Your Rival

"Rosie."The voice rolled out low and even, carrying none of the panic Selene expected from someone chasing a lost child through a heavy traffic. She turned towards it and found a man standing a few feet away, hands loose at his sides, dark coat settled over broad shoulders like he'd been born wearing it.He didn't rush forward. He didn't raise his voice again. He simply waited, the way a man waits when he already knows how a situation will resolve.Selene straightened, one arm still curved protectively around the girl clinging to her legs."Is she yours?" she asked, because someone had to say something, and the silence between strangers on a sidewalk had a way of turning things strange fast."She is." His eyes moved from Selene's face down to the small hands fisted in her skirt, and something in his expression shifted — not quite surprise, but close to it. "Rosie doesn't usually do this.""Do what?""Attach herself to people." He crouched slightly, bringing himself to the girl's eye

Mara's apartment smelled like cinnamon candles and fresh coffee, a small one-bedroom on the fourth floor with a couch that pulled out into a bed nobody's spine really forgave the next morning. Selene set her two boxes down by the window and looked around at the cramped, cluttered warmth of it. "It's not much," Mara said, already pulling a spare blanket from the hall closet, "but it's yours as long as you need it." "It's temporary," Selene said, more to herself than to her friend. "just give me few weeks ok, i'll find something." Mara raised an eyebrow but didn't argue. She'd learned a long time ago that arguing with Selene about limits she set for herself was a losing game. Selene didn't sleep much that first night. She lay staring at the water stain on the ceiling, running numbers in her head — rent she didn't have, a job she needed, a life she had to build out of nothing but her own two hands, same as she always had. By morning she'd already ironed the one blazer she owned and m

The silence didn't break so much as splinter, one small noise at a time — a phone ringing unanswered at the front desk, someone's chair creaking as they remembered they were supposed to be working, a printer somewhere spitting out pages nobody needed anymore.Selene became aware of every set of eyes still lingering on her, and heat crawled up her throat in a way no boardroom negotiation had ever managed to produce."I should—" She glanced down at Rosie, still fastened to her side like a limpet, then back up at the sea of faces pretending very hard not to be watching. "I should get back to doing my work.""Everyone." Zayden's voice cut across the floor, low but carrying, and the pretense of busyness collapsed instantly into actual busyness, heads dropping, keyboards clicking, phones answered with sudden enthusiasm.He crouched slightly, bringing himself level with his daughter, though his eyes flicked once towards Selene in something that might have been an apology already forming."Ro

The executive boardroom on the fortieth floor filled slowly that morning, senior directors settling into leather chairs with the particular ease of men and women who'd occupied those same seats for years. Selene took the chair near the end of the table, folder squared in front of her, and felt the weight of a dozen assessing glances land on her before the meeting had even started."Miss Whitmore." One of the senior directors, a silver-haired man named Callahan, slid a thick report across the table towards her without preamble. "Since you're joining these meetings now and you're the CEO’s assistant, perhaps you'd like to walk us through the Meridian acquisition projections."Selene caught the faint smirk he didn't quite hide as she opened the folder. “A test..?” She said to herself. She'd expected one eventually — she just hadn't expected it dressed up as an assignment.She scanned the columns of figures, revenue forecasts, margin calculations, projected growth rates stacked in dense r

Dr. Ellison's office sat above a pharmacy on a quiet street two blocks from Mercy General, the kind of place doctors retired into when they wanted fewer patients and more silence. Tristan arrived early, sat in the cramped waiting room flipping through a magazine he didn't read, and stood the moment the doctor's door opened."Mr Wolfe." The older man gestured him inside, closing the door behind them with the careful deliberateness of someone about to say something he'd rehearsed. "Thank you for coming.""You said there was something about Selene's file." Tristan didn't sit. "I'd like to hear it."Dr. Ellison settled behind his desk, folding his hands, choosing his words the way a man chooses footing on ice. "Several documents from your ex-wife's hospitalization are missing from her file. Notes from the attending nurse. Lab results from the night of her admission are gone, as though they were never filed at all.""Missing how?""They were removed," the doctor said carefully. "Deliberate