A DANGEROUS PROXIMITY

Lily’s POV

The interview had gone the way I planned. I answered every question the way a hungry twenty-two-year-old with five degrees was supposed to answer them, humble but precise with numbers, careful not to sound like I already owned half the buildings in this city. Three days later, the email came through. I had the job.

Now it was my first morning at Adrian Atelier, and my stomach was in knots that had nothing to do with nerves about the work itself.

“Are you sure about this, ma’am?” Charles asked for what felt like the millionth time that morning.

I walked out of my room in red pump heels and a fitted black dress that showed off my figure without trying too hard. My fingers brushed through my long black hair, pulling a few strands to the side. I wore Gucci, but nothing from the collections I actually could have afforded ten times over. Charles trailed behind me holding my phone, while one of the housekeepers carried my bag.

“For the millionth time, Charles, I know what I’m doing,” I said, taking my bag from the housekeeper before heading to the car in the garage.

Charles held the door open and waited until I settled in before handing me my phone. I had let the chauffeur go weeks ago. It would look strange for someone earning a data analyst’s salary to still have a driver, so Charles filled that role now too, on top of everything else he did for me.

“Remember, you’re my Uber driver if anyone asks,” I reminded him. He nodded and pulled out of the mansion gates.

Usually, a first day at a new job came with some kind of excitement. What I felt instead was closer to dread. I was about to spend my days in close range of the man I believed had murdered my family, and I needed to keep my anger buried deep enough that it wouldn’t show on my face. One wrong look, one slip, and my whole plan could fall apart before it even started.

I glanced at the rearview mirror and caught Charles’s calm eyes watching me. He was the only person left in this world I trusted completely. I still remembered the night we met, four years ago, in a bar where I had been drunk enough to want to hurt myself, a broken bottle in my hand and no plan for what came next. He had stopped me that night. At the time I hated him for it. Later, I understood he had saved my life. When our paths crossed again, this time through a job application at my own company, I gave him a better position without a second thought. He had been by my side ever since.

“We’re here,” Charles said, breaking through my thoughts.

The building in front of us was massive, glass and steel stretching up into the sky, people rushing in and out along the front steps. I checked my watch. Eight-thirty, right on time. I had studied Adrian’s schedule for weeks and made sure my first day would line up with his.

“Pick me up at five,” I said, gathering my things before stepping out.

Inside the lobby, my eyes landed on a man near the front desk, tall, surrounded by a few others who seemed to orbit around him without being asked to. Something in me already knew it was Adrian before anyone said his name. I walked toward the desk to sign in, reminding myself of the plan. Get noticed. Get close. Move fast, because I couldn’t stand looking at his face every day longer than I had to.

I let myself really look at him for the first time in five years, and my breath caught before I could stop it. His grey eyes were the same, but colder now, like something in him had hardened since the last time I saw him at my father’s side. His black hair was neat, touched with a little grey near his temples. His jaw, his mouth, the whole set of his face carried a kind of command that made people move out of his way without him needing to ask. He looked better now in his late thirties than I remembered him looking in his early thirties, and I hated that I noticed.

What am I doing, I thought. I shouldn’t be looking at him like this.

“Who are you?” His voice cut through my thoughts, low and rough.

I blinked and pulled myself together. Of course he didn’t recognize me. I wasn’t Kathryna Grayson anymore. New face, new name, new history. Still, some small part of me expected him to feel it anyway, some pull that told him who I really was.

I reminded myself who he was. What he had done. I straightened my back.

“Lily Nolan,” the HR woman beside him answered before I could. “Our newly hired data analyst, sir.”

“She looks young. Can she handle it?” he asked, not even looking at me directly, only at HR.

“Yes, sir. Five degrees, all in relevant fields.”

His eyes moved over me then, quickly, like he was trying to guess my age without asking.

“Twenty-two, sir,” I said, keeping my voice even despite everything boiling under my skin.

He cleared his throat and turned away. “Get her settled. Fill her in on the current workload.”

My office was smaller than the one I had back home, but clean and functional enough. Within the hour, his assistant briefed me on my first real task, working with the sales team to build out a data-driven strategy for the upcoming season.

After hours of back and forth with the team, we landed on a pitch worth pursuing, but the numbers didn’t work without outside funding. Too much money had already gone into new designs after the company lost the farmland deal earlier in the year. I suggested Capital Management Group, one of the biggest financial firms in the country. Adrian agreed to consider it but worried about their usual profit rate.

“I got them down to five percent interest instead of their normal twenty-five,” I told him, keeping my eyes steady on his.

“You did that?” He actually looked surprised.

I nodded. A small smile crossed his face, one he seemed to catch himself having and quickly smoothed away.

“Have finance draw up the contract,” he said.

“There’s a clause,” I added.

He raised a brow, waiting.

“If the funds aren’t repaid within eight months, the company and everything attached to it goes to them.”

“How long would we actually need the money?”

“Eight months, sir. Exactly.”

He was quiet for a moment. “That’s a hard deadline.”

“I believe we can make it.”

“Good. Do as you said.”

I nodded and turned to leave.

“Lily?” His voice stopped me at the door.

I turned back around, keeping my face calm even though my knees felt weaker than I wanted to admit. “Sir?”

“This deal is a big one. Set something up for the team, drinks, dinner, whatever they’d like. And thank you for the work today.”

“You’re welcome, si—”

“You can go now,” he said, already back to staring at his screen.

I walked out of his office telling myself this was progress. He trusted me. He was letting me in. Exactly what I needed.

He had no idea what was coming for him.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​