Chapter 2

Melanie's POV

“Ms. Reyes. I know you're in there.”

The fist hit my door three more times before I even managed to sit up, hard enough that I felt it in my chest, and for one groggy, disoriented second I genuinely thought I was still dreaming.

Then the voice came again, sharper this time, and I remembered exactly whose door that was, exactly what today was supposed to be, and exactly how little time I had left to fix any of it. A week. It had been a week since the club, since the restaurant, since I'd started keeping a mental countdown of days I didn't actually have to spare.

My landlord. Of course.

I froze on the couch where I'd fallen asleep with the TV still murmuring in the background. For one pathetic second I considered not answering at all, just letting him stand out there and pound until he gave up and left.

“I can hear you moving in there,” he said, and something in his tone told me he'd done this exact routine with enough tenants to know every trick in the book. “Third notice, Ms. Reyes. You've got until Friday.”

I made myself get up and cracked the door open just enough to look at him, forcing my voice to come out steady even though my hands were shaking at my sides. “I have an interview this morning. A good one. I'll have the money by next month, I promise, I just need a little more time.”

“You said that last month,” he said, not unkindly, which somehow made it worse. “Friday, or I start the paperwork. I'm sorry, but I've got bills too.”

He walked off down the hall before I could say anything else, and I shut the door and pressed my back against it, breathing hard, feeling something hot and humiliating build up behind my eyes that I refused, absolutely refused, to let fall. Not today. I didn't have time to fall apart today.

My phone buzzed on the counter. Cassie.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, the second I picked up.

“Like I want to throw up,” I said honestly, dragging myself toward the bathroom mirror. I had a lot to drink yesterday. “My landlord was just at my door. Again. He wants the rent by Friday.”

Cassie went quiet for a second, and I could picture the exact guilty expression she was making on the other end of the line, the one she'd been wearing on and off for the past week since her mother had shown up at the club and found her still working her shift instead of sitting across from Ethan Cole like she was supposed to be. Her mother froze her account immediately. It had been frozen for six days now, and neither of us had found a way around it yet.

“I'm so sorry, Mel,” she said, and I could hear how much she meant it, how the guilt had been sitting on her all week same as the fear had been sitting on me. “I keep trying to think of something. I asked my dad, but he won't go behind her back, not on this. I don't know what else to do.”

“I know,” I said, and I did know, had known for days now that this wasn't really her fault, not entirely, even if some small, exhausted, unfair part of me still wanted somewhere to put all this panic. “It's not on you. Your mom's the one being ridiculous about a blind date that didn't even matter.”

“It still feels like it's on me,” she said quietly. “You wouldn't even have needed the money if I hadn't begged you to cover for me that night.”

I didn't have a good answer for that, because some bitter, tired part of me privately agreed with her, even though I would never have said so out loud. “Just…go kill it today,” she said instead, changing the subject the way we both silently agreed to whenever it got too close to something neither of us wanted to sit inside for very long. “The interview. Please. For both of us.”

I hung up and stared at my reflection for a long moment, at the tired eyes and the one blazer I owned and said the only thing I had left to say to myself. “You can do this. You've survived worse than one interview.”

***

The interview itself went better than I let myself hope it would. It was my third one this month, and I'd learned by now exactly which answers landed and which ones made a panel's eyes glaze over, and by the time I stood to shake hands with the last of the three people across the table, I could see it in the small, satisfied way they glanced at each other. I walked out of that room feeling lighter than I had in weeks, already composing the text I'd send Cassie the second I got outside.

I stepped into the elevator still smiling, hugging my folder against my chest and let myself jump once the doors slid shut, a small, ridiculous bubble of joy I hadn't earned the right to feel yet but couldn't quite talk myself out of either..

Don't get your hopes too high, Melanie, I told myself, even as the smile stayed stubbornly plastered across my face. Today had started about as badly as a day could start, and somehow, impossibly, it was actually turning good...

My smile died on my lips immediately the door opened on the ground floor....and before me was someone I never thought I'd see in this lifetime again.

Ethan Cole!

He was standing directly in front of the elevator, close enough that I nearly walked straight into him, and for one disbelieving second I just stood there, certain my own eyes were playing some cruel trick on me.

“Wait,” I said, stepping out past him. “Are you stalking me?”

He let out a short, humorless chuckle, and something about how unbothered he looked only made my blood boil faster. “Stalk? Do you think I have the time for that?”

“Of course you would,” I snapped, folding my arms across my chest. “Since you clearly have time to assault a woman and bully a little kid.”

The chuckle vanished from his face immediately, replaced by something cold and still that made the hallway feel ten degrees colder along with it. “You really don't know when to stop, do you,” he said, his voice low.

"Not when someone like you keeps showing up everywhere I go,” I shot back, refusing to let myself flinch under that stare.

“Everywhere you go?” He stepped fully out of the elevator's path, his gaze fixed on me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. “I was here before you.”

I scoffed, because I wasn't about to let him talk his way out of this so easily. “Sure you were.”

“What exactly are you implying?”

“That you're following me.”

He stared at me for a long moment, then actually looked around the empty hallway like he needed a witness to confirm this conversation was really happening. “You think I'm following you.”

“Yes.”

“Why?"

“Because this is the second time I've seen you somewhere I never expected you to be,” I said, my voice rising despite my best efforts to keep it level.

He let out a laugh with no humor in it at all. “You have an impressive imagination.”

“And you have an impressive talent for appearing where you're not wanted,” I fired back, watching his jaw tighten in response, some small, petty satisfaction blooming in my chest at finally landing a hit.

I folded my arms tighter and refused to back down, holding his gaze even though every instinct in my body was screaming at me to look away first. “Are you going to deny it?”

“I'm going to tell you that you need to stop accusing people of things you know nothing about,”

“Oh, please,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I saw you with that boy outside the restaurant. I saw you take money from that child.”

Something flickered across his face, gone before I could name it. “He stole it.”

I blinked, certain I'd misheard him. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“He was a child,” I said, my voice climbing higher despite myself, the memory of that small, trembling hand handing over crumpled bills flashing behind my eyes.

“And a thief,” he said, entirely unmoved, like the two things weren't remotely in conflict for him.

I stared at him, searching his face for some crack in the certainty, some hint that he was lying, and finding nothing but calm, unshakable conviction staring back at me. “You're unbelievable,” I said finally, because I didn't have anything better.

“So I've been told,” he said, and walked past me like the conversation was already over.

“Wait!” I called after him, turning on my heel.

He stopped walking but didn't turn around, his back to me, his shoulders set in a way that told me he was already regretting giving me even that much.

“Why are you here then?” I asked, and the silence that followed stretched long enough that I almost repeated the question before he finally, slowly, turned his head.

“This is my company,” he said.

I laughed before I could stop myself, a short, disbelieving sound. “Your company?”

“Yes.”

I looked around at the enormous hallway, the marble floors, the gleaming glass, then back at him, waiting for the punchline that never came. “You own this place?”

“No.” He paused, letting the silence stretch just long enough to unsettle me further before he finished. “I run it.”

Something about the flat, unbothered way he said it made my smile disappear entirely. “You… work here?”

“I don't work here,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine. “I own the company.”

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. For one long, airless second I genuinely couldn't breathe, my mind scrambling to reject what he'd just said even as every piece of him — the tailored suit, the watch that probably cost more than a year of my rent, the effortless, unshakable confidence I'd mistaken for simple arrogance — clicked into place all at once, horribly, undeniably.

Oh God.

“Wait,” I said, my voice barely a whisper now, all the fight draining out of it at once. “You're —”

“Mr. Sinclair.”

A man's voice cut through the hallway before I could finish, and I turned to see someone in a crisp suit hurrying toward us, a tablet clutched against his chest. “Mr. Sinclair, the board meeting has already started. They're waiting for you.”

I looked slowly back at Ethan. No, Mr. Sinclair. Not Ethan Cole, not the name Cassie had handed me.

My stomach twisted itself into something tighter and colder as the pieces finished falling into place — the man I'd accused of assaulting a woman, the man I'd just accused of stalking me, the man I had personally struck in the back of the head with my own shoe, was standing in the hallway of the company where I'd just interviewed for a job, and apparently, impossibly, he was the CEO.

My blood ran cold.

He glanced at me once, his expression giving away nothing, before turning back to the man waiting on him. “Tell them I'll be there in five minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

The assistant hurried off, and Ethan — Mr. Sinclair, I corrected myself, looked back at me with an expression that had gone almost frighteningly calm.

“You were saying?” he asked.

I opened my mouth but nothing fucking came out. For once in my life, standing in the hallway of the company that might have just become my new employer, staring at the man I had wronged not once but twice now...

I had absolutely nothing left to say.