Chapter 3

Melanie's POV

I had never wanted the ground to open up and swallow me so badly in my entire life. Unfortunately, the ground seemed determined to keep me alive.

He didn't wait for me to find my voice again. Whatever answer he'd been expecting, my silence seemed to satisfy him more than words would have, because he simply turned and walked toward the elevator bank without another glance in my direction, leaving me standing alone in that gleaming hallway with my heart hammering somewhere up near my throat.

This is Sinclair Enterprises. Meaning he's the fucking cold CEO that people whisper about. The famous Damien Sinclair. Fuck it.

I don't know how long I stood there after the elevator doors closed behind him. Long enough that the receptionist at the front desk started giving me curious looks, long enough that my folder had gone soft and damp where I'd been clutching it against my chest without realizing it. Eventually I made myself walk out of that building on legs that didn't feel entirely like my own, the late morning sun doing nothing to warm the cold, sick feeling still sitting low in my stomach.

But something wasn't fucking adding up. If he's Damien Sinclair, who the hell is Ethan Cole, and why did he show up with that name?

***

“What the hell did you just say?” Cassie burst out. We were lucky the club was quiet and not really full of many people, since it was still one in the afternoon. “Are you sure of what you're saying...that his name is Damien Sinclair?”

“Yes, Cassie. He owns the entire company I got interviewed at.” I said, gulping down a shot. I had fucking used my mouth to ruin my chance at getting a job.

“Wait, back up,” Cassie said, grabbing my wrist before I could reach for another shot. “What exactly did you say to him?”

“What didn't I say,” I said, my voice cracking somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “I accused him of stalking me. In his own building, Cassie. In front of his own assistant. I told him he clearly had time to assault a woman and bully a kid but not enough sense to leave me alone, and then he just...stood there, looking at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and I couldn't even finish the sentence when he told me who he actually was.”

Cassie's face went pale in the dim light. “Mel —”

“I ruined it,” I said, and the panic I'd been holding down all morning finally cracked loose, spilling out faster than I could control it. “I ruined the one good interview I've had in months because I can't keep my mouth shut, because I have to open it and accuse and assume and swing first every single time, and now some billionaire I've humiliated twice thinks I'm unhinged, and I am never getting that job, and I don't even blame him, Cassie, I wouldn't hire me either.”

“Mel. Breathe.”

“I can't afford to breathe. I can't afford anything. I have until Friday and no job and a landlord who's done pretending to be patient with me, and all I've managed to do since that stupid club is make everything worse every single time I open my mouth.”

Cassie squeezed my wrist hard enough that it actually cut through the spiral for a second. “Okay. Okay, stop. We don't know anything for sure yet. Let me just look him up first before you decide your entire life is over, alright?” She was already pulling out her phone, thumb moving fast over the screen. “Ethan Cole. Ethan Cole. Let's see what comes up.”

It only took a few seconds for the search results to load, and Cassie turned the screen toward me, her expression already shifting into something uneasy. It was a real profile. A real man, actually named Ethan Cole, mid-thirties, broad-shouldered, an easy, camera-ready smile that Damien had never once aimed in my direction. I stared at the photo, waiting for my brain to make sense of it, and it took several long seconds before it actually did.

“Cassie,” I said slowly. “I've seen this man before.”

“What? Where?”

“The club,” I said, my voice dropping as the memory rearranged itself in my head, slotting into place with a horrible, clicking precision. “He was there that night. I saw him near the entrance right when the police showed up, talking to one of the bouncers. I didn't think anything of it, there were a hundred people standing around by then, but it was him, Cassie, I'm almost positive.”

Cassie's thumb froze over her phone. “Okay. Okay, wait, let me —” She kept scrolling, faster now, and I watched her face change again, paling several shades in the space of a few seconds. “Mel. Ethan Cole and Damien Sinclair have known each other since college. There's, like, a hundred photos of them together. Charity galas, business openings, some ribbon-cutting thing two years ago. They're not just business contacts. They're best friends.”

I sat back in my chair, feeling something horrible and clarifying settle over me, the same sick, sliding sensation of watching an entire structure of assumptions collapse at once. “So if Ethan Cole was the one your mom's assistant actually arranged the date with —”

“— then Damien went in his place,” Cassie finished, her voice barely above a whisper, like saying it any louder might make it more real than either of us wanted. “Just like you went in mine.”

We stared at each other across the table, and I felt something cold slide down my spine that had nothing to do with the club's air conditioning.

Two strangers standing in for two people who'd never actually planned on showing up themselves, thrown together by other people's mothers and other people's excuses, and somewhere underneath the horror of it, some small, treacherous part of me couldn't help wondering exactly why Damien Sinclair had decided that night was worth showing up to at all, if the name on the reservation wasn't even his.

“Why would he do that?" I said slowly. “Why would a billionaire CEO show up to some random blind date pretending to be his friend?”

Cassie shook her head slowly, still staring at her phone like it might offer up more answers if she looked hard enough.

“I don't know, Mel.”

I let out a breath and leaned back in my chair. None of it made sense.

“Maybe Ethan told him to go,” I said, grasping.

“Why would he?”

“Maybe they do this kind of thing for each other.”

Cassie gave me a look. “You think billionaire men regularly attend blind dates for their best friends?”

“When you put it like that…”

“It sounds insane because it is.”

I groaned and dragged both hands over my face. “So I didn't even go on a date with Ethan.”

“No.”

“I went on a date with his best friend.”

“Yes.”

“And his best friend happens to be Damian Sinclair.”

“Yes.”

“And I hit Damian Sinclair in the head with my shoe.”

Cassie winced. “Yes.”

I dropped my hands. “I'm going to die.”

“You're being dramatic.”

“I assaulted a billionaire.”

“You didn't assault him.”

“I threw a fucking shoe at his head!”

“You said he was bullying a child.”

“He was!”

Cassie stared at me. I stared back. Neither of us said anything for a long moment, until finally she sighed.

“Okay. We need to figure out what actually happened with that boy.”

I frowned. “I don't care anymore.”

“You should.”

“Why?”

“Because if you're wrong about that too…”

She didn't finish. She didn't have to. My stomach sank, the question forming whether I wanted it to or not. What if the boy really had stolen something from him? What if Damien hadn't been bullying him at all? What if the woman at the club hadn't been getting assaulted either?

I shook my head quickly. No. I'd seen what I'd seen.

My phone buzzed against the table before either of us could say anything else, cutting through the tense silence like a blade. I didn't recognize the number, and for one long second I genuinely considered letting it ring out, certain it could only be more bad news stacking itself on top of everything else. Cassie nudged my arm.

“Answer it,” she said. “It might be the landlord.”

“That's not comforting,” I muttered, but I answered anyway, pressing the phone to my ear with a hand that wasn't entirely steady.

“Ms. Reyes,” said a crisp, unfamiliar voice. “This is Naomi Whitfield, from Human Resources at Sinclair Group. I'm calling regarding your interview earlier today.”

I closed my eyes, bracing myself for the rejection I was already certain was coming, already composing the gracious, dignified way I'd thank her for her time and hang up without falling apart until she couldn't hear me anymore. “Okay,” I said instead, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be.

“We'd like to offer you a position,” Naomi said, and I actually pulled the phone away from my ear to stare at it, certain I'd misheard her entirely.

“I'm sorry...what?”

“Mr. Sinclair reviewed your interview personally this morning,” she said, patient in the way of someone repeating herself for the second time already. “He's decided to offer you a position, effective immediately if you accept. Though I should mention, it's not the marketing coordinator role you originally interviewed for.”

My stomach dropped. “I don't understand.”

“Mr. Sinclair would like to offer you the position of Executive Assistant,” Naomi said, each word landing like she'd been instructed to say it exactly this way and no other. “Reporting directly to him. He asked me to make clear that the offer stands regardless of today's interview, and that he'll explain the details himself when you start Monday.”

I sat there with the phone pressed hard against my ear, staring at Cassie's wide, horrified eyes across the table, feeling something cold and enormous settle low in my stomach that had nothing to do with relief, even though relief was exactly what I should have been feeling. Executive Assistant. Reporting directly to him. The man I'd called the police on. The man I'd humiliated at a restaurant. The man I'd hit in the back of the head with my own shoe outside on a dark street, certain I'd never see him again.

“Ms. Reyes? Are you still there?”

“Yes,” I said faintly. “Yes, I'm here. I'll...I accept.”

I hung up a few minutes later, the details of paperwork and start times already sliding out of my head as fast as Naomi delivered them, and set the phone down on the table like it might bite me if I held it too long.

“Well?” Cassie said, practically vibrating out of her seat. “What did she say?”

“I got the job,” I said slowly, still turning it over, still waiting for it to feel like the good news it was supposed to be. “Executive Assistant. Reporting directly to Damien Sinclair.”

Cassie's mouth fell open. “Mel. That's...that's actually incredible, that's a huge —”

“Why?” I said quietly, cutting her off, the question that had been sitting underneath my ribs since the moment Naomi said his name finally working its way out loud. “Why would he do that? I called the police on him. I humiliated him at that restaurant. I accused him of stalking me in his own building, and somehow, out of everyone he could have hired, he wants me sitting right outside his office every single day.”

Cassie didn't have an answer for that. Neither did I.

But what the actual hell is Damien planning? And hope it's not that I just agreed to his trap?