So, who is she?

Melanie’s POV

What?

What did I just hear?

The woman I had been so certain he was assaulting that night was actually his cousin? That single piece of information sat in my chest like a stone, heavy and impossible to ignore. I kept replaying the dark hallway in my mind — the way she had been struggling, the muffled sounds, the cold expression on his face when he turned toward me — and none of it seemed to match what he had just said. I had been so sure of what I was seeing. So completely sure that I hadn’t hesitated even for a second before calling the police.

“Your cousin?” I asked, still half hoping he might take the words back or tell me it was some kind of twisted joke.

“You heard me,” Damian replied, his gaze already returning to the computer screen in front of him as if the conversation barely deserved his full attention.

“Then what actually happened that night?” I pressed, unable to stop myself from asking.

“That’s for you to find out,” he said without looking up. “You had already painted the entire picture in your head and presented it as fact. Explaining myself to someone who made up their mind in less than five seconds felt like a waste of time.”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, then slowly closed it again. There was no clean or satisfying response I could give him. He was right, and the truth of it stung more than I wanted to admit. I had decided what I was seeing almost instantly. I had looked at a partial scene in a dimly lit hallway and turned it into a complete story without asking a single question. The confidence I had felt that night now felt reckless and embarrassing in hindsight.

Still, one more question sat heavily on my tongue, refusing to leave. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why did you go to the blind date in Ethan’s place?” I asked. “He was the one who was supposed to be there, not you.”

Damian’s fingers paused on the keyboard for a brief second, though he still didn’t raise his head to look at me. “Same reason you went in Cassandra’s place,” he answered simply, then continued typing as if that single sentence was enough to close the subject entirely.

The response landed exactly the way he intended it to. Once again, he had shut the conversation down with a few quiet, precise words that left me standing there with nothing useful to say back. I hated how easily he could do that; how he could strip the argument out of my hands without even raising his voice.

“Close the door,” he said suddenly, his tone shifting back to pure professionalism. “You still have a schedule to fix, and you now have even less time than before.”

The abrupt change snapped me out of the lingering shock. Whatever small opening had existed in the conversation was gone. I stepped out of the office without another word and shut the door behind me, standing still in the hallway for a few seconds longer than I should have while I tried to gather myself.

The executive floor felt quieter than before, the earlier noise of keyboards and low conversations somehow more distant. When I finally returned to my desk, Sophia glanced up from her screen, took one look at my face, and raised her eyebrows in quiet question.

“That bad already?” she asked.

“Something like that,” I muttered, sitting down and opening the folder Damian had sent over.

Forty-one appointments stared back at me from the screen. Overlapping times. Back-to-back meetings scattered across different parts of the city. I could feel the familiar tightness of frustration settling into my shoulders as I scrolled through the list. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said it was a mess, and the limited time he had given me was clearly intentional.

I forced myself to start sorting through it anyway.

The next two hours passed in a tense, focused silence broken only by the soft sound of typing and the occasional chime of incoming emails. Every time I thought I had found a workable arrangement, another conflict appeared and forced me to start over.

My jaw ached from how tightly I had been clenching it by the time I finally managed to reorganize most of the schedule into something that made sense. I double-checked every time slot, called the offices that needed confirmation, and sent careful emails to the ones I couldn’t reach, marking everything clearly so there would be no excuse for mistakes.

At exactly fifteen minutes to eleven, I printed the revised schedule and walked back to his office. I knocked once and entered, holding the papers carefully in my hands.

Damian didn’t look up immediately. When he finally took the documents from me, he scanned them in silence, his expression giving nothing away. I remained standing in front of his desk, waiting, the earlier revelation about his cousin still sitting uncomfortably at the back of my mind while I watched him read.

After a moment he set the pages down. “Did you confirm all of them?”

“Yes.”

“All forty-one?”

“Yes, sir.”

He picked up the first page again and studied it more closely. “Not just moved around without checking?”

“No,” I answered. “I called every office that needed confirmation. The ones I couldn’t reach, I sent emails and marked them accordingly so you would know which ones were still pending a reply.”

His eyes moved across the page before stopping on one particular line. “And this one? The Henderson meeting?”

“I moved it from Tuesday to Thursday.”

“Why?”

“Because you had two meetings scheduled at the same time on Tuesday,” I explained. “The Henderson meeting wasn’t as urgent as the other one, so I shifted it to Thursday afternoon after confirming they were available.”

He looked at me then, really looked at me, as if he was measuring the answer. “And they agreed?”

“Yes.”

A brief silence followed. Then he gave a small nod. “Good.”

I almost smiled at that. It was the first positive thing he had said to me all morning, and even though it was small, it still managed to ease a fraction of the tension in my chest. “Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

Of course. I should have known better than to expect the moment to last.

He turned another page, his eyes scanning the new arrangement. “You’ve left twenty minutes between the board meeting and the meeting with the Japanese delegation.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because the board meeting is here in your office and the next one is at the conference center downtown,” I said. “Even with a driver, you need at least twenty minutes to get there without rushing.”

His eyes lifted to mine again. “You considered traffic?”

“Yes.”

“And what if the board meeting runs late?”

“Then I’ll inform the Japanese delegation ahead of time and arrange for someone to receive them and keep them comfortable until you arrive.”

His expression remained unreadable, and for a moment I couldn’t tell whether I had said the right thing or quietly damaged whatever small progress I had just made. The silence stretched long enough that I began to feel the weight of it settling on my shoulders.

Finally, he placed the papers neatly on his desk. “You’re not terrible.”

I stared at him for a second, unsure how to respond to something that barely qualified as a compliment. In the end I simply nodded, deciding it was safer not to push my luck. “I’ll take my leave now.”

He didn’t say anything as I turned toward the door. I still hadn’t gotten used to how large his office felt — the long stretch of space between the desk and the entrance, the two sofas facing each other.

I was just about to turn the handle when the door opened from the other side, and I found myself standing face to face with a woman I had never seen before.

She was strikingly beautiful in the kind of polished, expensive way that didn’t need to try too hard. Her blonde hair fell neatly over one shoulder, and she wore a fitted black dress that managed to look elegant rather than revealing, paired with red heels and understated gold accessories. She carried herself with the easy confidence of someone who belonged in rooms like this and knew it.

She smiled when she saw me, the expression polite. “You are…?”

I quickly collected myself. “Melanie Reyes. I’m Mr. Sinclair’s new executive assistant.”

“Oh, really?” she said, stepping inside as if she had every right to walk in without knocking.

“You can leave, Ms. Reyes,” Damian’s voice came from behind me.

I nodded once, slipped past her carefully, and closed the door quietly behind me.

When I reached the main area of the executive floor, Sophia and the others were already talking in low voices near the desks. I didn’t even try to hide my curiosity as I approached them.

“Who is she?” I asked.

Sophy looked at me with mild surprise. “You don’t watch the news or follow any of that?”

I shook my head. “Not really. It doesn’t interest me.”

Chloe leaned in slightly, her voice dropping as if the walls themselves might be listening. “That’s Victoria Hale. She’s the CEO’s fiancée.”

The words hit harder than I expected.

Damian was engaged???