Chapter 1- Noah’s POV

I was sitting on the bathroom floor at two in the morning, holding two pieces of paper.

In my left hand was Eli’s hospital bill.

$8,400.

Balance due immediately.

Eli was seventeen and sleeping ten feet away. He’d been coughing since October. It was the kind of cough that made doctors go quiet, the kind that told you they knew something you weren’t ready to hear yet.

In my right hand was my bank statement.

$43.

I sat there for a long time, staring at both numbers as if looking at them hard enough might somehow change them.

It didn’t.

From the bedroom, I heard Eli cough.

That deep, rattling cough.

Three times.

Then silence.

Then once more, like an afterthought.

I closed my eyes.

I was twenty-three years old with a literature degree, a job at a coffee shop that paid fourteen dollars an hour, a seventeen-year-old brother who needed medication we couldn’t afford, and another brother who was eight years old and had stopped asking for things because he’d learned that asking upset me.

That last part hurt the most.

Caleb used to ask for everything.

Cereal with the coloured marshmallows. New sneakers. Five more minutes before bedtime.

Normal kid stuff.

Now he ate whatever I put in front of him without complaining. He folded his own clothes without being asked. And before he asked me for anything, he watched my face first, trying to figure out whether it was a good day or a bad day.

Eight years old, and he’d already learned how to make himself smaller around someone else’s problems.

My problems.

I had done that to him.

I put the papers down and picked up my phone.

I opened the search bar.

Personal assistant jobs Manhattan.

I scrolled.

The first page was useless.

The second wasn’t much better.

Then, somewhere on the third page, I found it.

Personal Assistant. Live-in. Immediate start. $6,000/month. Discretion required.

I stared at the salary.

Six thousand dollars a month.

Live-in meant no rent. No rent meant almost everything I earned could go toward Eli’s bills.

The medication.

The hospital.

The groceries.

And maybe, if things actually worked out, Caleb could have his coloured-marshmallow cereal again without me checking the price first.

I applied before I finished reading the listing.

Three days later, a woman named Mrs. Hale called.

“Monday. Nine a.m. Cole Tower, Fifth Avenue.”

I grabbed a pen and wrote it down.

“Do not be late, Mr. Carter.”

Then she hung up.

I stared at my phone.

I googled Damien Cole immediately.

Thirty-four.

Billionaire.

CEO of Cole Enterprises, a company involved in real estate, technology and finance.

Brilliant.

Ruthless.

There weren’t many pictures of him online, but in almost every one, he looked like he was one minor inconvenience away from ruining someone’s entire life.

Three years ago, he’d been in a car accident.

There had been a brief period of speculation afterward, then nothing.

He’d withdrawn from public life and continued running his company from behind closed doors.

I found one interview from four years earlier.

One quote stood out.

“I don’t tolerate inefficiency.”

I put my phone down.

Then I looked at the two pieces of paper still lying on the bathroom floor.

$43.

$8,400.

I swallowed.

“You need this job, Noah,” I whispered to myself.

I looked at the hospital bill again.

“You need this job more than you’ve ever needed anything in your life.”

I got up.

Found my pale blue shirt.

There was a coffee stain on the cuff.

I told myself I’d deal with it.

I didn’t.

⸻

Monday morning, I walked into Cole Tower completely unprepared.

Not for the marble lobby.

Not for Mrs. Hale and her three rules.

Not for the private elevator that took me to the fifty-second floor.

Definitely not for the penthouse at the end of the hallway.

And I wasn’t prepared for the voice that came from behind the double doors.

“Send him in.”

Low.

Quiet.

The kind of voice that had never needed to be loud to make people listen.

I took a breath and walked inside.

He was sitting behind a large desk.

Dark hair.

Strong jaw.

Exactly as unforgiving as the photographs had suggested.

And his eyes—

Pale grey.

Almost silver.

They were pointed somewhere just past my shoulder.

Not at me.

Through me.

For a second, I didn’t understand.

Then I remembered.

He couldn’t see me.

I’d read about the accident.

I’d known he was blind.

But knowing something on a screen and standing three feet away from the person it had happened to were two completely different things.

Because somehow, those eyes made me feel more noticed than anything ever had.

“Sit down, Mr. Carter.”

I sat.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, a small, very certain voice whispered the thought that would prove to be the beginning of everything.

Oh no.