LOGINShare
Chapter 5 - Noah’s POV
publish date:
2026-05-07 05:06:51Day nine started badly and got worse.
Eli’s doctor had called again in the morning. Not with news, just a reminder. Two weeks was now one week and the number Dr. Reeves had given me hadn’t gotten any smaller and my first paycheck wasn’t coming until Friday and even then it wasn’t going to be enough. I knew that. I just needed to get through the day. I made Damien’s coffee at six twenty-eight. Laid out his files in the order he’d need them. Confirmed his nine o’clock call. Everything was fine. At eleven forty-five I brought him water. Still water, tall glass, no ice. I set it on the left side of his desk, away from the files. He picked it up. Drank. Set it back down. Then his hand caught the edge of a folder and the glass tipped and water spread across the Henderson report he’d been working on all morning. He went very still. “Mr. Carter.” “I’m sorry, I’ll get—” “You put the glass on the wrong side.” “I put it on the left. Away from your files.” “Beverages go on the right,” he said. “Away from my dominant hand. Did Mrs. Hale not tell you that?” She hadn’t. I was sure of it. “She didn’t mention it,” I said. “Then you should have asked.” Something tightened in my chest. Nine days. Four hours of sleep a night. His coffee, his files, his footsteps, the blinds, all of it, without asking for anything, and my brother was sick and I had seven days left to find money I didn’t have. “You’re right,” I said. “I’ll reprint the report.” “It took me two hours.” “I know. I’ll reprint it.” “This is exactly the kind of inefficiency—” “I heard you the first time,” I said. The room went silent. Damien went very still. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was unprofessional.” Nothing. “Mr. Cole.” Nothing. He set his pen down slowly. Parallel to the edge of the desk. “Reprint the report,” he said. “And close the door on your way out.” I reprinted it and slid it under his door because I didn’t trust myself to go back in there. Then I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the wall. He was going to fire me. Today or tomorrow and then there’d be no job, no room, no plan. Eli had seven days. Caleb was eating plain rice. I’d lasted nine days before I cracked. Seven assistants. I was going to be number eight. I sat there for twenty minutes. He didn’t call for me. At one o’clock I made his lunch and left it outside his door and walked away. He ate it. I heard the door open and close. At three he called my name from down the hall. I came immediately. Stood in the doorway. Kept my face neutral. “The Mercer call at four,” he said, like nothing had happened. “I’ll need the quarterly projections.” He was already turned back to his desk. Giving me nothing. “They’re already pulled. I’ll have them on your desk by three thirty.” “Fine,” he said. “Is that all?” “Yes.” I turned to leave. “Mr. Carter.” I stopped. He was looking just past me the way he always did, grey eyes landing somewhere over my shoulder. “Beverages on the right,” he said. “Going forward.” No apology. No acknowledgement. Just a correction, flat and simple, like the last three hours hadn’t happened. I should have been annoyed. I was. Completely. The whole afternoon had been unfair and he knew it and he wasn’t going to say so and that correction was the closest thing to an apology I was ever going to get from Damien Cole. But I still had the job. That was the part that mattered. That was the part I held onto as I walked back down the hall, shoulders straight, face calm, like the last three hours had been nothing. He hadn’t fired me. After all of that, after the glass and the report and the edge in my voice that I still couldn’t believe had come out, he had simply moved on. Given me a correction and a four o’clock task and gone back to work like I was going to be here tomorrow. Maybe I was. I went to the kitchen and started pulling what he’d need for dinner and told myself the relief I felt was purely practical. About Eli. About the paycheck. About Caleb and the rent and the list of things that depended on me still being employed in this penthouse tomorrow morning. It had nothing to do with him. I set the cutting board down a little harder than necessary. It had absolutely nothing to do with him.
Latest chapter
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 47– Noah’s POV
The first time someone accused me of being in love with Damien Cole, I should have laughed. Instead, my stomach dropped.The car ride back from Central Park was quiet. Not awkward, not uncomfortable, just full. The kind of silence that existed when too much had been said and neither of us had figured out what to do with it yet. I kept thinking about the bench. About his voice when he said I mattered enough for him to bring me somewhere real. Most people wouldn’t understand why that hit so hard. Most people didn’t know Damien Cole.Beside me, he sat calm, one hand resting loosely against the seat between us. Close enough that I could have reached it. I didn’t. I still felt it anyway.By the time we pulled into Cole Industries, I’d almost convinced myself to stop thinking about it. Then the elevator doors opened, and the atmosphere shifted immediately. Conversations stopped. People looked away too quickly. I frowned because something was wrong, and beside me Damien noticed at the same t
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 46 — Damien's POV
I gave the driver an address I had not said out loud in three years. Noah sat beside me in the car, quiet, the quietness of someone who had just dismantled a deposition in eleven minutes and was still coming down from the thrill of it. "Where are we going," he said. "Somewhere I used to go," I said. "Used to," he said. "Before," I said. He understood. He didn't push. The car stopped after twelve minutes. I knew the route without needing to be told, every turn memorised long before the accident took it away from me visually and long after it had stayed mapped in my body regardless. Central Park. The entrance near Seventy-Ninth. I got out. Found the path with my cane, the one I had not used since the night I went to find him at the hospital, and felt Noah fall into step beside me without taking my arm, without hovering, just present. "There's a bench," I said. "Third one on the left after the fountain. Used to be my spot." "Used to be," he said. "I haven't been here in thre
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 45 — Noah’s POV
The deposition room had no windows.I sat at one end of a long table with Marcus beside me and a court reporter typing quietly in the corner and Hale’s lawyer across from me, a woman named Patricia Glenn who had the energy of someone paid by the hour to be intimidating.Damien was not in the room. He had argued about it for two days and lost and was somewhere outside it, listening through whatever updates Marcus could give him, which was its own kind of unbearable.“Mr Carter,” Patricia Glenn said. “You were given level three database access four days before the breach occurred. Correct?”“Yes,” I said.“That’s an unusually fast escalation for someone in your position,” she said. “Personal assistant. No background in finance, law, or technology.”“I have a literature degree,” I said. “Mr Cole gave me access because I found an error his legal team missed. He valued the work, not my résumé.”“Convenient,” she said.“It’s documented,” I said. “The email chain exists. Marcus has copies.”
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 44 — Damien’s POV
Marcus called at nine am.“Hale’s lawyers filed something,” he said. “A countersuit. He’s claiming wrongful termination from three years ago. Says the timing of our criminal case against him is retaliatory.”I sat back in my chair.“He’s trying to muddy it,” I said.“He’s trying to delay it,” Marcus said. “If he can drag this into a years-long legal fight, the data breach charges get tied up with his employment dispute. Juries get confused. Settlements happen instead of convictions.”“What does he want,” I said.“Money,” Marcus said. “And for us to drop the criminal referral.” A pause. “Damien there’s something else. His filing mentions Noah by name. Claims Noah’s hiring and rapid access escalation was irregular and worth investigating.”I went very still.“He’s trying to make this about Noah,” I said.“He’s trying to make this messy enough that you back off,” Marcus said. “It’s a pressure tactic. It won’t hold up. But it means depositions. It means Noah might need to give a statement
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 43 — Noah’s POV
Daniel left at one fifteen. He hugged me on the way out which he had never done before and said absolutely nothing about it and pressed the elevator button and was gone before I could ask what that was about. I went back to my desk. Sat down. Stared at the Zurich checklist on my screen. Us. He had said us. Not the checklist. Not we. Us. Like it was the most natural word in the world, like it had always been the word, like two people and a penthouse and four weeks and six days had been us for longer than either of them had said out loud. And then a promotion. And whatever you need for Eli and Caleb said quietly at the kitchen counter like it was a small thing. Like it was nothing. Like paying my brother’s hospital bills and now restructuring my entire employment package was just something that needed doing so he was doing it. I pressed both hands flat on my desk. Breathed. My phone buzzed. Daniel. How are you doing. Sitting at my desk, I typed. That’s not an answer. I
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 42 — Damien’s POV
Daniel arrived at noon without being invited. I heard the elevator at twelve and knew immediately because Daniel’s footsteps had a rhythm I had catalogued thirty years ago and could not unknow. Easy. Unhurried. The walk of someone who had decided where he was going and expected to be welcome when he got there. I had not invited him. “Daniel,” I said from my office without moving. “Damien,” he said from the entrance hall. “I didn’t ask you to come,” I said. “I know,” he said. Already moving toward the kitchen. “I brought lunch.” I put my phone down. Stood up. Walked to the kitchen doorway. He was unpacking containers onto the counter with the ease of someone who had been in this kitchen a hundred times, which he had not, but Daniel treated familiarity as something you decided rather than earned. Noah was at his desk. I could hear him keyboard, chair, the quiet rhythm of him working. He had not come out. “Noah,” Daniel called. Too loud. Carrying deliberately. The keyboard
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 12 — Damien’s POV
Victoria Mercer collected people. I knew that before she hung up. I had known it before she called. I had sat across negotiating tables from her twice in the last four years and both times I had walked away with exactly what I came for and a mild suspicion that she had also gotten exactly what she
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 8 - Damien’s POV
I had fired people for less. That was the first thing I thought when Noah Carter walked out of my office. I had terminated contracts for lateness, for incompetence, for a tone of voice I didn’t like on a Tuesday afternoon. I had ended careers with less cause than a missed Henderson call and I had
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 10 — Damien’s POV
I had a meeting at eleven. Six people. My executive team plus two consultants from the Mercer group, flown in from Chicago, four hundred dollars an hour each, here to discuss a restructuring proposal that should have been straightforward. Nothing about today was straightforward. I told Noah at n
HIS BLIND OBSESSION Chapter 9 - Noah’s POV
I woke up at five forty-three having slept approximately never and decided that was fine. Fine was a word I was getting very comfortable with. Fine covered a lot of ground if you didn’t look at it too closely. I made his coffee. Six twenty-eight. Right side of the desk. Two inches from the corner
You may also like
Owned on the Ice M/M Romance
E L Simon51.0K viewsFallen For The King (MxM Romance)
Cassandra Davy37.5K viewsThe Brother I Shouldn’t Want
StarsTouch pen15.1K viewsDark Secrets Between Roommates
Nabi12.5K viewsThe Wrong Type of Free
Hxn344 viewsFallen In Control
L.Dreams84 viewsThe Tyrant’s hidden king
RoseGrace61 viewsTo Marry a Monster
PINKMama1.1K views
