chapter 2

Bianca's POV

I stared at Anna Adams like she had just asked me to jump off a cliff. My mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air, but no words came out. Kiss her? Kiss a woman? What kind of job interview was this?

"I... I don't kiss women," I finally managed to whisper, my voice so quiet I was not sure she could even hear me.

Anna's smile grew wider and more dangerous, like a cat that had cornered a mouse. She bent down and picked up my resume from where it had fallen, holding it between two fingers like it was something dirty she did not want to touch.

"Then I guess this interview is over," she said coolly, offering the folder back to me.

My heart stopped beating. This could not be happening. I came here for a personal assistant job, not... whatever this was. What kind of company was this? What were they actually doing here? My mind raced with a thousand confused thoughts.

I looked down at my resume in Anna's perfectly manicured hands, then back up at her beautiful, cold face. Nothing made sense anymore. I was supposed to answer questions about my typing speed and computer skills, not be asked to kiss my potential boss.

"I... I don't understand," I stammered, my whole body shaking like a leaf in a storm. "This is supposed to be a job interview. Why are you asking me to... to..."

I could not even say the words out loud. Kiss a woman? Me? I had never even thought about such things before. The whole situation felt like I had walked into someone else's dream by mistake.

Anna watched me struggle with obvious amusement, clearly enjoying my confusion and innocence. Her dark eyes sparkled with something that looked like hunger, and it made my stomach flip in ways I could not understand.

"You have five seconds to leave my office," Anna said suddenly, her voice turning ice cold. "Starting now."

The way she said it made my blood freeze in my veins. She was completely serious. This was really happening. I was about to lose the only job opportunity I had left, and with it, any chance of saving my mother's life.

I grabbed my resume from her hands, my fingers trembling so badly I almost dropped it again. My legs felt like they were made of water as I turned toward the door.

"You are a pervert," I whispered without thinking, the words slipping out before I could stop them.

Anna's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but I was already moving. I did not look back as I rushed out of her office, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might explode right out of my chest.

I ran down the hallway, past the beautiful paintings and crystal vases, my borrowed shoes slipping on the marble floors. The elevator ride down felt like falling into hell. When the doors opened, I pushed through the lobby full of perfect people and burst through the glass doors onto the busy street.

The cold air hit my face like a slap, but I kept walking until I found a quiet corner where nobody could see me. I leaned against a brick wall and tried to catch my breath, my whole body still shaking from what had just happened.

That was when my phone started ringing. The sound cut through my confusion like a knife. I looked at the screen and saw it was Dr. Martinez from the hospital. My heart sank into my stomach.

"Hello?" I answered, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Bianca, I am calling about your mother Elena," Dr. Martinez said, and I could hear the worry in his voice. "You need to listen to me very carefully."

My legs gave out and I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold sidewalk, my free hand pressed against my mouth to stop myself from screaming.

"Her condition has gotten much worse," the doctor continued. "The dialysis is not working anymore. Her kidneys are failing faster than we expected. You have forty-eight hours to raise the money for surgery, or..."

He did not finish the sentence, but I knew what he meant. My mother was going to die.

"How much?" I whispered, even though I already knew the answer would destroy me.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The surgery needs to happen immediately, and she will need to go to a specialist hospital. Without it, she will not survive the week."

The phone slipped from my numb fingers and clattered onto the concrete beside me. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I did not have two hundred and fifty cents to my name.

"Are you there, Bianca?" Dr. Martinez's voice called from the phone.

I picked it up with shaking hands. "Yes sir. It's okay. I'll... I'll find the money somehow."

"I am expecting you to call me back soon with an answer," he said gently. "I am sorry, but time is running out."

The line went dead, leaving me alone with the worst silence I had ever heard.

I sat on that cold sidewalk and thought about my life falling apart piece by piece. How did everything go so wrong so fast? This morning I woke up thinking I might finally have hope. Now my mother was dying and I had just been asked to kiss a woman in the strangest job interview of my life.

I looked up at the Luxe Noir building towering above me like a black and gold mountain. What kind of company was this really? What were they actually doing behind those expensive walls? The sign outside said fashion house, but what I saw inside made no sense at all.

Tears started falling down my cheeks like warm rain. Not the loud, sobbing kind of crying, but the quiet, hopeless kind that happens when your heart breaks so completely you cannot even make sound. Each tear felt heavy and painful as it rolled down my face and dropped onto my hands.

"I can't get a loan," I whispered to myself. "I'm unemployed. I have nothing to use as guarantee. No bank will even talk to me."

More tears fell as the reality hit me like a truck. I was completely alone in the world with no money, no job, and no way to save the only person I loved.

"I don't think I can do this," I said to the empty air around me. "Why is everything happening at the same time?"

I thought about what Anna Adams had said to me in that office. Kiss me. Why would she ask such a thing? What was she planning to do with me? I could not kiss a woman. I had never even thought about women that way before. What was wrong with her?

But then I thought about my mother Elena lying in that hospital bed, getting weaker every hour while her kidneys shut down one by one. Forty-eight hours. That was all the time I had left with her if I could not find a miracle.

I looked down at my watch through my tears. The numbers seemed to glow in the afternoon light, each second ticking away like a countdown to my mother's death.

One more tear fell from my eyes and hit the concrete below, and I knew that time was running out faster than I could ever imagine.

"What am I going to do?" I whispered as the clock kept ticking and my world kept falling apart.