Chapter One: Love, Power, and Posession

I never imagined a job could change my life forever. Who would have thought that a receptionist’s desk could be the doorway to love, obsession, and betrayal? My name is Isabella. I’m twenty-four. I come from a quiet house where loud dreams are folded and put away like the shirts my mother irons. But I had a way of whispering mine until they felt real.

We weren’t poor, exactly. My father works at the civil service; my mother sells fabrics at the market. We ate well enough. My younger sister, Clara, is twenty-two and bright and fiercely practical — the kind of girl who studies the bus schedule and chooses the cheaper brand when we grocery shop. Education wasn’t something my parents chased for pleasure; it was a tool, a ticket to stability. For them, a steady job was the goal. For me, it was the opening act.

I wanted more. Not just money, but the way the rich people carried themselves—the long evenings, silk dresses, late dinners in places where the waiters knew your name. I wanted to walk into a room and not feel like a shadow. Sometimes, when Clara and I passed the boulevard where the city’s wealthy liked to be seen, I’d slow down and watch. I’d imagine what it felt like to belong to that world. Clara would laugh and tell me to stop staring like I’d never get there. But dreaming kept me breathing.

So when I saw the job at Daikon Hotel for a receptionist, I applied with the kind of hope that felt like prayer. Daikon was the kind of place where people arrived in cars that hummed like promises. The lobby smelled of coffee and cashmere, and chandeliers threw forgiving light across polished marble. On my first day in the uniform, heart loud enough to be heard in my throat, I sat behind the desk and watched lives slide by: business magnates with clipped accents, honeymooners who eyed each other like trophies, women whose handbags made me want to learn names of designers.

I had heard the owner’s name—Mr. Adrian Dickens —before I ever saw him. It was a name mentioned softly, like a secret or a warning. People spoke of him with a mix of reverence and relief: he paid well, he expected excellence, and he didn’t tolerate foolishness. I told myself he was a distant figure, a rumor, a face on a magazine I might one day hold.

Two weeks before I started at the hotel, Clara and I went to the supermarket to buy soap and rice. It was ordinary, ordinary in the way that life had been for as long as I could remember. I was in the aisle picking out pasta when I heard the voice: sharp, loud, coated with a kind of impatience you couldn’t fake. I turned and saw him—tall, perfectly tailored in a navy suit, a man who didn’t belong in our small part of town. He had a face that looked expensive; even his annoyance seemed polished.

He was yelling at a worker—no, not yelling so much as cutting him down. His words were an odd mixture of cold and command: “How could you let something like this happen? Do you understand consequences?” The young man stammered, red-faced and embarrassed, while the man with the suit didn’t blink. “Fix it. Now.”

I remember feeling cramped in my own skin, like the air had been made thinner for people like him. Clara tugged my sleeve and hissed, “Let’s go,” but I stayed. I watched because I could not not watch. There was something dangerous in him; in that moment he was all sharp edges. I felt sympathy for the worker, and a little thrill that a person could be that powerful.

He noticed me then. For a second his expression softened—annoyance replaced by a look I can’t explain—brief, private. He smiled at me, an almost apologetic tilt of mouth, as if acknowledging that I had seen an ugly thing he had done. It didn’t make him smaller. It made him interesting.

I told myself nothing of it. Rich men behaved badly sometimes; the world had taught me that. I didn’t expect to see him again.

But on my third day at Daikon, he walked into the lobby.

At first I thought it was a coincidence. Then I heard someone whisper, “Mr. Dickens,” and the surrounding air shifted. People went quiet in the polite way of those who know they must behave. He moved through the lobby with a purpose that felt like a promise. He had the exact same face as the man in the supermarket, but here he carried himself as if the whole hotel was an extension of him—because in truth, some of it was.

He looked across the desk and stopped. Our eyes met. There was that same recognition, but this time there was no anger—only a small, unreadable smile. Later, when I told myself the story, I would never be able to say if he softened because I was there, or if something about me made him curious. What I felt was a warmth that settled in my chest and would not leave.

At first, his attention was a series of small, dangerous permissions: a glance as he walked past, a comment about the way I stacked reservation cards. He was sharp with others—impatient, clipped—but he was different with me. He’d lean in to ask a question and the corner of his mouth would lift in a way that made me want to keep speaking. I told myself I was imagining it. I was not.

Then, one afternoon, my name appeared on his calendar. The receptionist beside me turned pale and told me to go up. I climbed the elevator thinking of everything I’d ever wanted and how ridiculous it was that one appointment could contain so much fear and hope.

His office smelled of leather and lemon. He stood by the window, hands in his pockets, looking like a man who had never been made to wait. When he turned and said “Isabella,” it felt like the word had been carefully chosen for me.

“Sit,” he said.

There was a small, terrible thrill as I lowered myself into the chair. He studied me as if he was considering the weight of my life.

“Have dinner with me tonight,” he said, flat and sure, as if stating the weather.

My voice wanted to refuse. My head tried to list sensible reasons—this is the boss, you are an employee—but my body answered first: “Yes.”

He was meticulous. That evening he sent a car for me, and when we arrived at the restaurant, the waiter addressed him like royalty. The night smelled of citrus and wine and a future I had only dreamed about. He asked about my parents, about Clara, about the little things of my life with a softness that made me forget the man who had berated the supermarket worker. He listened. He laughed in the right places. He complimented me in ways that felt personal, not rehearsed.

A week later, he told me to stop working the desk. “A girlfriend of mine should not be answering reservation calls,” he said. “I will put you somewhere better.” My heart pounded in my ears. I knew it was fast. I knew it was reckless. I knew it was everything I had wanted since I was a child watching glamorous women step out of taxis in evening gowns.

He didn’t stop there. He took me shopping that weekend—real shopping. He picked dresses with the ease of a man who had done this before, and he smiled when I tried them on like he was seeing me for the first time. He paid for a hair session that left my hair glossy and new. He even handed me a phone in a small black box and watched my face as I turned it on. The phone felt like air that belonged to a richer life. I called Clara that night, my voice buzzing. I wanted to tell her everything in every detail

Clara collected the bag from me the moment I stepped into our room, like it was proof I had crossed into another world. She flung it on the bed and pulled me down beside her, her eyes already demanding the full gist.

I didn’t hold back. I told her everything—how he opened the car door like I was royalty, how the waiter pulled out a chair for me as if I was someone important, how he ordered without even asking for the menu. “He took me to La Bella Luna,” I added casually, waiting for her reaction.

Clara almost choked on her laughter. “La Bella Luna? Isabella, do you know how expensive that restaurant is? Do you know who eats there?”

I grinned. “Exactly. And the way the waitress looked at me… it was like she knew I mattered just because of him. For once, I felt respected, Clara. Important.”

I told her about the food—dishes I couldn’t even pronounce properly. I told her how he stopped by a boutique on the way, how I came out with clothes I never dreamed I could own. How he had me sit in a salon chair while someone redid my hair, and how, before I could even breathe, a brand-new phone was pressed into my hand to replace the one that kept dying every time I tried to make a call.

Clara sat there, sipping her tea, eyes wide, smiling and shaking her head every few minutes. I could feel her happiness mixing with that familiar wariness she never bothered to hide.

I was still talking, still smiling, still trying to catch my breath from how surreal it all felt when my phone buzzed on the bed. I reached for it, assuming it was her teasing friend, but the name on the screen made my heart skip.

It was him.

I opened the message, and the smile drained from my face.

After everything I’ve done for you, you have no right to let another man look at you. No right to smile at anyone else. From now on, you’re mine. Only mine.

I froze, staring at the words, my chest tightening in a way dinner and gifts couldn’t fix. Clara leaned closer, snatched the phone gently, and read it too.

Her lips curved into a half-smile. “Oh, come on, sis. Don’t overthink it. That’s just jealousy talking. Men are always like that when they really love a woman. Trust me, it’s nothing. He likes you—that’s all.”

I nodded, pretending to believe her. But long after she fell asleep, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, the glow of my new phone on the nightstand. His words echoed in my head, heavier than the dress hanging in the wardrobe, heavier than the dinner I couldn’t stop thinking about.

Mine. Only mine.

And for the first time, I wasn’t sure if I should be happy… or afraid.