CHAPTER 003

"Resign?" Liam burst out laughing, loud and sudden, like I had just said something genuinely absurd. "You must be joking."

"Maeve, cut it out." Romy chimed in from the window, shaking his head. "We all know you can't stand to be more than three meters away from Alexander."

Alexander stopped typing on his laptop. He closed it slowly, crossed his arms over his chest, and watched me with an air of complete composure. Then he looked me over from head to toe, the way you look at something you have never quite seen before, like I had walked into his office wearing a different face entirely.

He has always been this way, a powerful man who was raised to believe he was all knowing, that nothing could catch him off guard.

That arrogant, self-centred way he carried himself used to make my heart race. Whenever those blue eyes landed on mine, my pulse would jump before I could stop it, not that it didn't now but I reminded myself it was for completely different reasons. I had spent years being helpless in front of that look.

My heart would never beat for him again.

"If you're throwing a tantrum to get my attention, you're sorely mistaken." Alexander's gaze turned icy. "Pull yourself together. I won't say it a second time."

I clenched my fists at my sides.

I knew him well enough to read every shift in his expression. He was angry — he loathed anyone who wasted his time — and underneath the cold composure, he was waiting. Waiting for me to apologise, to lower my head, to give him what he was used to receiving from me. In my previous life I would have done exactly that. I would have been terrified of angering him, terrified of being cut off from him completely, and that fear would have driven me straight back to his feet.

But now, being cut off from him was precisely what I wanted.

"I was speaking English," I said. "Unless there's something wrong with your hearing, I assume you understood me."

It was a rude remark. It was also incredibly effective.

Liam and Romy both stared at me, completely dumbfounded.

Alexander's eyes filled with rage, and underneath the rage was something else — bewilderment, genuine confusion, the disorientation of a man confronting something that did not fit any pattern he knew. How could a woman who had spent years being so completely subservient to him suddenly show this kind of backbone? It defied all logic. It was as though the sun had risen in the west.

Then he gradually calmed down, his expression growing colder by the second. He stood up from behind his desk and adjusted his suit jacket with a slow, deliberate pull at each lapel. No one in the office made a sound. Even Liam and Romy went quiet, sitting very still the way people do when they know better than to speak. When Alexander was truly furious, no one dared to intervene. My heart was hammering against my ribs like it was trying to get out, but I kept my feet exactly where they were.

He walked around the desk and came toward me and stopped close enough that I had to make a conscious decision not to step back. I heard his low, impatient breath as his familiar masculine, woodsy scent washed over me in terrifying, almost mind numbing waves. How I kept my eyes on him as those blue orbs bored into mine was a mystery.

He looked me over again, slowly, studying me. Then stepped even closer, and I had to clench my jaw tighter and will myself to stand still. I met his eyes, rage for rage. He leaned in, as though trying to melt every bone of resistance in my body through searing look

I would not be afraid anymore. I had died once already. Nothing this man did could intimidate me now.

"Unless you place a letter of resignation right in front of me," he said, his voice low and deliberate, "don't expect me to believe a single word of this."

Fine.

I could do exactly that.

I turned and walked toward the door to go and print the letter.

"I hope I'm not interrupting." Dorothy's voice floated in from the doorway. She stood there with her full lower lip pushed out into a soft pout, her beautiful eyes moving between me and Alexander with an expression of gentle concern.

"Alexander, why are you being so stern with my sister?" She stepped inside, her voice dropping into something warmer and more intimate as she looked at him. The way she performed protectiveness over me made my stomach turn. Before she had pushed me out of a window, I had sometimes actually believed that look. I had sometimes actually thought she cared about me. The memory of my own foolishness sat in my chest like a stone.

I also noticed, and I saw it with complete clarity this time, that the moment Alexander's eyes landed on Dorothy, his entire expression changed. The ice left his face. His shoulders dropped a fraction and the rage that had burned in his eyes mere seconds ago was practically non existent. He looked like a completely different person from the man who had just been staring me down with cold fury. How had I spent years looking directly at that and finding ways to explain it away?

"When did you get back?" he asked her.

"Just today." Dorothy's voice was warm and syrupy as she moved further into the room. "But I managed to upset Maeve the very moment I arrived home. You have to help me get her to forgive me. She listens to you more than anyone else." She crossed to the sofa and sat down right beside Alexander, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched.

"I can't help you," Alexander said, though his gaze had drifted back to me as he spoke, still watching me with that air of calm certainty. "She's angry with me too. She demanded to resign the moment she walked through the door today." He said it easily, dismissively, the way you mention a child's bad mood at breakfast. He still did not believe a single word of it, from the way his eyes lingered before shifting to my sister, I could tell.

"Oh, Alexander." Dorothy laughed softly, tilting her head. "Maeve is just waiting for you to remember something important. She wants to get married sooner rather than later, but you keep putting the subject off. That's all this is."

What?

"So that's it!" Romy laughed, pointing at me like a puzzle piece had just clicked into place. "No wonder Maeve felt bold enough to lose her temper with Alexander."

"Maeve, I bet you won't have to be a waiting bride for much longer." Liam leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, a grin spreading across his face. "Alexander's grandmother is planning to use his birthday this year to—"

"That's enough, Liam." Alexander cut him off, his voice sharp and immediate.

Liam closed his mouth.

The Hagreeves family had a well-known tradition. The family heir would formally announce his fiancée, the future mistress of the household, on one of his birthdays before turning thirty. I had waited year after year, sitting with that knowledge, hoping that each birthday would be the one. This year marked Alexander's twenty-ninth birthday. And on this very birthday, in my previous life, he had finally announced that he would marry me.

As it turned out, walking into that marriage had meant walking straight into my grave.

Walking into a life where I was a legally married life yet, I was the other woman.

I blinked and pushed those dark, suffocating thoughts back down below the surface.

Four pairs of eyes were fixed on me now. Waiting. Waiting for me to crack, to ask the question they all knew I was supposedly desperate to ask, to beg Alexander with my eyes to tell me he was going to announce our engagement at his party and make everything right again. Alexander sat there on the sofa looking like a man who had already won and was simply watching the formalities play out.

"In case you didn't know, Alexander," I said, "I won't be going to your birthday party anymore."

Liam promptly spat out the mouthful of tea he had just taken.