CHAPTER 5: Pack Your Things

Maya's POV

I watched from my third-floor window as the driver rounded the lead SUV and opened the back door, and for one absurd second, I thought about pretending I wasn't home. Turning off my lights, letting the buzzer ring itself out, waiting for whoever this was to give up and leave.

Then he stepped out onto the sidewalk, and I understood immediately that giving up wasn't something this man did.

Even from three floors up, I recognized him instantly — the same sharp stillness from the terrace, the same unhurried, unreadable calm, except now it was daylight and he looked even more out of place among the cracked pavement and overflowing recycling bins of my building than he had in a ballroom. He wore a dark coat over a suit that probably cost more than my rent for the year, and he didn't so much as glance at the small crowd gathering to film him. He simply looked up.

Straight at my window.

I stepped back so fast I knocked my elbow against the frame.

By the time the knock came at my door — three measured raps, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world — I'd barely managed to smooth my hair and convince myself this was actually happening.

I opened the door and there he was, filling the entire frame of it, close enough now that I could see details I'd missed in the ballroom's dim lighting. Dark eyes, not the gold I remembered from last night. A faint, unreadable tightness around his mouth, like he was working hard to keep something contained.

"You," I said, which was possibly the least intelligent thing I could have said, but it was all that came out.

"Me," he agreed.

"How do you know where I live?"

"I have people for that."

"That's not comforting."

Something almost like amusement flickered across his face before disappearing again. "I'm not here to comfort you."

"Then why are you here?" I crossed my arms, mostly to stop my hands from shaking. "Look, about last night — I'm sorry. What I did wasn't fair to you. I was upset, and you were just standing there, and I used you to make a point to my ex. It wasn't right, and I—"

"Pack your things."

I blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Your things." He said it slowly, like I might genuinely be struggling with the words. "Pack them. You're coming with me."

"I don't even know your name."

"Damon Ashford."

The name meant nothing to me in the moment, which apparently showed on my face, because something like disbelief crossed his.

"You really don't know who I am."

"Should I?"

"No," he said, after a pause, something almost like relief in his voice. "Actually, that's refreshing."

"That still doesn't explain why I'm supposed to pack anything."

"I need a personal assistant."

I laughed — one short, disbelieving sound. "You flew across town in a three-car convoy to offer me a job?"

"And what’s wrong with that?” He studied me for a long moment, something unreadable working behind his eyes. "I don't have time to explain everything right now. What I can tell you is that after last night, you're going to need somewhere to go, and I happen to need someone in my house."

"I have a life here."

"Do you?" He glanced past me, into the apartment — the garment bag still hanging on my closet door, the single suitcase I hadn't unpacked from a weekend trip months ago, the general sense of a life built around a wedding that no longer existed. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like most of what you had here ended last night."

The words landed harder than they should have, mostly because he wasn't wrong.

"I have no experience being anyone's assistant," I said, grasping for something, anything, that might make this conversation make sense.

"You'll learn."

"This is insane. I don't know you. I kissed you one time, out of desperation, and now you want me to move into your house?"

"You kissed me," he agreed. "I didn't ask you to. But you did it anyway, and now here we are."

"I was drunk on humiliation, not alcohol. It didn't mean anything."

Something shifted in his expression at that — quick, controlled, gone almost before I registered it. "I know exactly what it meant."

"Then explain it to me."

"Not yet."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I'm giving you today."

I opened my mouth to argue further, but he was already glancing past me again, toward the small window overlooking the street, where the crowd outside had grown considerably since I'd first looked down.

"You should also know," he said, "that by tonight, every pack in this territory will have heard exactly whose attention you caught last night. Whatever protection you had as Xavier Cross's fiancée is gone. What you have instead is considerably bigger, and considerably more dangerous to refuse."

My pulse spiked. "Dangerous how?"

He didn't answer that either. Instead, he reached past me, lifted the garment bag off my closet door with two fingers, and held it out to me like the conversation was already finished.

"I'll give you ten minutes to pack whatever actually matters to you," he said. "Everything else, I'll have replaced."