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Chapter 21 — The Price of Wanting
Tanggal publikasi:
2026-06-02 08:31:26
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One Night, Wrong Man CHAPTER 100 — The Choice
*POV Derby* The heavy double doors of the boardroom swung inward without a sound, sealing seventy executive storeys above the street noise of central Manhattan. My knuckles were white against the strap of my leather briefcase as I smoothed my grey pencil skirt and pulled out my chair at the secondary seating row. I didn't glance toward the head of the table. I kept my chin level and my eyes locked strictly on the blank notepad in front of me, though my skin burned with the memory of the cold sub-basement archive twelve hours prior. The air inside the room was suffocating, thick with expensive aftershave, sharp espresso, and the quiet, terrible weight of a family empire preparing to purge an infection. Victor Vasquez sat at the center, flanked by four senior board directors whose collective tenure predated my high school graduation. To his left sat Tamara Hayden, radiant in a structured terracotta blazer, her slender fingers tracing the edge of an ivory fountain pen. "Item thr
One Night, Wrong Man CHAPTER 99 — Too Late
*POV Derby* My words hung in the quiet basement archive, heavier than the cold concrete ceiling pressing down above us. Jordan’s hand, still hovering near my jaw where he had tucked that strand of hair, froze mid-air. The heat of his fingers was inches away, but the distance between us felt like a chasm wide enough to swallow the entire city. "The problem isn't that you don't know how, Jordan," I repeated, my voice dropping until it was barely a murmur, flat and devoid of the panicked edge from moments before. "The problem is that you're always late." Jordan’s chest rose on a sharp, silent intake of air. His dark eyebrows pulled together, a flicker of confusion crossing his exhausted face before settling into something guarded and tense. "Late?" "Always," I said. I looked down at his unbuttoned collar, at the pulse beating hard and fast against his neck, then raised my eyes back to his. "Every single time I finally rebuild my walls and decide to survive this job on my own, you b
One Night, Wrong Man CHAPTER 98 — Stay
*POV Derby* A stack of blue layout proofs slipped from my hand and scattered across the wide drafting table, sliding over the smooth pine surface until two sheets fluttered onto the floor. I didn't reach down to gather them. My fingers stayed braced against the edge of the desk, my knuckles pale under the harsh yellow glow of the single desk lamp. The design archive on the sub-basement floor was always cold after seven in the evening. It smelled of old newsprint, binding glue, and metallic ink—a forgotten corner of the Vasquez building where nobody came looking for executive updates or board compliance memos. I had come down here to hide from the quiet whispers on thirty-four, pulling three seasons of archived project binders just to give my hands something to hold. The heavy steel door at the end of the narrow aisle groaned on its hinges. Footsteps echoed off the concrete floor, deliberate and heavy, cutting through the silence of the basement storage. I didn't need to tu
One Night, Wrong Man CHAPTER 97 — The Distance I Choose
*POV Derby* An empty plastic coffee lid rolled twice across the floorboard of my sedan before hitting the accelerator pedal. I didn't reach down to grab it. My hands remained fixed on the steering wheel, my knuckles white against the dark leather, eyes pinned to the brake lights of the delivery truck idling in front of me. Victor Vasquez hadn't raised his voice once during breakfast. He hadn't threatened to fire me, blackball me from the industry, or strip my severance package. He had simply held up a mirror, showing me the exact shape of the wreckage Jordan and I were creating together. By the time I reached the thirty-fourth floor, the silence in the hallways was entirely different from yesterday’s panicked whispering. It was cold. Calculated. When I walked past the secondary compliance pod, Sarah kept her eyes strictly glued to her dual monitors, her fingers typing with aggressive speed. Marcus, who usually asked for my input on regional stress tests every Tuesday morning
One Night, Wrong Man CHAPTER 96 — The Chairman’s Warning
*POV Derby* The silver fork in my hand felt remarkably heavy. Instead of an interrogation room at headquarters or an ominous corporate conference hall, I sat at a polished mahogany dining table inside the private dining suite of the Grand Regency. Sunlight filtered through sheer silk drapes, reflecting off immaculate crystal stemware and white porcelain plates. Victor Vasquez sat opposite me. He moved with a deliberate, slow precision—slicing a piece of poached pear, setting his knife down without making a sound against the rim of the dish, and dabbing his lips with a linen napkin. An old man enjoying a quiet, lavish breakfast, looking like a benign patriarch rather than the ruthless founder who built a global empire from the ground up. "You aren't touching your tea, Miss Vance," Victor observed softly. His eyes were pale grey, completely devoid of the restless intensity that burned in his son’s face, yet every line around his jaw radiated absolute authority. "It’s a hand-harve
One Night, Wrong Man CHAPTER 95 — The One Who Took the Blame
*POV Derby* Daniel’s hand shook slightly as he slid the server audit logs across the polished mahogany boardroom table. I didn't reach for the paper. My gaze remained glued to the three dark words typed on the top line: USER_ID: D_VANCE. "The command to swap the primary deck with the corrupted file originated from your local terminal at eight-twelve AM, Miss Vance," Arthur Pendelton, the senior board chairman, stated coldly. He leaned back in his leather swivel chair, resting his joined fingers over his rounded stomach. "Nobody else logged into your station." "I was in the east prep lounge at eight-twelve," I said, keeping my posture straight and my voice anchored, even as my pulse thudded wildly in my ears. "Anyone with administrative network access could have spoofed my IP address while I was away from my desk." "A convenient defense," Pendelton sneered, tapping his gold pen against the table. "The fact remains that an unvetted, deeply inappropriate personal photograph was di
One Night, Wrong Man Chapter 6 — Again
-POV Derby The first thing that brought me back to reality wasn’t the blinding sunlight cutting through the heavy velvet drapes. It was the sheer, suffocating quiet of the room. I blinked my eyes open, my brain taking a messy five seconds to remember exactly where I was. Penthouse suite. The Four
One Night, Wrong Man Chapter 5 — The Night.
-POV Derby Somewhere between freezing under Jordan Vasquez’s heavy gaze in the conference room and stepping into the private executive elevator, my brain completely short-circuited. I’d already decided to go upstairs. The rest was me desperately acting like this was still up for debate. The ride t
One Night, Wrong Man Chapter 4 — Impulse
-POV Derby I spent most of Thursday morning pretending my life hadn’t become significantly more complicated over the course of a single night. By the time I slipped into a seat near the back of the conference room, my presentation was already open on my laptop. The slides waited patiently on the s
One Night, Wrong Man Chapter 3 — Just a Name.
-POV Derby By Monday I’d almost convinced myself it was over. Not in some dramatic way. Just… closed. Like shutting a tab you left open too long and deciding not to open it again. I made coffee that tasted like nothing. Went to work. Answered emails acting like the weekend had never happened,
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