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Chapter 45 — Jealous, This Time It Hurts

last update Veröffentlichungsdatum: 25.06.2026 08:49:12

-POV Derby

The glass corridor connecting the main office tower to the Grand Horizon executive pavilion always felt like walking through a greenhouse. By three in the afternoon, the sun hit the panes directly, throwing sharp, blinding squares of light across the polished concrete floor. It was hot, bright, and completely packed with corporate managers heading toward the weekend closing sessions.

I walked with a heavy plastic crate clamped under my arms, filled with the final printed copies of
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  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 45 — Jealous, This Time It Hurts

    -POV Derby The glass corridor connecting the main office tower to the Grand Horizon executive pavilion always felt like walking through a greenhouse. By three in the afternoon, the sun hit the panes directly, throwing sharp, blinding squares of light across the polished concrete floor. It was hot, bright, and completely packed with corporate managers heading toward the weekend closing sessions. I walked with a heavy plastic crate clamped under my arms, filled with the final printed copies of the third-quarter integration audits. My shoulder muscles were tight, aching from a long day of data entry, but the skin on the back of my neck felt entirely different. It still carried that quiet, lingering memory of his fingers from last night—the slow, heavy warmth of his palm holding me against the leather sofa while the tower slept. *Derby.* He had whispered my name like it was an anchor, like he actually needed the glitch to survive the machine his father had built for him. I’d let mysel

  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 44 — The First Real Touch

    -POV Derby I sat still on the leather sofa, the digital tablet in my lap displaying a list of fuel-surcharge adjustments that had long stopped making sense. The take-out containers had been cleared away, and the amber light from the desk lamp threw a warm, quiet glow across the hardwood floor, stopping just short of our feet. Jordan hadn't moved back to his desk. He remained sitting on the adjacent section of the sofa, his long legs stretched out, his eyes fixed on the city lights blinking through the glass window. The sharp, restless energy that usually drove him to pace the room or check his inbox every three minutes had entirely faded. He looked quiet. Almost still. "You're staring, Derby," he murmured, not turning his head. The gravel in his voice was softer now, muffled by the late hour and the half-empty glass of whiskey sitting on the side table. "I'm looking at the logistics data," I lied, my voice flat but lacking its usual defensive edge. "The tablet is upside down," Jo

  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 43 — Too Comfortable

    -POV Derby The take-out cartons from the Thai place on 45th Street were scattered across the low glass coffee table, alongside three different printouts of the revised shipping manifests. It was almost ten at night. The cleaning crew down the hall had already finished their pass on the executive wing, leaving the forty-second floor in that deep, absolute quiet that usually signaled it was time to leave. Instead, I was sitting on the edge of the plush leather sofa, my legs tucked under me, laughing so hard my chest actually ached. "You did not say that to a federal auditor," I gasped, holding the paper cup of iced tea like a shield as I looked across the table at him. "Tell me you didn’t." Jordan was leaning back against the armrest of the heavy chair opposite me, his charcoal suit jacket draped over the back of his desk chair and his white sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He had his glass of whiskey resting against his knee, the ice long melted, and for the first time since I’d kn

  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 42 — Routine That Isn’t Normal

    -POV Derby The three-week mark of the Vanguard integration phase arrived without a corporate announcement, but my life had already quietly restructured itself around a brand-new set of coordinates. By mid-November, the frantic, high-stakes panic of our first few encounters had settled into something far more terrifying: a routine. It didn't start with a formal agreement, and we definitely didn't sit down to draft a memo about it. It just happened, sliding into the cracks of the daily office grind until the boundaries between my actual job and my secret life became completely blurred. Every Tuesday and Thursday night, the pattern was exactly the same. The digital clock on my twenty-fourth-floor monitor would click past 7:30 PM, the fluorescent lights overhead shifting into the automated evening energy-saving mode. The rest of the operations pool would be long gone, their chairs neatly tucked into their particle-board partitions. Then, my private inbox would chime with a single, une

  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 41 — Stay

    -POV Derby The raw taste of the whiskey on his tongue was still burning in the back of my throat long after he pulled away. Jordan’s forearm stayed pressed flat against the painted concrete wall right above my shoulder, his massive frame creating a shadow that completely blocked out the pale fluorescent lighting of the utility corridor. His breathing was heavy, the fabric of his white shirt rising and falling against my chest with a slow, disciplined rhythm that felt entirely too loud in the narrow hallway. I kept my hands flat against his chest, feeling the hard, steady thud of his heart beneath my fingers. Every single self-preserving instinct I had left was screaming at me to use this exact pocket of air to push him back, to grab my cardboard box of compliance logs, and to finally take the exit door behind him. The boundary lines hadn't changed. Tamara was still out there in the light of the conservatory, and the multi-billion-dollar pre-nuptial agreements were still sitting on

  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 40 — He Still Chooses to Stay

    -POV Derby The industrial copier in the restricted alcove finally went quiet, its cooling fan letting out a long, mechanical sigh that felt entirely too relatable. I stacked the freshly printed compliance sheets into the cardboard file box, my hands functioning on pure muscle memory while my brain remained completely numb. *You don't belong here.* The phrase had settled into the marrow of my bones, heavy, cold, and irrefutable. I looked down at the box in my arms. This was my boundary line. These white pages, the cheap toner scent, the stiff fabric of my mass-market blazer—this was my actual coordinates on the map. Jordan could talk about wanting the glitch when the doors were locked on the forty-second floor, but the second the sun came up, his life belonged to a shipping heiress who wore emerald silk like a birthright. I was done playing the hidden anomaly in his perfect system. I was going to deliver these files to the administrative drop box, take the service elevator down to

  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 38 — Tamara Steps In

    -POV Derby The dining pavilion at the Grand Horizon was designed to look like an indoor conservatory, full of glass panels, massive white orchids, and enough sunlight to make everyone look like they had never worked a forty-hour week in their lives. By twelve-thirty, the room was packed. The noise

  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 37 — You’re Mine (Without Saying It)

    -POV Derby The logistics seminar in the main hall was turning into an absolute nightmare by eleven-thirty. The air conditioning in the pavilion was struggling against the heat of a hundred people packed into the tiered seating rows, and the volume in the room had escalated from a polite corporate

  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 36 — Public Tension

    -POV Derby The main lobby of the Grand Horizon grand pavilion was a completely different beast at ten in the morning. The dark, moody romance of the evening gala was gone, replaced by the sharp, unforgiving glare of daylight cutting through the massive glass domes. It was a high-traffic hub for th

  • One Night, Wrong Man   Chapter 35 — The Line Blurs

    -POV Derby The folder with the compliance logs stayed on the corner of his desk, completely forgotten. By the time the office clock ticked past 8:00 PM, the tense, transactional energy that usually defined the forty-second floor had completely dissolved. We didn't scramble to fix our clothes, and

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