Leila Monroe, a bright but financially struggling intern, steps into the cold world of the Whitlock Group for a summer internship. She’s determined to stay professional until she collides with the CEO, Sebastian Whitlock. Their first encounter is electric and unsettling, igniting something dangerous between them. Sebastian is married, older, and coldly in control yet his eyes linger, and his silence speaks volumes. Leila tries to follow the rules. But power doesn’t follow rules.
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The First Glance Hurts the Most Leila Monroe’s POV If someone had told me that my summer internship would begin with chaos, I would have doubted and possibly wouldn’t have worn heels that blisters the feet. “Excuse me,” I muttered as I managed to pass between a pair of assistants gathered at the elevator side, clutching my tote like it was my armor. The building was made of glass, steel, and silence towered above me like it belonged in another different world that I didn’t belong to. Twenty-two floors up was the Whitlock Group, carved out in quiet power. Minimalist, cruelly pristine, expensive enough to make someone like myself feel disposable. My resume might’ve been plucked out from a sea of overachievers, but walking into that marble lobby, I knew one thing that everyone was replaceable including myself Everyone except him. Sebastian Whitlock. His name wasn’t just engraved on the walls of the building. It was evident into the way the doors closed too quickly and silently , how assistants barely breathed when speaking about him, how even the office plants seemed to stand straighter when his name was mentioned. Thought I hadn’t seen him yet. I have only heard the stories both the ones whispered, never written. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t fraternize. He never, ever let someone touches what he owns. I had promised herself i wouldn’t be stupid. That i wouldn’t be another intern who melted under the gaze of a man who would never, ever look her way. But I felt promises were very easy to make until I met the devil. And that was immediately before I saw him. --- It happened in the worst possible way to think. I was late. On the first day, I wore a new dress, frizzy curls pulled into a nice ponytail, and an overfilled coffee order nearly toppling in my little arms. I turned a corner too quickly and collided with a wall. Except the wall smelled like power and expensive rage. The coffee hit the floor. So did my phone. My dignity, she wasn’t sure. "I'm so so so sorry" i began, dropping to my knees. “Don’t move.” The voice wasn’t loud, but it didn’t have to be. It was slow, exacting. The kind of voice that didn’t need to raise itself to be obeyed. And when I looked up,my breath caught in my throat and eyes met the man behind it. Sebastian Whitlock. Tailored in black, six-foot-something of sleek composure, and eyes like frost pulled from a winter storm. The air around him shifted with precision. Men straightened in his presence. Women held their breath. And Me? I forgot every single rule I’d rehearsed. He looked at me like I was inconvenient. Not messy. Not pathetic. Just unexpected. His gaze swept over me and stopped at my name badge. “Miss Monroe.” His voice folded her name into something dangerous. “I…I again, I’m sorry. I was trying to find the creative department” “You were running.” His brow ticked, barely. “And not watching where you were going.” I swallowed. “No, sir.” A pause. Measured silence. Then something flickered. Something brief but dangerous. He crouched beside me, ignoring the spilled coffee like it never exist. “I don’t tolerate carelessness, Miss Monroe.” “It won’t happen again." “It won’t,” he echoed, standing. “Get up. You’re late. Anderson is waiting.” I blinked. “You… know who I’m interning under?” That same flicker in his eyes. “I know everything that enters my building. Especially when it doesn’t knock.” And then he walked past me. Not another word. Not even a glance. But the damage was already done. The moment I saw him, I was sure of two things. One was that Sebastian Whitlock wasn’t just powerful. He was lethal. And two no amount of rules could save me now. --- By noon, I still hadn’t stopped replaying it. The voice. The stare. The way he said “Miss Monroe” like he was tasting it. It was stupid. He probably didn’t remember me. Hell, I actually hoped he didn’t. “Eyes up, rookie,” supervisor Anderson grunted, snapping me back to my reality. “We’re going into a client pitch. Don’t speak. Don’t even think about blinking.” I nodded, adjusting my blazer. The glass doors of the conference room loomed ahead. Sleek, intimidating. And inside, seated like a god among mere mortals was him. Sebastian. Flanked by executives, his attention sharp and still. His fingers drummed the table once. Twice. The room held its breath. He looked up. And this time, he did see her. His gaze locked on me just for a second. Long enough to make my knees betray her. Long enough to make me forget how to walk. Something in his expression shifted. Recognition. Calculation. Then it was gone. The meeting began. And for the next hour, I barely heard a thing. --- Later, I escaped to the rooftop garden, the only place not swamped with egos and tailored stress. The sky was cool accompanied by the wind. But fate didn’t believe in mercy. “I find interns here when they’re crying.” The voice cut through the air. I turned around, heart slamming. “I’m not crying.” Sebastian stepped closer, one hand in his pocket, the other holding out my phone. “You dropped this,” he said. I took it slowly, trying not to let my fingers brush his. “Thank you, Mr. Whitlock.” He didn’t leave. Instead, his gaze roamed over me quiet, observant. Almost... cruel. “You’re not like the others,” he said finally. My throat dried. “I… I don’t know what that means.” “You will.” And with that, he turned and walked away. --- I stood there clueless long after he was gone, phone clutched tight in my palm. Not like the others. It was a warning. And maybe… A promise.Chapter Twenty-FourThe Knife’s EdgeLeila’s POVThe silence was a wound.It bled between us, filling the room thicker than smoke, sharper than any blade. My lips still burned from Sebastian’s kiss, my chest still ached with Blake’s broken plea, and yet I felt Damian’s shadow pressing from the corridor like he’d carved himself into the bones of the air.Three men, three hungers, three traps.And me, the foolish center of all of it.I wanted to scream. I wanted to vanish. I wanted God help me to be kissed again.Instead, I stood with my palms pressed flat to the desk, shaking like the wood might steady me.Sebastian hadn’t moved. He stood where I’d left him, chest rising like he’d swallowed fire, his hand white-knuckled against the desk edge. His eyes burned into mine, dark and endless, and I could still taste the desperation he’d poured into me.Blake was different. His face was pale, jaw tight, his fists trembling with restraint. He wasn’t fire he was stone. Breaking himself from the
Chapter Twenty-ThreeThe FractureSebastian’s POVThe door clicked shut behind her, and for the first time in years, I felt hollow.Leila’s voice still echoed in the room until then. A promise, a curse, a blade tucked neatly between my ribs.Blake stood across from me, chest heaving, his lip split, blood trailing the curve of his chin. He looked like a man who’d just watched his world slip from his grasp.We were both stripped bare in that silence, but Blake was the first to break it.“You don’t deserve her,” he spat, voice thick with fury.I let the words settle before I answered calmly with a sharp precision. “Neither do you.”His fist tightened at his side. I could see the tremor in his knuckles, the urge to lunge at me, to spill blood just to prove he could.“You think this is a game?” His voice cracked with something beyond rage something rawer, deeper. “Dragging her into your hunger, your chaos, like she’s a piece you get to move on the board?”“She’s not a piece,” I snapped, s
Chapter Twenty-TwoThe Office GlassSebastian’s POVThe sound of the watchers at the door gnawed at my ears like teeth scraping bone. Damian’s smile burned into me, that damn key clenched in his fist, the promise of power sealed in his silence.But it was her face I couldn’t shake….Leila’s face was pale, furious, frightened… and mine at that point didn’t matter.Damian had set the board, but I refused to be his pawn. I wouldn’t let him write the ending for me, not when her choice still lived raw in the air. She had moved toward him first but hesitation was not finality.I caught her wrist again but this time she didn’t pull back.“Come with me,” I whispered…not a plea, not a question it was a command laced with desperation.Her lips parted to argue, but the watchers slammed harder, and in the blur of chaos was Blake wrestling for breath, Damian standing like a statue carved from shadow I dragged her out.Down the corridor, and into the office, door slammed shut in silence of the kind
Chapter Twenty-one The Quiet MathematicsDamian’s POVLeila moves immediately not to Blake nor to Sebastian but rather to me.Her hand trembles, but it lifts anyway, closing the gap between us. She doesn’t touch my palm, but the intent is there, obviously her choice has been made.Sebastian reacts instantly as his hand clamps around her wrist, jerking her back. The key flashes in his other hand, silver teeth biting his skin.“She doesn’t choose you,” he spits. “She never will.”Leila yanks against him. “Let me go.”I don’t need to move. I don’t need to raise my voice. I only just said “You’re holding her too tightly.”Sebastian bares his teeth. “You gave her the key to destroy her and now you think I’ll let you finish what you started?”“Not think,” I replied. “Know.”Blake cuts in then, shoving himself between them, forcing Sebastian to take back a step. His body is rigid, ready to break if it means shielding her.“Both of you are done,” he snaps. “She isn’t a prize. She isn’t a we
Chapter Twenty The Quiet MathematicsDamian’s POVThe knock silences them.Of course it does.Three people, three different equations, all suspended by a sound they cannot solve.Inside, Sebastian stills first. Always the predator steadily pausing, calculating, deciding whether the sound is prey or rival because he never has a partner not even his wife. He will assume the latter. He has always assumed the world spins around challengers waiting for him.Leila’s breath stutters next. She isn’t afraid of the noise itself. She is afraid of what she doesn’t know always the impatient and she is clever enough to know she doesn’t know much. That awareness is both her strength and her fracture.Blake reacts last as he took steps closer, hand already tightening into a fist just like a protective reflex or maybe loyal reflex just perfectly the sort of reflex that kills men like him early, because loyalty is faster than reason.I could predict their exact words before they speak.Sebastian: shar
Chapter NineteenThe Quiet MathematicsDamian’s POVStillness is an equation, I know this because I have lived long enough to measure silence like currency.And tonight, the silence tells me everything.Sebastian has moved. Blake has followed. Leila has chosen neither, which is a choice in itself.I should let it play out and let Sebastian do what he does best seduce, consume, fracture. Let Blake do what he does worst believe. Let Leila dangle between them like the spark in dry grass, burning before she even knows she’s on fire.But I am not as patient as the watchers.Nor as cruel as Sebastian.Nor as faithful as Blake.I am something else. Something they keep forgetting because they want me to be only one thing: brother, traitor, ghost.But I am mathematician before all of it. I keep the numbers.And the numbers say this: if Leila keeps the key, the Crown will find her. If Sebastian takes it, the game accelerates too fast. If Blake shields her, he dies before dawn.So the numbers
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