CHAPTER 1: PART TWO

"I think I need to tell you how I really feel about you."

The words were out before she could catch them. For a moment, the office went completely still, and Mia could hear the clock on the wall, a dry, steady ticking she had never noticed in three years.

Alexander set down his pen. "What do you mean?"

She had expected him to understand at once. His calm question made everything harder. Her thumbnail found the edge of her tablet and pressed into it. "I've been trying not to say this for a long time."

"Say what?"

"I have feelings for you."

He didn't move. She had pictured so many versions of this moment, surprise, a smile, even in her most foolish hours, him telling her he felt the same. She hadn't pictured this silence. But she had come too far to stop, so she kept her eyes on his face and went on.

"I know you're my boss, and I know that makes this complicated." Her voice wobbled, and she steadied it. "I told myself it would fade. That it was just because we worked together every day." She gave a short, nervous laugh. "It didn't. It got worse."

Alexander leaned back in his chair. "Mia,"

"Please let me finish."

He stopped.

"I know when you're tired," she said, "because you rub your watch."

His eyes dropped to his wrist, then came back up. "I do?"

"All the time. You don't notice." She almost smiled. "I do. I notice everything about you, and I don't know how to stop, and I'm not asking you to change anything. I'm not asking for a relationship." Her fingers had gone cold. She curled them tighter around the tablet. "I just couldn't keep pretending that I don't love you."

The word sat between them. She couldn't take it back now.

"I love you," she said again, quietly, so he would know she meant it.

Alexander rose from his chair. He came around the desk slowly and stopped a few feet away from her.

"How long?"

"Almost three years."

His eyebrows lifted a fraction. "The whole time you've worked for me."

"Not at first. After a few months."

He looked away toward the window and the rain, and Mia studied his profile for any clue. She found none. That frightened her more than anything he could have said.

"I didn't know," he said at last.

"I know."

"How did I not know?"

"Because I never told you."

"You could have."

"I was afraid."

"Of me?"

"That you would look at me differently." She shrugged, a small, helpless movement. "I like working for you. I respect you. I didn't want this to ruin it."

"You should have told me."

"Why?"

He opened his mouth and closed it again. "I don't know."

The answer hurt more than she'd expected. She smiled anyway because it was easier than the alternative. "I knew this was a bad idea."

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"It feels like I did."

"You didn't." He took half a step closer. "Are you embarrassed?"

"No." It wasn't quite true. She was terrified, but she had no intention of letting him see it. "I think I've said enough."

He seemed to search for words, and that surprised her. Alexander Vale could talk his way through a boardroom full of hostile investors. Now he stood in front of her, quiet, one hand half raised as though he'd forgotten what it was for.

"I appreciate your honesty," he said finally.

Something in her chest folded in on itself, very gently. "Thank you."

"I mean it."

"I know."

He studied her a moment longer. "You should go home."

She nodded. "Okay."

She was almost to the door when he spoke again.

"Mia."

She looked back.

"Get some rest."

"I will."

She walked out and let the door close behind her. Then she leaned against the wall in the empty corridor, shut her eyes, and breathed. Her hands were still shaking. But under the fear, strangely, there was something lighter. She had carried this alone for three years. Now it was out of her, and whatever came next, she had been honest.

She packed her bag slowly. Switched off the desk lamp. Glanced once at his closed door and waited, foolishly, for it to open.

It didn't.

In the elevator, she rested her head against the cool mirrored wall and whispered to nobody, "At least he knows now."

,

Alexander stayed where she'd left him, standing beside his desk, looking at the door.

For the first time all evening, he wasn't thinking about tomorrow's meetings or the presentation or the figures on slide seven. He was thinking about Mia, in the doorway, with rain still in her hair.

Three years. She had loved him for three years and he hadn't seen it.

He sat down slowly. His eyes fell on the paper cup she had brought that morning. He picked it up and drank. It had gone cold and bitter, exactly as black as he liked it. He should have thrown it away. Instead, he set it carefully back on the blotter, as if it might break.

I love you.

Women had said those words to him before. People had said they admired him, envied him, and needed him. Mia had never asked him for anything. She had stood in front of him with unsteady hands and told him the truth. He thought of how she always arrived with his coffee at the exact right minute, how she stayed late without being asked, how she saw things nobody else did. He had filed all of it under job description. Now he wasn't sure.

He leaned back and closed his eyes. And then, because he couldn't stop himself, he reached for the black leather folder.

The courier had brought it at four. His father's initials were pressed into the cover. Alexander had read what was inside twice already, but he opened it again and turned to the first page, where a name sat at the top in a clean black type.

Mia Carter.

Below it, a list of dates and transfers to an outside account and a summary in his father's neat, cold language. Confidential files. Sold to a competitor. Three months of it, maybe more. At the bottom, in his father's handwriting, a single line:

Ask yourself what she really wants.

He had told himself it couldn't be true. He had told himself that twice. But his father had never been wrong about people, and Alexander had spent his whole life learning what happened to men who trusted the wrong ones. Weak men get used. He could hear it in the old voice, patient and flat.

He read the page a third time. Then he looked at the cold coffee and at the closed door, and something in his face went still.

His phone buzzed. A message about tomorrow's schedule. Any other night, he would have called her at once.

Instead, he picked up the phone and found her name, and his thumb hovered over it. He almost pressed it.

Then, slowly, he turned the phone face down on top of the folder.