Chapter 2:Mr. Perfect favorite compliant

Zoe's POV

“He said the towels were folded wrong.”

Elena almost choked on her coffee.

“Wrong?”

“In halves. Like some kind of crime.”

Zoe dropped onto the stairwell step beside her and pulled off her apron. She untied it harder than she needed to, still annoyed about what had happened upstairs.

“Eight months, Elena. Eight whole months of thirds and quarters and ‘the sheets need to be tucked at a forty-five-degree angle.’ And do you know what he has never said to me?”

Elena took another sip of her coffee.

“Let me guess.”

“Thank you.”

Zoe lifted one finger before Elena could say anything else.

“Not once. Not for the meals I cook. Not for the dry cleaning I take all the way across town. Not even for the time I got his goddaughter to stop screaming during the worst tantrum ever while he hid in his study like a coward.”

Elena laughed.

It was a low, warm laugh. It was the kind of laugh that had helped Zoe survive her first scary month in the Blackwood apartment.

Back then, Zoe had not known where anything belonged. She had spent the first few weeks afraid of making mistakes.

And Julian Blackwood had not made things easier.

The man had looked at her from the first day as if she were a dirty mark on something expensive that he had not yet found the time to clean.

“He's not a coward,” Elena said.

“He is.”

“He's just…”

Elena paused, looking for the right words.

“Zoe, the man eats dinner alone every single night. His mother left when he was twelve. His father worked him almost to death, then died and left him a company with three thousand employees. And he doesn't even have one person who calls him just to ask how he's doing.”

She shrugged.

“Cut him some slack.”

“I'll cut him some slack the day he learns how to say please.”

Elena smiled.

“You love this job.”

“I love not being homeless,” Zoe replied.

The joke came out sharper than she meant it to.

Elena noticed.

Of course she did.

Elena knew Zoe well enough to know when there was something behind her jokes. But, thankfully, she also knew better than to ask questions when Zoe wasn't ready to answer them.

Because the truth was, Zoe did love some parts of the job.

She loved the quiet mornings before the city fully woke up.

She loved standing in the kitchen and looking out at the beautiful view.

She loved the fact that, for the first time in her adult life, she had a bed that was actually hers.

A room that was hers.

A door that she could lock and know that nobody would suddenly walk in.

That meant more to her than most people would understand.

Zoe had spent eighteen years moving from one foster home to another. She had learned very early that a house and a home were not always the same thing.

She had also learned something else.

People who had the most did not always think they owed anyone anything.

Not kindness.

Not respect.

And definitely not a simple thank-you.

Julian Blackwood seemed to fit that idea perfectly.

With his expensive suits, cold blue eyes, and endless complaints about everything, he was exactly the kind of rich man Zoe had promised herself she would never depend on.

Especially not a man who could complain about how a towel was folded.

She shook her head.

“Tomorrow,” Zoe said as she stood up, “I'm saying something.”

Elena looked up at her.

“You say something every day.”

“I mean really saying something this time.”

Zoe brushed the back of her uniform.

“If he wants to treat me like I'm just the help, fine. I'll do my job. But I'm not going to stand there and take everything he says as if I don't have a spine.”

Elena raised her coffee cup.

“To spines.”

Zoe laughed and lifted her water bottle.

“To spines.”

Their bottles touched lightly.

For a few seconds, Zoe forgot about Julian.

She smiled and headed back upstairs to finish preparing dinner.

She had no idea that the next problem waiting for her had nothing to do with towels.

She didn't get her chance to speak to Julian the next morning.

She didn't get the chance the day after that either.

In fact, she didn't get the chance for three more days.

It happened on the third morning.

Zoe was on her way down to get some supplies from the storage room on the security level.

She wasn't really supposed to spend much time there, but she used that route whenever she could.

It saved her almost ten minutes.

Ten minutes might not sound like much, but when you worked in a huge penthouse and had a long list of things to do every day, ten minutes mattered.

She was walking down the hallway when she almost stepped on something.

She stopped.

At first, she thought it was a piece of black plastic.

Then she looked closer.

It was a flash drive.

A small, black flash drive.

It had no name written on it.

No label.

Nothing.

It was lying partly under the edge of a trash bin outside Marcus Webb's office.

Zoe stared at it.

She looked around the hallway.

Nobody was there.

She looked at the flash drive again.

Not my business.

She almost kept walking.

Actually, she did walk past it.

One step.

Two steps.

Three.

Then she stopped.

Something inside her told her to go back.

Maybe it was the part of her that had grown up moving between foster homes.

Over the years, she had learned that important things did not always announce themselves.

Sometimes they were small.

Sometimes they were easy to miss.

And sometimes they were lying quietly on the floor, waiting for someone to notice them.

Zoe turned around.

She walked back to the flash drive and bent down.

She picked it up.

It was smooth and black.

There was still a little warmth on it, as if someone had only recently been carrying it in their pocket.

Zoe turned it over in her fingers.

Nothing.

No name.

No number.

No clue about who it belonged to.

“I'll give it to him tomorrow,” she whispered to herself.

She meant Marcus.

“It's probably nothing.”

She slipped the flash drive into the pocket of her apron.

“Probably just some boring security file. I'll hand it over and forget about it.”

That was the plan.

A simple plan.

Pick it up.

Give it back.

Forget about it.

She almost believed herself.

Zoe continued toward the elevator.

She had taken only three steps when she heard a voice.

She stopped immediately.

It was Marcus.

His voice came from around the corner.

He was speaking to someone Zoe couldn't see.

His voice was low and serious.

“...can't keep stalling.”

Zoe's hand slowly moved toward the flash drive in her pocket.

She stayed where she was.

Marcus continued speaking.

“He wants it done before the gala. That's not negotiable.”

Zoe froze.

Her fingers tightened around the flash drive through the fabric of her apron.

Her heart suddenly started beating faster.

The quiet sound of the building seemed to disappear.

She could hear nothing except Marcus's voice and the sound of her own heartbeat.

She didn't move.

She barely breathed.

Who was he talking to?

What did he want done?

And what did the gala have to do with it?

Zoe knew she should leave.

She knew she shouldn't be listening.

This was not her business.

She was only the housekeeper.

She should turn around, go upstairs, finish her work, and forget she had heard anything.

But her feet wouldn't move.

She stayed behind the corner, listening.

There was something strange about Marcus's voice.

It wasn't the voice of someone talking about a normal work problem.

He sounded serious.

Almost angry.

And suddenly, the flash drive in Zoe's pocket didn't feel small anymore.

It felt heavy.

Very heavy.

She swallowed.

A cold feeling moved through her stomach.

A few minutes ago, she had thought she had found a simple flash drive that someone had dropped.

Now she wasn't so sure.

Maybe it really was nothing.

Maybe Marcus was talking about something completely normal.

Maybe the flash drive contained nothing important.

Zoe wanted to believe that.

She really did.

But something inside her told her otherwise.

She slowly stepped back.

Her hand was still holding the flash drive.

She looked toward the corner where Marcus was standing.

Then she looked toward the elevator.

She had to make a choice.

Walk away and pretend she had heard nothing.

Or find out what was going on.

Zoe took another slow step backward.

Her heart was still beating hard.

She didn't know it yet, but the little flash drive in her pocket was about to change everything.

And the worst part was that she had no idea who she had just gotten herself involved with.

Whatever was happening around Marcus...

It was not nothing.