Chapter 4

CHLOE'S POV 

Two weeks had passed since he iced me out.

Two weeks since he said those words…“You should learn not to stay where you’re not needed”...and ripped something quiet and blooming out from under me.

I’d stopped bringing him tea.

I no longer wait at his office doorway, waiting to see if the steel in his eyes would soften.

I was professional,efficient, Cold and didn't let my emotions get the best of me.I learned that if I kept my voice low, my expression blank, and my replies short, he would stay on the other side of the wall he'd built.

And I’d stay on mine.

But that didn’t stop me from noticing things.

Like how he hadn’t laughed once since that night. Or how he barely touched the catered lunch trays brought in for meetings. Or how, every now and then, I would catch him looking at me with this unreadable expression like he wanted to say something but was holding back.

I should’ve let it go.

But soft doesn’t mean weak.And just because he chose silence didn’t mean I didn’t still feel everything he did.

---

“Here you go,” Nina dropped a chocolate protein bar on top of my desk. 

“You look like you are about to kill someone.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“You always say that when you’re grinding your teeth.”

I gave her a look. “Why are you so good at reading me?”

“Because I used to be you,” she said, tilting her head toward Elias’s closed door. “Except I lasted four days.”

“You worked for him?”

“Oh, no. God, no.” She smirked. “I flirted with him at a company gala once. He looked at me like I was a calendar reminder that didn’t belong in his schedule.”

I snorted.

“He’s not evil,” she continued, more serious now. “He just… doesn’t know how to let people get close without clawing them away.”

“So I noticed.”

She studied me for a moment. “You want my advice?”

“No, but you’re going to give it anyway.”

She grinned. “Don’t wait for him to wake up. Men like Elias? They only realize what they want when they think they’ve lost it.”

...

That same afternoon, Elias called me into his office for the first time in a week.

When I entered, he didn’t look up from his monitor.

“I need you to sit in on a call with the Zurich team,” he said. “They’ve pushed twice. I want it resolved today.”

I stood across from his desk, pad in hand. “Would you like me to schedule a translation assistant for the—”

“No. You’ll handle it.”

He finally looked at me.

And the air shifted.

His gaze was colder than I remembered. Not angry. Just unreadable.

“I trust you to manage it.”

It was the first kind thing he’d said in fourteen days.

And it only made me more angry.

“You trust me now,” I said before I could stop myself. “After two weeks of barely acknowledging my existence?”

He blinked.

I was shaking. Quietly. Professionally. But still.

“You cut me out. For what? Because I noticed you didn’t eat lunch? Because I brought you tea?”

“I asked for space,” he said flatly.

“No,” I snapped. “You asked for silence. You wanted obedience. Not presence. Not concern.”

A beat of dead silence stretched between us.

Then,calmly he said, “I didn’t ask for your concern.”

That hurt more than it should have.

I nodded once. “Understood.”

I turned, hands shaking, chest tight, and left the office.

...

The conference call with Zurich was a blur. I translated more emotion than words, negotiated through strained accents and overlapping legal terms, and managed to de-escalate a multi-million-dollar impasse—all while pretending my lungs weren’t tight and my heart wasn’t halfway shattered.

Afterward, Gavin stopped me in the break room.

“You okay?”

I shook my head. “He’s impossible.”

Gavin leaned over the counter, arms crossed. “He’s afraid. He’s been that way since his mother died. You didn’t hear it from me.”

I froze. “I didn’t know.”

“No one talks about it. It happened when he was eighteen. Changed him. Before that? He was just intense. After? He became…” He paused for a second. “What he is now.”

“That doesn’t justify how he treats people.”

“No,” Gavin agreed. “But it explains why he panics when someone sees past the armor.”

I met his gaze. “He still hurt me.”

“And that’s on him,” Gavin said, quiet now. “But don’t pretend like he’s not hurting too.”

---

That night, I left early.

At least, early by Rourke Holdings standards 5:00 p.m.

The elevator ride was long or maybe I was just too tired.

I walked out into the cold street of Manhattan,and decided to take a walk instead of using the subway.

Halfway down the block, I felt someone following me.

I turned around.

There he stood, his coat unbuttoned, his tie loosened and his dark hair damp from the cold.

“I am sorry” he said.

It wasn’t dramatic.

It wasn’t loud.

It wasn’t even… convincing.

But that was the last thing I expected.Elias Rourke apologizing to me.

I looked at him and asked “Do you even know what you’re apologizing for?”

He hesitated for a second. “For acting like you didn’t matter.”

The streetlight kept changing above us.

I looked into his eyes.

“Why now?” I whispered.

He looked away,his expression blank,as if the answer was written on the sidewalk.

“Because today you walked out of my office,” he said. “And I didn’t know if you were ever going to walk back in.”

My throat tightened.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he added, calmly now. “I know I have said hurtful words to you, and made you feel unimportant.”

I really wanted to believe him,but I just couldn't.

“You don’t get to decide when I am important,” I said, my voice shaking. “You don’t get to say hurtful things then expect me to still be the same.”

“I know,” he said. “and I am sorry for the hurtful words.”

I didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

I just stood there and watched him walk away,but not with the same cold expression but a calm expression.