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Chapter 2

Author: Hayley
That sound should have stayed behind a locked door.

It definitely should not have come from Damian Moretti in the middle of a company celebration, with half the executive floor watching and Vanessa Crane turning stiff beside me.

Damian lowered his lashes for half a second. Color climbed to the sharp corners of his eyes, there and gone so quickly I would have missed it if I had not been staring at him like a fool.

Everyone traded glances. No one dared ask a question.

I held the velvet box against my chest and tried to look innocent, professional, and completely unaware that my boss had just reacted to my hand on a lipstick.

"Thank you, Mr. Moretti." I let my voice soften just enough to be dangerous. "I really like it."

Damian's jaw flexed.

[@BookTokAfterDark: One little "I like it" and he is losing the plot.]

[@SteamQueen: Sir gave her the remote and hoped for the best. Incredible planning.]

[@RomanceGremlin: This is high heat behavior. I am not blinking.]

So that was the kind of story I had landed in.

Not a quiet office romance, but one of those serials readers tagged spicy and then threatened to riot over whenever the author faded to black.

Ridiculous as it sounded, Damian's reaction had been real.

When the toast ended, he turned and headed for the private bathroom at the end of the corridor. His back stayed straight, but his pace was quicker than usual.

The comments lit up again.

[@MafiaMutt: Tactical retreat. He is not surviving this floor.]

[@SteamQueen: If she keeps that in her purse, he is done before lunch.]

[@SoftDomScholar: Wait. It only works for Nora? He absolutely planned this.]

Only me?

I looked down at the lipstick and felt heat gather under my skin.

I probably should have been angry. Normal men did not hand their crushes enchanted makeup and leave out the instruction manual. But before anger came something softer, something that made my chest ache.

So I had not imagined it.

Damian had been watching me too. He was just too proud, too careful, or too repressed to say, Nora, I want you.

I untied the ribbon and ran my thumb over the tube.

Somewhere down the corridor, a heavy thud came from behind the bathroom door.

The comments erupted.

[@MafiaMutt: He just braced himself against the wall. I am unwell.]

[@PageTurner88: Not a red flag. A walking blush flag.]

[@SteamQueen: The spice is already spicing.]

I bit back a smile.

"Nora."

Vanessa's voice came from behind me, sharp with fake amusement.

Before I could react, she reached over my desk and picked up the lipstick.

"It is just lipstick," she said, turning it between her fingers. "Why are you guarding it like a family heirloom? I do not even recognize the brand. Some little custom workshop, maybe. I cannot imagine why Damian would give you this."

My chest tightened. "Give it back."

Even if the comments were right and it did nothing in her hand, I hated seeing Vanessa touch it. It was Damian's gift. His awkward, maddening, far-too-intimate confession, even if he had been too much of a coward to put words around it.

Vanessa smiled wider. "Precious, is it? Nora, do not tell me you actually think he sees you differently."

Her voice carried just enough for the rest of the top floor to hear.

"Are you in love with Damian?"

My face went hot. "Do not be ridiculous."

The words had barely left my mouth when a cold voice sounded behind me.

"What are you discussing?"

I turned and saw Damian standing at the mouth of the corridor.

His expression was darker than before, and the flush around his eyes had not completely faded.

Vanessa instantly slipped into wounded innocence. "Damian, I only wanted to see the gift you gave Nora. She snapped at me."

Damian's gaze dropped to the lipstick in her hand.

The air went still.

"That belongs to her," he said, each word quiet and dangerous. "Who gave you permission to touch it? Put it back in the box. Wipe it clean first. Now."

Vanessa's fingers stiffened, but she did not dare disobey him. She pulled a tissue from the box on my desk, wiped the tube as if it had burned her, and placed it back in the velvet case. Her mouth compressed into a thin line.

For the first time, I was not afraid of her.

I picked up the case and gave her a pleasant smile. "Thanks, Vanessa. Next time you want to touch someone else's things, ask first."

Damian glanced at me, and something in that look tripped my heartbeat.

I held the box against my chest and, because apparently I had lost my mind, said very seriously, "Do not worry, Mr. Moretti. I will take excellent care of your lipstick. I will keep it close and make sure no one else touches it."

His eyes darkened.

[@BookTokAfterDark: "Keep it close"? Nora, ma'am.]

[@SoftDomScholar: She thinks she is being polite. She is actually flirting with a loaded weapon.]

[@MafiaMutt: He is fighting for his life behind that face.]

Damian said nothing.

He only turned and went back into his office.

Somehow, I had the feeling I had made things worse.
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  • The Heiress in the Dog Cage   Chapter 8

    I found out later that Damian could see the reader comments too.It happened the next morning. New York was blue with early light, and Damian was wrapped around me from behind, lazy and satisfied in a way that made him look nothing like the untouchable heir everyone feared.I reached for the water on the nightstand when a comment floated across my vision.[@BookTokAfterDark: A full night behind a fade-to-black? Author, count your days.]I nearly choked.Behind me, Damian laughed softly. "They still want more."I went stiff. Slowly, I turned my head. "You can see them?"He looked far too calm. "I have always been able to see them."My brain short-circuited.So when I first touched the lipstick, he saw the comments? When I called him repressed, compared him to a guard dog, and threatened him with Crimson Vow, he knew?Damian buried his face against my shoulder. His chest shook with quiet laughter."Don't be mad.""You knew I knew?""Eventually." He kissed my shoulder. "At first I thought

  • The Heiress in the Dog Cage   Chapter 7

    After we went public, I thought everything would become complicated.It did. Most of the trouble never reached me because Damian handled it before I even knew it existed.He did not ask me to quit or move me into some pretty, pointless role. Instead, he had legal redraw the top-floor reporting lines and promoted me to project coordinator."You are not my accessory," he said when he handed me the new badge. "If you stay at Moretti Holdings, you stay because you earned it."I told him he had finally said something human. Inside, I melted.That weekend, Damian took me to a private Moretti family charity dinner on the Upper East Side.The party was held in a century-old limestone mansion lined with black cars, dark suits, diamonds, champagne, cedar, and old money. It was the closest I had ever stood to his family world.Damian's father, Vincenzo Moretti, was still the man everyone listened to. If outsiders insisted on using an old-fashioned word, they would call him the Don. Damian was onl

  • The Heiress in the Dog Cage   Chapter 6

    The rumors exploded the next morning.The moment I stepped onto the top floor, everyone looked at me wrong. Vanessa sat at her desk with a little smile she could not quite hide. Less than an hour later, a woman in an expensive coat stormed into the office and stopped in front of my station."So you're the little assistant trying to steal my husband?"She was Martin Doyle's wife.She slapped a stack of printed messages onto my desk and accused me of ruining her marriage. She said Martin had spent money on me. She said girls like me would do anything to climb one floor higher.The surrounding employees backed away, but no one looked surprised.Clearly, they had already heard this version.I looked at Vanessa.She gave me a sweet, innocent smile."Nora, you're young. People make mistakes. But doubling down when everyone knows the truth only makes it worse."Something in me finally caught fire.I had a temper. I had simply spent two years being careful around Damian, careful in his world,

  • The Heiress in the Dog Cage   Chapter 5

    Martin recovered fast. He straightened, wiped the slime from his expression, and smiled like a loyal employee greeting his boss. "Mr. Moretti."Damian stepped into the elevator and looked him over. "Out."Martin nodded so quickly he almost folded in half, then slipped past him and disappeared.The doors closed again.Damian turned to me. "What did he do?"I said nothing.Not because I wanted to protect Martin. I wanted him fired, sued, and afraid of elevators for the rest of his life. But another anger had been sitting in my chest since noon.After the lounge, Damian had not explained, confessed, or named whatever we had become. He had only booked dinner, as if a restaurant reservation could make up for two years of silence and a lipstick that made him unravel in my hand.I had waited long enough.I did not want to keep guessing.Damian saw my face and started to panic."Nora, did I do something wrong?"He reached for me. I took the lipstick from my pocket and closed my fingers around

  • The Heiress in the Dog Cage   Chapter 4

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  • The Heiress in the Dog Cage   Chapter 3

    That night, in my tiny Brooklyn apartment, I set the velvet box on my vanity and stared at it until the rain outside turned the windows silver.The pizza place downstairs blinked red through my curtains. My apartment was small, ordinary, and worlds away from Damian's glass offices, private drivers, and Central Park views.Yet his lipstick sat under my lamp like a crack in that world had opened just wide enough for me.I reached for it, then pulled my hand back.I liked him. Too much.Because I liked him, I did not want to become someone who used the advantage he had handed me just because I could.The comments, naturally, had no such restraint.[@SteamQueen: He is in the shower. This is not a drill.][@KindleKiller: Hot water, tattoos, bad decisions. Perfect.][@RomanceGremlin: He looks less like an heir and more like a man being haunted by his crush.]I covered my face.Do not think about it. Which meant, of course, that I thought about it immediately.What did Damian look like withou

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