Chapter Four: The Penthouse View

Eli’s shoes clicked sharply against the marble floor as the elevator doors opened directly into his penthouse.

Silence greeted him. Cool, high-ceiling, empty silence.

The space stretched out in understated opulence—glass walls revealing the glittering skyline, white marble countertops, clean lines, and soft lighting. A brushed steel kitchen gleamed in the far corner like it had never been used. Which, if Eli was being honest, it hadn’t. Most nights, he came home too tired to eat. Tonight was different though.

Tonight, he was smiling.

He dropped his backpack on the designer sofa—his fake employee badge still clipped to the strap—and headed straight for the massive windows. The city lay beneath him like an intricate circuit board. Lights blinked. Cars crawled. Life pulsed below.

But his mind wasn’t on the view.

He was still thinking about Callie.

Callie, with the sharp mouth and sarcastic wit, the one who had handed him a melting ice cream sandwich like it was a trophy. The one who didn’t seem impressed by anything—and wasn’t trying to be. Who didn’t laugh at his awkward flirting… because she didn’t even notice it was flirting. And somehow, that made her even more interesting.

He poured himself a glass of water from the fridge’s hidden panel and leaned on the countertop. The quiet was different from the breakroom buzz—no bad 2000s pop, no crinkly paper crown, no sarcastic banter drifting in from the corner where Marcus and Jazmin had debated whether Carl might secretly be a ghost.

Eli chuckled under his breath. Carl, who never blinked. Brenda, who ruled over everything with her Diet Coke bottle of mystery. Preston, who could turn anything into a contest. And Callie, of course—floating through the store like she owned nothing and owed no one.

They weren’t what he expected.

He'd started this whole masquerade with a certain cynicism. The board had called it reckless. PR had warned against it. But Eli had insisted. If he was going to run BuyMore—really run it—he needed to see it from the ground up. Not through glossy reports and filtered summaries. He needed the gritty details. The real store.

So he’d picked a location at random. Picked a name. Pulled out an old backpack and a pair of sneakers. Hired someone to cover for him as the “public” CEO temporarily. And he walked into BuyMore like he was nobody.

But now?

He wasn’t sure he wanted to go back.

He padded barefoot across the penthouse floor, glass in hand, and settled into the sectional near the window. His phone buzzed. A message from Madison—his assistant-slash-executive babysitter.

“Press request came in from Bloomberg. They want to feature you in their summer CEO spotlight. I told them you’re on a private retreat. You’re welcome.”

Eli rolled his eyes, smiling faintly, and typed back:

“Tell them I’m deep in spiritual retail reflection. And surviving on vending machine crackers.”

He put the phone down and stared at the ceiling.

It should’ve felt ridiculous, this whole double life. A billionaire in khakis and scuffed sneakers, stacking sanitary pads like he was on a mission from God. But it hadn’t felt ridiculous.

It felt… fun.

No one fawned over him. No one sucked up. No one acted like he was special. And the welcome party?

It was stupid. Cheap pizza, flat soda, a crown made of receipts. And yet it had felt more sincere than any charity gala he’d thrown in the last three years. People clapped for him. Not because they had to. Just because they could.

And then there was her.

He let his head fall back against the cushions.

Callie.

Sharp. Clever. Impossible to read.

He replayed the moment in the breakroom when he’d finally tried saying it plainly: “Would you maybe want to grab coffee sometime?”

She’d blinked like he’d asked her to solve a math equation. She hadn’t said no. But she hadn’t said yes either.

Eli smiled.

He liked that about her. That she didn’t fold easy. That she didn’t immediately turn her head just because someone looked at her like she was worth noticing. It made him want to earn it. Whatever “it” was.

But that came with a problem. A giant, penthouse-sized problem.

She didn’t know who he was.

Not really.

To Callie, he was Eli-the-newbie. Awkward, maybe a little charming, definitely clueless about feminine hygiene products, and only recently initiated into the BuyMore breakroom cult.

She didn’t know that he was also Elijah Dane Whitaker. Twenty-nine. Owner of forty-seven percent of the BuyMore corporation. CEO of Whitaker Holdings. A man who once accidentally crashed a cryptocurrency panel because his name was on the wrong itinerary and no one had the guts to correct him.

Would she look at him differently if she knew?

Would she talk to him the same way?

Would she laugh, or would she recoil, or would she assume he was just slumming it for sport?

Eli rubbed his eyes and stood, walking toward the massive bookshelf lining the back wall. He didn’t read half the titles there—most were gifts or meant for optics. But in the corner was a small photo tucked behind the frame of a business degree: his father, grinning beside a rusting shelf in the first BuyMore store. Back when they had only one.

“Know what you’re doing, son?” his father used to ask.

Eli would nod.

But tonight, he wasn’t sure.

There was a knock on the penthouse door—soft, deliberate.

Eli frowned.

No one ever knocked. Not up here.

He walked over, checked the monitor. It was Emile—his driver-slash-bodyguard-slash-confidant since childhood. The man had once broken a champagne flute on a yacht just by standing still too long and making people nervous.

Eli opened the door.

Emile stood tall, coat folded over his arm.

“Just checking in, sir. You’re not responding to security check-ins.”

Eli blinked. “I turned my earpiece off.”

“I assumed as much. You’ve been offline for ten hours.”

“I was... stacking tampons.”

Emile raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“I’m fine,” Eli added. “Really.”

Emile gave a slow nod. “The security team is concerned about your continued immersion.”

“It’s not immersion. It’s... research. Field work.”

“You came home with cheese dust on your sleeves.”

Eli glanced down. “Marcus opened a bag of chips with too much enthusiasm.”

“You also have a paper crown in your backpack.”

“That,” Eli said, walking back into the living room, “was earned.”

Emile stepped inside, surveyed the room. “Do you intend to keep this charade going?”

“It’s not a charade,” Eli muttered. “It’s work.”

“You have access to every store camera and employee file. You could’ve done your research from here.”

“That’s not the point.”

Emile paused. “Is this about the woman?”

Eli looked up sharply.

“She was on the corner monitor earlier,” Emile said, mildly. “The one above your fridge. The feed was muted. But I saw your face.”

Eli said nothing.

“She doesn’t know who you are.”

“That’s kind of the whole idea.”

Emile clasped his hands behind his back. “And what happens when she does?”

Eli stared out the window again. The city shimmered. Cars flowed like rivers of light.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

They stood there in silence.

Then Eli said, more to himself than to Emile, “I like it there. At the store. I like them. They’re weird. And honest. And sort of broken, but... real. Nobody’s pretending to be anything.”

“You’re pretending,” Emile said.

Eli nodded slowly. “I know.”

He walked over to the table, opened his backpack, and pulled out the receipt crown. He placed it on his head, slightly askew.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Like a very expensive liar.”

Eli grinned. “Perfect.”

Emile sighed, exasperated but used to this.

“I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”

Eli saluted him with his water glass. “Tell the board I’m still alive.”

As the door clicked shut behind Emile, Eli sank back onto the couch. He reached for his phone, hovered over Callie’s contact.

They’d only exchanged numbers briefly at the end of the night, after Marcus had insisted “real teams stay connected.” She’d rolled her eyes but typed it in anyway.

His thumb hovered over the keyboard.

He typed:

“Let me know if you ever feel like that coffee.”

He hesitated.

Then, backspaced.

And instead wrote:

“Had fun tonight. Thanks for not laughing directly at me.”

He hit send.

Set the phone down.

And leaned back against the couch as the city buzzed beneath him, a boy-king in a paper crown, sitting high above a life he wasn’t sure he wanted anymore...