Chapter 2–New Girl, Old Scars

🌿 Rider's  Point of View

I've always believed the most dangerous cracks don't shout. They hum like a light about to burn out, or the silence in a room that feels too sharp around the edges.

The office burned too brightly that morning.

Not sunlight, as the city had woken to a curtain of low, grey cloud, but the harsh overhead fluorescents buzzing against the hum of conversation and the clatter of keyboards. I didn't like mornings like this. They reminded me of the numerous early meetings and the days when my first marriage was coming apart in quiet, invisible ways.

From my corner office, I had a perfect view of the bullpen. The glass walls gave the illusion of distance, but not much escaped me in this place: numbers, performance, and morale. People are patterns; I've built a life on spotting fractures before they splinter.

That's why I noticed Dan Callaghan the moment he walked in.

Pressed navy suit. Crisp shirt, this one a shade too sharp for the role he held. New shirt, new shoes, new scent of cologne drifting faintly behind him. It was not just a clean shave, polished shoes, and hair styled as if he'd actually taken the time to care. It was more

Men don't reinvent their wardrobe without a reason. Not at thirty-something. Not without someone watching.

He'd been a good employee for years, steady, reliable, content with quiet wins, but lately there was something… off.

Or maybe not off. Different.

And hovering near his desk like a shadow was the new girl. Lillie Hart.

She'd started a few months ago in admin support, fresh-faced, sharp in a way that made the men in the office stumble over themselves to help her with whatever she "needed." Pretty, yes. Too aware of it, also yes.

I leaned back in my chair, fingers tapping against the armrest as I watched the two of them interact. Dan was polite and professional, even, but there was a stiffness to his posture, the kind that comes from trying too hard to look unaffected. Lillie laughed at something, too loud, tilting her head just enough that her blonde hair spilt over one shoulder.

The kind of move you only make when you're aiming.

––––––

I'd seen it before.

Hell, I'd been on the receiving end of it once.

The memory was sharp enough to cut even now.

Walking into my home office years ago, the sound of muffled laughter died the second I opened the door. My first wife, Julia, was sitting on the edge of my desk with that look in her eyes, half challenge, half guilt, as the man I'd hired stumbled through an excuse that didn't matter.

The air had smelled of her perfume, jasmine, thick and cloying. My coffee was still warm on the desk. Ordinary details, unchanged, made the betrayal sharper. Love doesn't collapse with noise; it collapses with the sound of a drawer sliding shut.

I'd learned two things that day.

One: betrayal wasn't always loud. Sometimes it was quiet, insidious, a slow rot that ate through the foundation of what you thought was solid ground.

Two: I would never ignore the signs again.

"Rider?" Mason's voice snapped me out of it. He leaned into the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, and his perpetual scowl was deeper than usual.

"Yeah?"

He tipped his chin toward the bullpen. "Is that your radar going off, or mine?"

I followed his gaze. Dan was at his desk, scrolling through his screen, jaw tight. Lillie was leaning just close enough to breach the professional bubble, her hand brushing his sleeve as if it were an accident.

"Both," I said, and Mason grunted his agreement.

"Want me to pull her records?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. She's green, probably testing boundaries. Callaghan's a grown man. He knows the rules."

"Yeah," Mason muttered, "but sometimes knowing ain't enough. She's trouble."

"They usually are," I said.

"You mean women like her?"

"No. People who think charm is currency. It always runs out."

He gave me the look that meant he wanted permission to push harder. Mason rarely trusted subtlety; he was a man who liked clean lines, not blurred ones. That's why I kept him close: where I calculated, he confronted.

By mid-morning, the office had settled into its rhythm, but my attention kept drifting back to that corner. Not because I cared about who was flirting with whom, after all, what my employees did in their personal lives was mostly their business, but because I ran a company that thrived on discipline and precision.

And nothing good ever came from blurred lines, particularly where cheating was concerned.

I'd hired Dan five years ago because he was sharp and loyal, the kind of man you could trust to handle accounts without hand-holding. He'd reminded me, in some ways, of myself when I'd started out—hungry, eager to prove something. I respected that.

Which was why I noticed when the edge of that discipline started to dull.

Longer lunches. Late nights. Clothes that didn't fit the quiet, capable man I'd built into middle management. And now, a woman like Lillie Hart is orbiting his desk like she already owns it.

At noon, I called for a meeting in the glass conference room overlooking the city. The department leads filed in, filling the space with quiet conversation and the rustle of paper. Dan arrived last, a sheen of tension around his shoulders, Lillie lingering just far enough away to avoid suspicion but close enough to watch him through the glass.

I didn't miss the way her gaze trailed him, sharp and assessing, like a predator waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

She circled him with looks instead of teeth, patience coiled behind her smile. Predators don't always chase. Sometimes they just wait for weakness to stumble close enough.

I hated that I recognised it.

I hated it more than I understood it.

After the meeting broke, I stayed behind, staring out at the sprawling city in shades of slate and steel. The skyline reminded me of everything I'd built and everything I'd lost along the way.

Steel and glass hold light the way people hold love: reflecting it, bending it, sometimes breaking it into pieces too scattered to put back. I'd built this view brick by brick, but it had cost me a home I couldn't rebuild.

Julia used to sneer that I'd married the company first, and her second. Maybe she'd been right. Or perhaps that was just easier than admitting she'd wanted something I couldn't give. She wanted constant validation, reckless excitement, my credit card, and the kind of love that burned hot and died fast.

I'd loved her in my way.

But love hadn't been enough to stop her from seeking something else in someone else's arms.

"Steele," Mason said again from the doorway, breaking my thoughts. "Got the initial report on the missing inventory."

"Walk me through it."

He methodically and precisely outlined patterns of small-scale theft that had been creeping through the system for weeks. It was clean work; far too clean for a sloppy outsider.

"Internal," I said, rubbing a hand over my jaw.

"Yeah," Mason agreed. "Someone who knows the codes. I'll pull badge logs and camera sweeps and see what pings."

"Do it," I said. My gaze drifted, unbidden, to the bullpen again

––––––

To Lillie, leaning over Dan's desk, her lips curved in something that wasn't quite a smile.

Something twisted low in my gut.

Not jealousy. Not exactly.

Recognition.

I'd seen the way she looked at him. The calculated charm, the tilt of her head, the soft laugh.

And I'd seen the way Dan looked back. He was not like a man in love, but like a man caught between wanting to be flattered and knowing better.

I wanted to believe he'd make a better choice. That he'd remember the woman he went home to, the quiet strength in her smile, the way her presence steadied a room without her ever realising it.

Layla.

I'd only met her once, months ago, at a fundraiser my company sponsored. She'd arrived on Dan's arm, understated in a midnight-blue dress that skimmed her frame like it had been made for her.

She hadn't worked the room or sought attention; she'd smiled, listened, and asked thoughtful questions. She wasn't loud. The room bent around her anyway. People leaned closer, slowed their speech. Not because she demanded it, but because she listened as if every word mattered.

In a world of performers, Layla was rare; an audience who didn't need the stage.

I'd thought then: he doesn't know how rare this is. And watching him now, I knew he still didn't.

It had been… disarming.

Enough that when Lillie had cornered me that same night, all sharp perfume and painted lips, I'd turned her down without hesitation. Not that I wouldn't have turned her down anyway, considering she was my employee, and I wasn't going to blur the lines for anyone.

But men rarely turned down women like Lillie Hart.

She hadn't liked that.

And I'd seen the flicker in her expression when she realised my attention hadn't been hers at all.

Weeks later, I'd seen Layla's photo in a simple silver frame on Dan's desk. Not posed, not staged. She was sitting cross-legged on their porch steps, hair caught in the wind, laughing at something outside the frame.

Now, months later, I saw the fallout of that night every time I stepped onto the floor. Lillie's eyes were sharp with something like spite. Dan walked straighter, speaking quieter, as if he could feel the storm building but didn't know where it would break.

I told myself it wasn't my business.

But I'd built this company on control, on reading patterns before they turned into problems.

And every instinct I had told me this was going to be one.

By the time I left the office that evening, the sky had darkened into a bruised indigo, rain slicking the pavement and blurring the city lights into soft, fractured halos.

I sat in the back of the car, phone in hand, messages from investors and board members flashing across the screen. I answered them automatically, my mind divided between the numbers and the image of Dan at his desk with Lillie standing too close.

Happiness had been quiet once, I remembered that. Betrayal was more silent still. And I'd learned the hard way that silence can sound like a countdown.

I'd been that man once.

Outside the window, rain smeared neon into watercolour streaks. The city blurred, but the pattern was clear: men and women forget the weight of vows faster than the world forgives them.

And I knew how fast a life could fall... quicker than a message on a screen.