All Chapters of My Love, My Boss: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

I knew something was off the second I stepped out of the elevator. The silence and the looks almost gave it up; but I couldn’t miss the shift in energy. That shift in the air when you walk into a room where your name has already been said out loud - twice, too loudly, followed by whispers. They didn’t hide it today. The stares didn’t dart away when I looked back. Some were curious, some cold and some flat-out smug. No one asked how I was, no one smiled at me as I walked to my desk. Mira wasn’t there. Her chair was pushed back, and her screen was dark. She stuck a note to her keyboard in her handwriting: Meeting. 8th floor. Save you a seat if you’re late. I dropped my bag, sat down and logged in. The group chat on my monitor blinked with a new message: “Cole, HR needs to confirm something on your onboarding form. Stop by after 10.” There was no subject line just a cold process wrapped in soft threat. I closed the window as Daniel passed behind me, slowly and then kept walking withou

I stared at the pen which was still in the box and still gleaming like a quiet threat for a long time.I got a message from Mira saying, “They pulled Carlson from Strategy. His seat’s empty.”The message landed like a punch. Carlson was my original department head. The one who believed in my first mock deck. The one who said, “You’ve got instinct. That’s not teachable.” Gone. Just like that. Cazien hadn’t told me. I instinctively stood and walked straight to the glass wall of the floor. Looked down at the lobby four stories below. It was all glass and marble. And suddenly it all felt so far away not just from where I stood but, from who I was when I got here.I came here for a shot - a future. A reason to believe that maybe I wasn’t just a product of my past. And now? I was a name on a list. A whispered story. A warning passed down to the next intern who dared to look a man like that in the eye. The door behind me opened. I didn’t turn.Mira’s voi

The room was colder than the rest of the floor not by temperature alone, but by the kind of chill that settles when power sits waiting to be wielded. It had high ceilings and black chairs that absorbed rather than reflected light. At the far end, a wall-length monitor pulsed with a blinking slide titled Q4 Strategic Sync. Not a hint of warmth anywhere. Just hard surfaces and harder intentions.I wasn’t late, but I wasn’t early either. Five people were already seated; two executives, a communications director, and a woman from HR I recognized but had never spoken to. They filled their seats with the sort of posture that said they’d been here longer than the story I was about to step into. The chairs were wide. Deliberately so. Built to make you feel smaller unless you knew how to fill them with the kind of presence that couldn’t be ignored.So, I did. I sat like I belonged.The door opened behind me, and Owen Locke entered the room, file tucked neatly under

“You need air,” Mira said, not bothering to ask if I agreed. She didn’t wait for permission before closing my laptop, lifting my ID badge off the desk like it offended her, and holding out my coat with two fingers as if daring me not to take it. Her voice was calm, but the look on her face said I didn’t have the option of staying behind. “You’ve been in this building for fourteen straight days. Your skin’s turning the color of stress. And you smell like stale ambition,” she added, sniffing dramatically. “I have a job,” I muttered, making no move to reach for the coat. “You have a pulse. Use it,” she snapped, already halfway to the door. That’s how I found myself outside just past six, the wind pressing cold fingers against my cheeks while my boots slapped the wet pavement. The Manhattan sky was painted in lavender streaks and the last hints of golden sun, but I barely noticed. I was too busy trying to remembe

His body shifted beneath mine with a kind of quiet focus that made every motion feel like a deliberate answer to a question neither of us had spoken aloud. His legs bent slightly beneath me, adjusting to the pressure of my knees framing his hips. His hands found the sides of my thighs, the weight of them warm and anchoring, not pressing me down, but holding me in place like I was something precious he didn’t want to startle. I leaned forward, letting my palms slide up his chest, over the smooth fabric of his shirt where it clung to the heat of his body. My knees adjusted their grip, legs slipping further apart to balance my weight across his lap. The heat between us swelled, thick and immediate, like the space itself had remembered us - our chemistry and our proximity - and was rising to meet it. His hands moved again, this time around my waist. He gripped me gently at first, then tighter, his fingers splaying wide as they learned the shape