Semua Bab Loving Mr. Vance in Silence: Bab 1 - Bab 8

Emma Hart had been Nicholas Vance's executive assistant for eight years. That was 2,640 days of 5:30 AM wake-up calls. 1,185 meticulously organized business trips. 840 rejected blind dates arranged by his mother. 392 cups of coffee delivered at precisely 7:40 AM — two sugars, a dash of cream, stirred exactly six times counterclockwise. And one unforgettable Christmas Eve when she'd sat alone in the office until midnight, waiting for him to finish a merger, only for him to walk past her desk without saying goodbye. She remembered all of it. Every single second. That was the problem. Emma stood outside Nick's corner office on the 52nd floor of Vance Tower, her hand hovering over the door. Through the frosted glass, she could see his silhouette — tall, broad-shouldered, impossibly perfect even as a shadow. He was pacing. He always paced before a board meeting. She knew he'd be wearing his charcoal gray Brioni suit today because it was Tuesday, and on Tuesdays he liked to project "co

Emma Hart did not sleep well.Not because she was thinking about Nicholas Vance sleeping in his car outside her building—although she was definitely thinking about that, and definitely not because she cared. She didn’t care. She absolutely did not care that the Vice Chairman of Vance Corporation, a man worth approximately three point eight billion dollars, had spent the night in the back seat of his own Mercedes like a reckless teenager after a fight.She didn’t care at all.Which was why she had checked the security camera feed on her phone four times between midnight and 5:45 AM.At 6:05 AM, she looked out her bedroom window. The Mercedes was gone. A bouquet of flowers—the same ones he had tried to give her last night—was placed neatly against her front door.Emma opened the door, picked up the flowers, and found a handwritten note tucked inside the wrapping.You once told me your favorite flower was peonies. I remembered. —N.V.She stared at the note for a long moment.She had told

Friday arrived like a verdict.Emma had spent the past two days avoiding Nick as much as possible—which was nearly impossible, given that her desk was fifteen feet from his door and he had developed a sudden habit of finding reasons to walk past her every twenty minutes. She had also spent those two days telling herself that tonight was just dinner. Just two humans eating food. No different from the hundreds of business dinners she had attended over the past nine years.Except at those dinners, she had been working.Tonight, she was supposed to be a person.At 6:00 PM, Emma stood in front of her closet in her apartment, wearing nothing but a towel and a growing sense of panic. She had tried on four dresses. The first one (black, professional) made her look like she was attending a funeral. The second (red, bold) made her look like she was trying too hard. The third (floral, playful) made her look like someone's sweet aunt. The fourth—The fourth was a deep emerald green, sleeveless, w

Nicholas Vance lay awake. He drove home in silence, the image of Emma’s fading taillights still fixed in his mind. He had sat in his car outside his penthouse for twenty minutes, engine off, hands on the steering wheel, staring at nothing. Then he had gone inside. His apartment was too big. Too quiet. Too empty. He had walked to his bedroom, taken off his suit jacket, and stood in front of the mirror. The man looking back at him had shadows under his eyes and a crack in his armor that he couldn't hide. "I never saw you," he had said. "Not really." He had meant it. For nine years, Emma Hart had been a fixture in his life—as constant as his heartbeat, as necessary as air. He had told himself she was just his assistant. A good one. The best. But just an assistant. He had been lying to himself for nine years. He knew that now. At 3:00 AM, he gave up on sleep. He made coffee—bad coffee, too bitter, because Emma wasn't there to make it right. He drank it anyway. Then h