Semua Bab HIS BLIND OBSESSION : Bab 1 - Bab 10

I knew he was nervous before he even sat down. Most people were nervous around me. I’d stopped finding it interesting years ago. Nervous people made mistakes, and mistakes wasted my time. The one thing I had never had patience for was wasted time. I heard it in the way he walked. The slight hesitation at the door. The three seconds he stood there before finally crossing the room. I noticed everything. People assumed that because I couldn’t see them, I couldn’t read them. They were wrong. If anything, losing my sight had made me pay more attention to everything else. The way someone breathed when they were lying. The pause before an answer. The slight change in someone’s voice when they were about to lose their nerve. People told on themselves all the time. They just didn’t realize it. Noah Carter sat down. He didn’t need to be told twice. That was mildly interesting. “You applied for a position requiring full-time live-in availability,” I said. “You’re twenty-three, your l

I knew the sound of every person who had ever worked in this penthouse. Mrs. Hale walked like she was always running late. Short, quick steps, always slightly rushed even when there was nowhere she needed to be. My previous assistant, Marcus, dragged his left foot slightly. A habit he probably wasn’t even aware of. The woman before him wore shoes that squeaked against the hardwood. She lasted nine days before I told her to change them. She quit instead. I catalogued people by sound. It was practical. Necessary. It was not, under any circumstances, something I did because I was interested in them. Noah Carter had been in my home for four days. I knew his footsteps already. That wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that I’d started noticing things beyond the sound of him walking. The way he set things down. Careful. Deliberate. Never careless. Like he understood that everything had a place and that the place mattered. In the mornings, he moved around the kitchen quietly. N

Three weeks. Noah Carter had been in my penthouse for three weeks and four days. And he showed no signs of leaving. This was becoming a problem. Not because he was bad at his job. He was, irritatingly, very good at it. He’d learned my system faster than anyone before him. He anticipated things I hadn’t told him to anticipate. He knew where everything belonged, when I needed it and how I preferred it. He moved through the penthouse like he’d memorised every inch of it. That was the problem. The previous seven had been easy. Too eager. Too nervous. Too slow. Too loud. They’d all given me a reason within the first two weeks. Sometimes it was obvious. Sometimes I had to look for it. Once I found the reason, I used it. They left. Simple. Noah hadn’t given me one. I’d waited for it. I’d looked for it. The glass incident on day nine had come close, but even then, he’d apologised, fixed the report and gone back to work. No drama. No complaints. He’d just kept going. I did

I had fired people for less. That was the first thing I thought when Noah Carter walked out of my office. I’d terminated contracts for lateness, incompetence, missed deadlines, even a tone of voice I didn’t like on a Tuesday afternoon. I’d ended careers with less cause than a missed Henderson call. And I’d never lost sleep over it. I picked up my phone. Then put it down. The penthouse was quiet. I could hear Noah down the hall. The familiar sound of his door closing, followed by silence. Not the silence of someone who had gone to bed. The silence of someone sitting very still. I knew that silence. I’d learned most of his silences by now. That one meant he was doing the math again. Whatever the math was. There was always math with Noah. Always some number he was trying to reach and somehow never quite managed to. I pulled up Henderson’s contact. Nine years. Quarterly calls. Never missed. Never late. Until today. Henderson’s assistant had been professional when she’

I had a meeting at eleven. Six people. My executive team, plus two consultants from the Mercer Group who had flown in from Chicago. Four hundred dollars an hour each. They were here to discuss a restructuring proposal that should have been straightforward. Nothing about today was straightforward. I told Noah at nine. “Conference room. Eleven o’clock. Coffee for eight, Mercer files on the table and manage the arrivals.” “Ten forty-five,” he said. Which meant ten thirty. It was done by ten thirty. The consultants arrived on time. I heard Noah at the door, calm and professional, not one degree warmer than necessary. The shuffle of expensive coats. Handshakes. Quiet greetings. The familiar sound of people performing intelligence at each other. I came in at eleven exactly. The meeting moved quickly. Mercer’s lead consultant, a man named Briggs, talked too much and said very little, which was a skill in its own right. My legal team nodded at appropriate intervals. I asked t