Lahat ng Kabanata ng HIRED TO HATE HIM: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 7

The first sign that something was off was the smell of cinnamon mixed with burnt sugar.Reyes & Daughters never burned a thing. Not once in twenty-two years. My mother could read dough the way other people read rain coming, just from the smell in the kitchen, and she'd passed that habit on to me before I was even tall enough to see over the counter. So when I pushed through the bakery's front door at six forty in the morning and caught that sharp burnt edge under the cinnamon, I knew before I even got to the counter that this day was off.I found my mother by the industrial oven, holding a tray of blackened rolls in one gloved hand and an envelope in the other. She hadn't even pulled the tray all the way out. She just stood there, staring at the paper like it might turn into something less final if she kept looking."Mom, what's wrong?"She didn't even look up. "Sit down for a second, mija."I stayed standing. I crossed the kitchen, took the tray from her before she could say anythin

"Something up, Ms. Reyes?"Damian's voice stayed calm and even, but his eyes hadn't left my face. The seconds dragged on. I could feel my pulse in my throat, and I knew whatever I did in the next three seconds would pretty much decide how the rest of this went.I forced myself to look away from the folder, slowly, like it didn't mean anything, like my eyes had just wandered there on their own. "No," I said. "Sorry. It's been a long morning. I think the elevator ride finally got to me."It wasn't a great lie. It wasn't even close. But his face didn't change, not really, and after a second he went back to whatever he'd been reading, like the whole thing had already lost its place in his day."Renee's office is just down the hall. She'll help you get settled." A pause. "Monday at eight. And don't be late.""I won't." My voice sounded steadier than I felt. I headed for the door before he could look up again, before he could catch whatever was still on my face, and I didn't let out the br

By my second week, I'd picked up Damian Cole's rhythm the same way I'd once learned the pace of a rush hour bakery line, not from anyone teaching me, but from repetition and from paying close enough attention that the pattern just started showing itself.He showed up at 7:15 every morning, always with the same black coffee from the corner shop, never the one in the building lobby, and he never said why. I never asked. He read every email himself before handing off even one, no matter how full the inbox got. He hated being interrupted mid-thought, but he never once raised his voice. What gave him away was the way he'd go completely still, which felt worse than shouting. And he was always testing people in these tiny ways most of them never even noticed, like slipping in a wrong number on a report and waiting to see who caught it, or planting a scheduling conflict just to see who flagged it before it turned into a mess.I caught them all. I'd decided, somewhere around day three, that bei

"I'm exactly who my résumé says I am," I said, picking my words like I was trying not to set something off. "A woman who needed a job and happened to be decent at this one. I don't know what else you want me to say."It wasn't the full truth. Not even close. But I told myself it was technically defensible, every word true on its own, lined up carefully enough to keep the bigger truth underneath out of sight. I'd learned this trick when I was young, I realized, sitting there under his scrutiny, from years of telling worried customers the bakery was fine, and from reassuring my mother after my father's diagnosis that things would work out. I was good at saying true things in a way that hid the bigger ones. I just hadn't expected to need the skill this badly, this soon, against someone this observant.Damian watched me for a long moment, and I made myself keep his gaze, made myself breathe normally, made myself be, for the length of that silence, someone with nothing to hide. I've gotten