Chapter One
Eliza
Here’s a rule I learned the hard way: if you walk into a boardroom full of men who think your uterus invalidates your MBA, you don’t ask permission. You wear heels sharp enough to sound like a warning, and you don’t speak until you’re ready to make someone regret interrupting you.
My heels cracked against the marble floor as I approached the front desk; measured, deliberate, loud enough to announce that I wasn’t sneaking in. This wasn’t an office. It was a battlefield with better lighting.
Lose today, and my name slid from the org chart into the polite footnotes of “former leadership.” Lose today, and I’d spend the rest of my career being introduced asalmost impressive. I tightened my grip on my bag and gave the receptionist a nod that saiddon’t slow me down. She didn’t.
The water features I’d chosen, water sluicing down an uneven, tilted glass wall, calmed me as always, and the thought that this might be one of the last times I saw it left my throat aching.
Stopping at the threshold of the elevator, I touched my badge to the panel; it beeped, the light went green, and access was granted.
The elevator ride was mercifully short. The doors opened onto glass, steel, and ambition; open-plan wood-and-glass desks arranged like a maze meant to keep everyone visible and slightly on edge. I loved this place, loved the way it was designed to make people uncomfortable. Comfort is the enemy.
My heels echoed as I cut through the bullpen, the sound steady even while my stomach twisted hard enough to crawl toward my throat. It was too early for chatter. Too early for mercy.
Someone had left a two-sided whiteboard filled with projections and buzzwords. One typo glared at me like an insult. But I didn’t fix it. Not my problem. Not today.
As I passed the glass of the executive offices, the lighting shifted; softer here, more expensive. The kind of glow meant to suggest power without warmth. I slowed outside my mahogany door, glancing at my name on the metal plate, and how that plate could be slid out and replaced. Everyone is replaceable. I inhaled the sterile air, then pushed inside.
I was supposed to be alone.
The soft zip of a file drawer cut through the room.
My spine locked.
“Are you lost,” I said evenly, setting my bag down instead of throwing it at his head like I wanted to do, “or do you usually break into offices before sunrise?”
Gabriel Valor stood at my filing cabinet like he’d always belonged there.
I didn’t give myself time to catalog him. I didn’t have the bandwidth. All I registered waspresence; solid, infuriating, exactly where he shouldn’t be. He didn’t even look at me. Hefinished reviewing the document in his hands, movements calm and unhurried, then closed the drawer with a quiet, precise click.
“I needed last quarter’s sales projections,” he said. “You filed them under your emergency food supply.”
“Some of us prepare for twelve-hour sprints.” I crossed the room, heels striking harder now.
“Some of us,” he replied, still not facing me, “don’t hoard protein bars like currency.” And finally, he looked up at me. The glance was quick—assessing with no trace of appreciation. Like he was gauging risk instead of aesthetics, which irritated me more than if he’d stared. Everything about him was controlled—his posture, his expression, even the timing of his breath, with no wasted motion and no tells he hadn’t approved.
“You always come in this early?” he asked.
“I always win,” I said, reaching my desk and powering on my laptop. The screen lit up with the presentation I’d revised into near-perfection. Charts and forecasts, the proof I deserved to stay. It would be enough. It had to be enough. I couldn’t bear the thought that it wouldn’t be.
His mouth twitched. “Then why do you look like you’re gearing up for impact?” he asked mildly.
I bristled and his gaze traced over me before meeting my eyes again.
That was his talent—not numbers, not strategy but people.
I shoved my chair back and faced him. “I don’t outsource what I can do better myself. And I don’t take advice from men whose primary skill is showing up at the last minute and claiming credit.”
He circled the desk with infuriating ease. Too close. Close enough that the scent of his cologne, dark, clean, intentional,cut through my concentration. “Some of us prevent public disasters,” he said. “It’s called teamwork.”
“I’d rather eat broken glass.” I yanked the file from his hands and froze. The top page wasn’t data. It was my LinkedIn photo. A cartoon villain mustache had been added in pen. I lifted it slowly. “You broke into my office to vandalize my face?”
“Stress relief,” he said. “You should try humor.”
I let the silence stretch and sharpen, aware of the fragile place it pressed against inside me, until he looked away first. “You here to sabotage my pitch,” I asked, “or steal breakfast?” I nodded at the protein bar sticking out of his pocket.