Chapter 2
It happened during the discussion of a property in the Hamptons. Hendricks was droning through projections. Ronan had finally looked away, and Lena allowed herself one small, exhausted exhale. She let her shoulders drop. She let her gaze drift.
She didn’t mean to look. She really, truly didn’t. But her eyes — tired, overwhelmed, desperate for somewhere to land that wasn’t another pair of judging eyes — drifted downward across the table, past Ronan’s chest, past his belt, toward his lap.
And she saw it. The unmistakable outline pressing against the fabric of his expensive black trousers. Right there, in the middle of a boardroom meeting, Ronan Moratini was—
Lena’s eyes snapped back up.
Too late. He was watching her again. And this time, the corner of his mouth had curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile and wasn’t quite anything safe.
She looked at her notepad. She tried to focus. She wrote a word — she didn’t know what the word was. Her hand was shaking too badly. Don’t look again. Don’t look again. Don’t look again.
She didn’t, for exactly four minutes. And then, God help her, she did.
It was an accident. It was. She had been trying to look at the projector screen behind him, and her gaze had to pass through him to get there. And her eyes betrayed her, dropping again just for a half second — just long enough to confirm what she had already seen. Just long enough to miss—
“Miss Carter.”
The room went silent. Lena looked up. Ronan was staring at her — not with anger, not with embarrassment, with something far, far worse. Amusement.
“Yes, sir?” Her voice came out as a whisper.
“Why,” he said slowly, deliberately, savoring every syllable, “can’t you stop staring at the bulge in my pants?”
Time stopped. Lena heard her own heartbeat in her ears. She heard a man at the end of the table choke on his coffee. She heard Hendricks make a small, strangled noise that might have been the start of a word he immediately abandoned.
She wanted to die. She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole. She wanted to evaporate into the recycled office air and never exist again.
“Sir, I— I wasn’t—”
“You were.”
“I wasn’t. I swear. I was looking at the screen behind—”
“Miss Carter.” His voice dropped lower, quieter, somehow more terrifying. “I don’t tolerate dishonesty.”
Lena’s eyes filled with tears. She blinked them back ferociously. “Mr. Moratini, I sincerely apologize if my eye line gave the wrong impression. I would never—”
“Stand up.”
“Sir?”
“Stand up.”
Slowly, on legs that didn’t feel like her own, Lena rose to her feet. Ronan gestured to the door. “Everyone out.”
Eleven men froze. “I’m sorry,” Hendricks said weakly. “Ronan, we still have to—”
“Out.”
Hendricks didn’t ask twice. None of them did. Within thirty seconds, the boardroom had emptied, and Lena Carter was alone with the most dangerous man in Manhattan. She had been at Moratini Holdings for one hour and forty-seven minutes, and she was already in a nightmare.
“Sit down, Miss Carter.”
She sat. Ronan didn’t move. He just watched her from across the long empty table — the open collar of his shirt, the slow patience in his eyes. He had all the time in the world. She had none.
“Mr. Moratini,” she began, her voice barely steady, “I am so deeply, deeply sorry. What just happened — what you think happened — I assure you it was not what you—”
“Stop.”
She stopped.
“I’m not angry, Miss Carter.”
“You’re— you’re not?”
“No.” He tilted his head. “I’m curious.”
“Curious?”
“You’re an interesting woman.” He stood up slowly, walked around the table, and took the seat directly beside her — not across. Beside. Three feet away, then two, then one. “Smart. Ambitious. Hungry. The kind of woman who claws her way out of nothing and convinces herself the climb was hers.”
“It was mine, sir.”
“Was it?”
“Yes. Yes, of course it was.”
Ronan smiled again — that same not-quite smile. “Tell me, Miss Carter. How many other firms offered you a position before us?”
Lena hesitated. “I— I had several interviews.”
“How many offers?”
“One. Just one. From Moratini Holdings.”
“A starting salary of one hundred thirty thousand dollars, plus benefits, plus a relocation stipend, plus a signing bonus you didn’t even ask for. Offered to a twenty-four-year-old girl with no connections, no family money, and no industry references.” He paused. “Did you ever wonder why?”
Lena’s blood went cold. “Because I earned it.”
“Did you?”
“What are you saying, Mr. Moratini?”
He didn’t answer her directly. Instead, he reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He set it on the table between them. He smoothed it with the flat of his hand. “This is your hiring file, Miss Carter. Approved by me personally, three weeks before your final interview.”
Lena stared at the paper, then at him, then at the paper again. “That’s— that’s not possible. I had three rounds of interviews. I met with the panel. I met with the VP of analytics—”
“You met with people I told to meet with you.”
The room tilted. “What?”
“There was no panel review, Miss Carter. There was no competitive selection. The other applicants, the ones whose resumes you saw in the waiting room — they were paid actors. The interview questions were designed by me. The tough panel that grilled you on case studies — those were my employees, instructed to test you on the specific things I wanted to see.”
“No,” Lena whispered. “No, that’s—”
“You were never competing for this job, Miss Carter. You were the only candidate.”
“Stop it!” Her voice cracked through the empty boardroom. She was on her feet now, her chair scraping back, her hands trembling, her eyes wild. “Why are you saying this? Why would you do this? Why would anyone do this? I don’t even know you. I’d never even seen your face before today. Why would you—”
“Sit down, Miss Carter.”
“No.”
“Sit down.”
There was something in his voice — not loud, not aggressive, but absolute — that made her knees give out. She sat.
Ronan watched her, expressionless. “I saw you,” he said quietly. “Two years ago, at a charity benefit at the Plaza. You were there as a plus-one for someone whose name I don’t remember and whose face I never bothered to learn. You were wearing a black dress. Your hair was up. You spilled champagne on a senator’s wife and apologized like the world was ending.”
Lena couldn’t breathe.
“I remember everything about that night, Miss Carter. The way you laughed, the way you walked, the way you carried yourself like a woman who didn’t yet know what she was worth.” His eyes burned into hers. “I decided that night that one day you would work for me. And what I decide, Miss Carter, comes true. Always.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m thorough.”
“This is illegal. This is harassment. This is fraud.”
“This is a job offer you have already accepted.”
“I’ll quit.”
“You won’t.”
“Watch me.”
She stood up. She grabbed her portfolio. She turned for the door.
“Miss Carter.”
She didn’t stop.
“Your mother.”
She froze.
“Your mother in Akron, Ohio. The one who works two shifts at the diner on Market Street. The one who sold her wedding ring last summer to help with your apartment deposit. The one whose mortgage is sixty-two days past due.”
Lena turned around slowly. Her hand was on the door. Her eyes were wide. “How do you—”
“I bought her debt yesterday morning.”
The portfolio slipped from Lena’s fingers and hit the floor. Ronan didn’t smile this time. He didn’t have to.
“Sit down, Miss Carter,” he said softly. “We have a great deal to discuss.”
May you like
And Lena, whose legs were shaking, whose mind was reeling, whose every plan and dream and certainty was crumbling to dust around her feet — sat back down.
She didn’t know it yet, but the contract he was about to slide across the table would change her life forever. And she didn’t know it yet, but the most terrifying part wasn’t what Ronan Moratini wanted from her. It was that somewhere deep down, somewhere she would never admit out loud, a part of her wanted it too.
