Chapter 1 The dark Office
Chapter 1: The Dark Office
The plastic digital stick on the edge of the marble sink felt heavier than a lead weight.
I stood frozen in the pristine, brightly lit executive restroom on the top floor of Vance Enterprises, my chest heaving as I stared down at the counter. Two bold, unmistakable pink lines glared back at me.
Positive.
Outside the door, the muffled sound of low, masculine voices echoed through the executive hallway. One of them belonged to my father, who had dropped by the headquarters for an unannounced lunch meeting. The other belonged to the man whose child I was currently carrying.
Eric Vance. My billionaire boss. And my father’s absolute best friend since college.
A wave of intense nausea hit me, but it had nothing to do with morning sickness. It was pure, unadulterated terror. If my father found out about the secret arrangement Eric and I had built behind closed doors over the last few weeks, it would destroy him. If the board found out, it would cause a corporate scandal that would rock the entire financial market.
Numbly, I wrapped the test in paper towels, shoved it into the bottom of my designer tote bag, and leaned against the cold marble sink. I stared at my reflection in the mirror, my chest heaving. My mind frantically raced backward through the calendar, trying to pinpoint the exact moment control slipped entirely out of my hands.
It hadn’t started with a careless mistake or a broken boundary weeks into my employment. It had started on day one. Before a single contract was signed, and long before the sun had even set on my first week.
My mind pulled me straight back to that quiet, shadowed Friday night six weeks ago, when the office building was completely empty, and the world outside was asleep.
The glass doors of Vance Enterprises were supposed to represent a fresh start. A way to prove I didn’t need my family’s safety net. But standing inside the sprawling, moonlit penthouse office of the CEO at nine o’clock on a Friday night, all I felt was a suffocating layer of heat.
I smoothed down my tailored pencil skirt, my fingers trembling slightly. The rest of the floor was completely dark, the other interns long gone. I had stayed late to finish filing the Q4 acquisition reports, hoping to leave them on the boss’s desk as a silent declaration of my work ethic.
I didn’t expect him to actually be here.
The heavy leather chair behind the mahogany desk was turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the glittering city skyline. A single crystal glass of amber bourbon sat on the desk, catching the ambient light.
“Mr. Vance?” I whispered, my voice sounding incredibly small in the cavernous room. “I brought the updated transition folders. I can leave them on the tray if you—”
The chair rotated slowly.
The breath caught instantly in my throat. My heart slammed against my ribs like a trapped bird.
It wasn’t just my new boss sitting there. It was Eric.
Eric Vance. The man who had spent the last fifteen years dominating the financial markets. The man who owned half the real estate in the city. And the man who happened to be my father’s absolute best friend since childhood family dinners.
The passage of time had only hardened his sharp jawline, threading subtle, silver streaks through his thick dark hair. He wore a crisp white dress shirt with the top two buttons undone, his sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular, tanned forearms. He looked powerful. Relentless.
And right now, his piercing slate-grey eyes were locked onto mine.
“Jessica?”
His voice didn’t startle me; it anchored me to the floor. It was a deep, gravelly baritone that cut through the silence of the room. He didn’t move from his seat immediately. Instead, he just... watched. His slate-grey eyes took their time, tracking the line of my throat, tracing the curve of my waist, before finally meeting my eyes. The deliberate slowness of his gaze made my knees feel weak.
He let the silence stretch between us for five long beats before he spoke again, his tone dropping an octave.
“What are you doing here?”
“I... I work here, Eric—I mean, Mr. Vance,” I stammered, gripping the folders tightly against my chest like a shield. “I’m the new corporate management intern. I started on Monday.”
Eric set his glass down. The heavy clink of crystal against mahogany echoed like a warning. He stood up, towering at six-foot-three, and walked around the massive desk with a slow, predatory fluid grace. The scent of expensive cedarwood, rich bourbon, and pure alpha energy closed in on me.
He stopped just inches away. I could feel the heat radiating off his body, but he didn’t speak right away. He simply leaned down slightly, studying my face as if searching for something.
“Your father told me you took an internship in the city,” Eric murmured, his words coming out low and unhurried. He paused, his eyes darkening to the color of a stormy sea. “...He didn’t mention it was under my roof.”
“I wanted to earn it on my own,” I breathed, refusing to step back, even as my breathing grew shallow. “Without his influence. Or yours.”
A dark, unreadable emotion crossed his face. He tilted his head, his hand hovering just inches from my shoulder before he slowly dropped it back to his side.
“You shouldn’t be here, Jessica.” He let the words hang in the air between us before completing the thought. “Not this late. And certainly... not with me.”
“I’m just doing my job, Mr. Vance.”
“Is that what this is?”
He took one final, agonizingly slow step forward, completely erasing the space between us. He reached past me, his forearm brushing against my hip as he gripped the edge of the doorframe behind me, trapping me against the wood.
With a swift, sudden contrast to his slow movement, his other hand reached around my waist, clicked the heavy lock on the office door, and slid the deadbolt into place.
The sharp click echoed like a gunshot.
He leaned down, the heat of his lips brushing the shell of my ear. He paused, letting me feel the ragged edge of his breath before he whispered, “Because if you stay in this office after hours with me... we are going to break every single rule your father ever made.”
