Chapter 3 - The Shadow and the SunI fled his office five minutes later, mumbling a panicked excuse about a pending quarterly audit that needed my immediate attention. Nathan hadn't stopped me. He had simply watched me go with that same unsettling, unyielding calm, letting me retreat back to the safety of my fluorescent-lit desk on the finance floor.
For the next three days, I barely slept.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his gray eyes. I heard his voice echoing in the quiet chambers of my mind: For you... I am willing to be whatever kind of man you've been waiting for.
It was madness. He was a billionaire mafia boss with enough blood on his hands to stain the entire Midwest, and I was just an ordinary girl from Milwaukee who wanted someone to hold her hand and ask her about her day before expecting anything else. We were two different species living on opposite sides of a glass wall.
Yet, the wall was cracking.
On Thursday afternoon, a simple courier delivery arrived at my desk. No card. No dramatic bouquet of red roses that screamed possession. Instead, it was a heavy, leather-bound first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird—the exact book I had mentioned reading during our hour-long conversation about my mother and my childhood. Tucked inside the front cover was a small, cream-colored note written in sharp, elegant fountain pen ink:
Read page forty-two. You were right about courage.
My fingers brushed the heavy paper as I flipped to page forty-two. A single sentence was lightly underlined in pencil: Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand.
I swallowed hard, a strange, terrifying warmth blooming in my chest. He was listening. Really listening. Not trying to buy me with expensive jewelry or flashy displays of dominance, but paying attention to the quiet details I had spent my whole life hiding in plain sight.
That evening, as I packed my bag to leave the office, Harper cornered me by the elevators.
"Okay, spill," she demanded, crossing her arms and eyeing me critically. "You've been walking around like you're sleepwalking through a romance novel all week. And don't tell me it's because of the Q3 logistics report, because I saw the book delivery from the mysterious courier."
"It's nothing, Harper," I lied, looking down at my shoes.
"That's not nothing," she snorted. "Nathan Cole doesn't send rare classic literature to analysts unless something seismic is happening. Are you seeing him? Outside of work?"
"No," I said, though even to my own ears, my denial sounded weak. "We just... we share some common interests."
"Common interests?" Harper laughed incredulously. "Maya, the man’s common interests probably involve tax evasion and international arms trafficking! Be careful. Men like that don't collect hobbies; they collect things they want to control."
Her words were a sobering splash of cold water. She was right. Beneath the rare books, the gentle voice, and the devastatingly handsome face, Nathan Cole was still the apex predator of Chicago. If I let myself fall for him, I wasn't just stepping into a relationship; I was walking blindfolded into the mouth of a volcano.
Yet, as I stepped out of the office building into the chilly Chicago evening air, a sleek black town car was idling curbside. The tinted rear window rolled down smoothly, revealing Lucas Grant in the front passenger seat, and behind him in the shadows of the cabin... Nathan.
He didn't get out. He didn't force me. He simply looked out the window at me, his expression open, waiting.
An unspoken invitation.
May you like
My heart hammered against my ribs. Every instinct screamed at me to turn around, run back inside, and catch the subway home. To protect my heart, my safety, and my quiet, predictable life.
Instead, my feet moved on their own. I crossed the sidewalk, pulled open the heavy door of the town car, and slid into the leather seat beside the most dangerous man in Chicago.
