Chapter Four - Shadows in the Glass
1342 Words
In her first two weeks at Steele & Co., Natalie had learned two things about Liam Cole.
To begin with, he was very, very good at what he did.
His grasp of brand psychology was razor sharp, his instincts unnervingly precise. In client meetings, he spoke with the kind of conviction that made people lean forward, as though each word carried the weight of inevitability. When he broke down a strategy, there was no wasted air. No hesitation. It was as though he’d already solved the puzzle in his head before anyone else had even realized there was a puzzle at all.
Secondly, he was hiding something.
Not just the usual billionaire heir polish or the curated restraint of a man raised under scrutiny. No, Liam carried a shadow. It was subtle, easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention, but Natalie noticed. She always noticed. Sometimes, in the middle of a meeting, it would flicker across his face and disappear again, like a storm cloud cutting briefly across the sun. He’d turn away too quickly, or she’d catch him watching her, not with flirtation, but with calculation. A steady, measuring kind of gaze.
As if she were both an answer and a threat.
Natalie told herself it didn’t matter. She hadn’t come here to decode Liam Cole. She had come here for Alexander Steele. To burn him, to watch him lose, to finally balance the scales.
And yet…
There were moments.
Moments when Liam leaned over her sketches in the design studio, so close she could smell the cedar and clean soap clinging to him. When his focus—razor-bright, unflinching seemed to pin her in place, unraveling something inside her chest she had locked away years ago.
It wasn't an attraction, she told herself. The attraction was simple. Predictable. What she felt was… inconvenient. Distracting. Dangerous.
And still, she couldn’t stop noticing.
That morning, they were reviewing her latest set of sketches for the campaign’s centerpiece installation, a towering art piece meant to debut at Steele & Co.’s winter gala. The gala was more than an event; it was a stage. The kind of stage Alexander Steele adored. Which made it the perfect place for Natalie’s revenge to begin
The room was lit by floor-to-ceiling windows, the city skyline a blur of silver glass beyond. Traffic shimmered below like veins of light running through the city’s heart. The polished oak table reflected their papers in duplicate, shadows stretching long and thin across the surface.
Natalie laid out her designs with deliberate care, willing her hand not to tremble as she slid the largest sketch toward him.
“This is the anchor,” she said evenly. “A mirrored structure that reflects the audience back onto itself. The whole point is to strip away the illusion and force people to confront what they see.”
For a long moment, Liam said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the page, jaw tight. A faint tic pulsed at the corner of his eye she had begun to notice, though she doubted anyone else dared to look closely enough.
“What?” she asked, sharper than intended.
He looked up slowly. His expression was unreadable, but his voice had changed—lower, softer, edged with something unspoken. “Nothing. Just… your work has a way of stirring things up.”
She tilted her head. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Not bad,” he said after a pause. His voice deepened, steady, deliberate. “Just… dangerous.”
Her heart gave a traitorous kick. Dangerous. The word should have been a warning. Instead, it landed like a spark on dry kindling.
“Art isn’t meant to be safe,” she shot back, lifting her chin.
Something flickered in his eyes then something like agreement, or recognition, or maybe just another shadow. He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “No,” he murmured, almost to himself. “It isn’t.”
The silence that followed stretched, taut and charged, until the knock at the door shattered it.
That afternoon, Natalie was summoned to the executive boardroom.
It was her first time stepping into the empire’s heart. The room was cathedral-like walls of glass revealing a skyline sprawling in every direction, a long table gleaming beneath crystal pendant lights. The walls were lined with curated art pieces worth more than her entire apartment building. Even the air seemed different here, cooler, sharper, as if saturated with power itself.
Every detail screamed permanence. Legacy. Control.
And at the head of the table sat the man she had vowed to destroy.
Alexander Steele.
The sight of him was a blade dragged across old wounds.
The last time she had seen him, he had been laughing, laughing as faculty dragged her out of the design expo. Her stolen work displayed behind him, as if it had always belonged to him. That memory was a scar etched into her bones, carved so deep she sometimes still woke with the sound of his laughter echoing in her ears.
Now, his smirk was exactly as she remembered. Sharp. Knowing. Laced with malice.
“Well, well,” he drawled, rising with deliberate slowness. “If it isn’t Natalie King. I must say, I didn’t expect to see you in my family’s offices again. Let alone working side by side with my dear cousin.”
The words were casual, but the way he studied her was anything but. His eyes dissected her, peeling her back layer by layer, searching for weakness.
Natalie forced her voice to stay even. “I’m here for the campaign. That’s all.”
Alexander’s eyes glinted with amusement, but before he could respond, a shadow fell across the doorway.
Liam.
He stepped inside silently, the room shifting with his presence. The cousins exchanged a look she couldn’t quite parse something sharp, something dangerous, as if an entire history was unfolding in the space between their stares.
Alexander’s smirk widened. “I hope,” he said, turning back to Natalie, “you’re here for more than revenge.”
The words struck like a slap. The air thickened, heavy with implication. Natalie’s pulse roared in her ears.
How did he know? How much did he know?
Before she could form a response, Liam’s voice cut through the tension. Low. Even. Firm. “Leave her out of whatever game you’re playing, Alex.”
Alexander laughed, the sound cold, calculated. “Oh, Liam. The game started a long time ago. She just doesn’t realize it yet.”
Natalie’s breath caught. Her fists curled at her sides, nails biting into her palms. Every muscle screamed to lash out, to scream, to finally hurl the truth at him ,You stole everything from me. But she bit it back, every ounce of discipline reminding her: timing. Revenge required patience.
And yet, as she turned to leave the boardroom, her gaze snagged once more on Liam. His eyes weren’t on Alexander.
They were on her.
Intense. Unreadable. Steady.
Not protective. Not pitying. Something else.
Something she couldn’t name.
When she stepped out into the corridor, the silence pressed against her like a weight. The boardroom door clicked shut behind her, trapping the venom she’d struggled to control.
She walked quickly, heels striking the marble floor in a rhythm that was part retreat, part defiance. But her mind was anything but steady.
Two things were certain;
One, Alexander Steele hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to her. In fact, he was daring her to come at him again.
Two, whatever history existed between Liam and Alexander, it was darker, more tangled than she had ever imagined.
And whether she liked it or not, she was standing dead center in the middle of it.
But the worst part wasn’t the danger.
The worst part was the question that kept haunting her as she walked away.
Which cousin was more dangerous?
Alexander, with his calculated malice?
Or Liam, with his shadows and silences… and the way he was slowly, inexorably, pulling her in?
- Writer
