Sebastian stood in his home office, staring out at the city below, the usual Manhattan bustle more muted from this height. The glass walls of his penthouse offered a panoramic view, but today, his attention was on something else entirely. His thoughts kept circling back to the dinner with Maya, to the unsettling feelings that had lingered in the air long after she had left. It gnawed at him and refused to let go.
The decision to whisk her off to Tokyo for a work trip had been impulsive. A small part of him had considered the trip an excuse—an excuse to keep her close, to figure out what made her tick. The other part, the part that had been steadily losing control over the past few weeks, had simply felt the need for distraction. Tokyo was as far as he could get from his chaotic thoughts,
