The ceo who shouldn’t exist

The elevator barely made a sound as it carried me up to the seventy-second floor of Kane Tower. I stood in the middle of the mirrored elevator, holding my portfolio against my chest a little tighter than I needed to. Everywhere I looked, there was another version of me staring back. Same dark hair twisted into a low knot. Same charcoal blazer over a plain black top. I had picked the outfit because it looked professional without screaming for attention.Still, my eyes gave me away. I looked far too awake for someone who had barely slept properly in three nights. I kept telling myself it was just nerves. This was the biggest commission I’d ever taken on: designing a private penthouse for Dominic Kane. Even before I met him, I knew the name. People in certain circles talked about him like he was more of a rumor than a person. Untouchable. Meticulous. Extremely private. He was the kind of CEO who could walk into a room full of cameras and somehow leave without giving them anything worth printing. There were barely any pictures of him outside the carefully controlled events he attended. Two weeks earlier, his office had called me. The woman on the phone had sounded calm and businesslike as she explained what he wanted. A complete redesign of his personal residence. Total discretion. No budget limit. And, apparently, I would be dealing with him directly. I almost said no. There was something about the whole thing that made me uneasy. The way the request had been delivered, so precise and final, as if every possible question had already been answered before I could ask it. But then I thought about my mother. The money from this one job would cover what was left of her treatment. More than that, it would give me a little room to breathe—a luxury I hadn’t had in years. So I accepted. The elevator doors opened onto a private foyer done in pale stone and glass. There was only one door in front of me, matte black and completely plain. I couldn’t even see a handle. I lifted my hand to knock, but before I could, the door clicked open. A man in a dark suit stood on the other side. Security, I assumed. He didn’t say a word. He simply stepped aside and motioned for me to go in. A second later, he was back inside the elevator, and the doors closed behind him. For some reason, that bothered me more than it should have. Then I stepped into the penthouse, and for a moment, I forgot how to breathe. It was enormous. And strangely empty. Glass covered almost the entire outer wall, giving me an uninterrupted view of the city below.Rain bled down the glass making the distant lights look like a surrealistic mural . The floor was polished concrete, dark and gray like wet ash. There was one long sofa facing the windows, with a low black-stone table in front of it. That was it. No photographs. No books. No little things left lying around. Nothing that told me who lived here. It didn’t feel like someone’s home. I stepped inside and let the door close behind me. I carefully set my portfolio case down and moved toward the glass, unable to resist looking at the drop below. Somewhere far beneath me, the city carried on as if nothing had changed, completely unaware that I was standing up here, suddenly wondering if I had made a terrible mistake by coming. “You’re early.” The voice came from behind me. Low. Calm. Controlled. There was something in it that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I turned. And the world seemed to tilt beneath my feet. He stood near the open kitchen, one hand resting against the edge of the island, the other wrapped around a glass of water he hadn’t touched. He was tall ,with a broad set of shoulders that made one guess he’d been in some kind of sports although there was no vanity in his appearance .His dark hair was slightly longer than I remembered, as though he had stopped caring about keeping it perfectly trimmed. The same sharp jaw. The same mouth. The mouth I remembered far too clearly. The one that had once traced a slow path down my throat, as though he wanted to memorize me by taste alone. Dominic Kane. Except— It couldn’t be Dominic Kane. Dominic Kane had died thirteen months ago in a private plane crash over the Atlantic. The entire city had watched the memorial. I had watched it too. I remembered sitting on the edge of my bed with one hand pressed over my mouth, staring at the screen as they showed his photographs over and over again. Because the man on the news was the same man who had spent one rain-soaked night in my apartment. The same man who had disappeared before morning. My heart pounded against my ribs and the room seemed to lean away from me ,making me feel all soon too giddy. He was watching me with an expression I couldn’t read. There was no surprise on his face. No recognition. Just a quiet, almost unsettling stillness as he studied me. “Ms. Ellis,” he said. “I was told you preferred to look around the space on your own before we spoke. I can leave if you need a little time.” The voice was unmistakable. Maybe it was slightly deeper than I remembered, a little rougher around the edges, but it was still him. I forced myself not to move. Somehow, I managed to keep my face calm, even though every nerve in my body was screaming at me to run. “Mr. Kane,” I said, though even saying his name felt strange. Unreal. “I—thank you. The space is… striking.” “It’s empty,” he said quietly. “That’s why you’re here.” He put down the glass and started walking towards me, each movement slow and precise. Some strange part of me had this wild thought, that he was moving as if he always had to shrink himself to the proportions lesser than what his physical presence would suggest. He stopped a few feet away and I could smell the clean scent of his skin, something warm and expensive buried in there, familiar as the feeling of something I had tucked away in my heart for over a year. "You look pale", he said, "are you sick?" "No", I replied, too quickly and I hated myself for it. I swallowed hard and tried again, "Just... the height. I'm not used to being this high above the city." That was a lie, I have built projects five times higher than this, but at that moment that was the only excuse that would allow me to keep the distance I so desperately wanted. And he was giving me weird looks, searching my face as if trying to read the truth I was so desperately trying to hide. For a moment I thought he would press on, see right through me, but in the end he just nodded, gave me this strange, sad smile, and turned around, heading towards the living room. "The previous design was my brother's", he said, "he had a thing for minimalist decor. Not that I blame him, actually, but I find that I never quite held that same appeal." My heart stopped. His brother. They hadn't announced the death yet, just that a younger brother had acted as a backup in some of the designs before disappearing shortly after the crash, but I hadn't paid much mind to it. I was still too busy trying not to think about the feel of a stranger's lips on my collarbone. "What do you want the space to feel like?" I asked because if I didn't speak I would start shaking. Dominic was silent for a long moment, and when he spoke his voice was even lower. "Like someone actually lives here, like it is safe to stay." The words struck at something deep in my ribs an sent shivers up my spine. With a shaky breath I opened up my portfolio and forced myself to focus on the work, the penthouse tour - master suite, two untouched guest rooms, a study filled with nothing but bare bookshelves and a rooftop terrace that opened up to the rain and wind. He said little, I asked a few probing questions and took extensive notes, hands only trembling slightly. Each time our eyes met something unspoken passed between us and I kept waiting for some flicker of recognition to pass over his face, but he never showed it. He either didn't remember me at all or was the most amazing actor I'd ever seen. I straightened my shoulders, steeled myself for what I needed to say next. "I'll have some preliminary concepts for you by the end of the week," I said gathering up my things. My voice was steady, almost surprised by the steadiness of it all. "I'll need access to the structural plans as well as any previous renovation documents." "You'll have them." He paused, and I could almost hear the cogs in his brain working overtime. "There is a private elevator key on the consol by the front door. It will give you access to the main floor whenever you need to be here, I keep irregular hours so you might find me here when you expect." I nodded, trusting myself not to say anything stupid. As I reached for the door he spoke my name, and the world seemed to stop turning. "Nora" Not Ms.Ellis, not even a variation of it really. It was my name, spoken out exactly as I remembered it that one night. He'd pressed me against the wall of my small apartment and asked if I was sure, and I'd whispered his name back just as stunned. I was frozen with my hand on the knob. "Yes?" There was a pause, a silence so thick I could almost hear the sound of it. When I turned around he was exactly where I'd left him, the city lights pooling at his heels. His expression had changed, all that carefully constructed mask slipping just enough to reveal something feral, something that made my breath hitch and my mouth go suddenly very dry. "Drive carefully, the roads are slippery." It was the most mundane sentence i'd ever heard in my life and suddenly it sounded like a confession. I walked away from the penthouse with the thump of my pulse in my ears. It didn't stop until I reached the underground parking garage, my hands shaking as I slid behind the wheel of my car with the door closed and the rain pattering on the roof, staring at nothing. He was alive. Dominic Kane was alive and had looked at me like he remembered everything we did in the dark. My phone vibrated in my bag, and I pulled it out with my shaking fingers. Unknown number. One line text. We need to talk. Tonight. I'll send a car at nine. No name. No signature. But I knew. I closed my eyes, pressing the phone against my forehead. Somewhere above me in the building, seventy-two floors up, was a man who wasn't supposed to be there anymore, waiting for something to happen, something that would change everything for the worse. Whatever happened next, it would destroy the perfect little life I had built for myself ever since the morning I woke up alone. I typed in one word. Okay. And then I turned the car on, already knowing I was about to walk away from something I might not live to see again.