THE CHRISTMAS HEIST

GETTING CLOSE

My first day at Frost Industries, I arrived fifteen minutes early.

Not too early—that suggested desperation. Not on time—that suggested I couldn't anticipate traffic, delays, the thousand small disasters that could derail a schedule. Fifteen minutes gave me time to settle in, to observe, to become indispensable before Zane even walked through the door.

The executive assistant's office was smaller than I'd expected but positioned perfectly—right outside Zane's door, with a clear view of the elevator and the corridor. Nothing and no one got to him without going through me first.

Exactly where I needed to be.

I'd spent the week memorizing everything Mr. Murky had sent me. Zane's schedule for the next month. His preferences—coffee black, lunch at his desk when he was working on something urgent, standing meetings on Tuesdays with the board. His habits. His patterns. The architecture of his life, reduced to data points I could exploit.

What the files hadn't prepared me for was the man himself.

He arrived at seven-thirty, carrying his own briefcase and a second cup of coffee that he set on my desk without a word. I looked up, surprised.

"Good morning," he said, and there was that smile again—the one that made him look younger, more approachable. Less like a billionaire and more like someone you'd want to know. "I wasn't sure how you took it, so I went with a guess. Vanilla latte?"

I stared at the cup. When was the last time someone had brought me coffee? When was the last time anyone had thought about what I might want?

"Thank you," I managed. "That's... you didn't have to do that."

"First day nerves are real. Caffeine helps." He shrugged out of his coat, and I noticed he'd loosened his tie slightly—the small rebellion of a man who wore suits because he had to, not because he wanted to. "Ready to jump into the deep end?"

"Always."

"Good. Because my nine o'clock just got moved to eight-thirty, the contracts for the Singapore deal need to be reviewed before noon, and I have approximately forty-seven emails that need responses I don't have time to write."

I pulled up his calendar on my computer, already scanning for conflicts, calculating how to shift everything else to accommodate the early meeting. "The Singapore contracts—are those with legal, or do you need me to pull them?"

"Legal has them, but I want your eyes on them too. You have an art history background. There's a clause about cultural artifacts that's been bothering me."

I blinked. "You want me to review contracts on my first day?"

"I want to know if you're as sharp as you seem. If the clause is fine, tell me it's fine. If it's not, tell me why." He paused in his doorway, looking back at me. "I don't need someone who just does what I ask, Elena. I need someone who thinks three steps ahead and isn't afraid to tell me when I'm wrong."

Then he was gone, door closing behind him, leaving me alone with a vanilla latte and the sudden, terrifying realization that this job might actually be exactly what he'd described.

The first week blurred together in a cascade of meetings, phone calls, and problems that needed solving five minutes ago. Zane hadn't been exaggerating about the pace. His schedule was a nightmare of back-to-back commitments, each one requiring preparation, follow-up, and at least three contingency plans.

But I was good at this. Better than good.

I anticipated which meetings would run long and built in buffer time. I learned which calls he'd take immediately and which ones I could handle myself. I figured out that he preferred written briefs to verbal updates and that he made his best decisions after ten at night when the office was quiet and he could think.

I watched him. Learned him. Became essential to him.

On Friday afternoon, I was reviewing the RSVPs for the Christmas gala when Zane emerged from his office, jacket off, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. It was the first time I'd seen him look even slightly disheveled, and something about it made my mouth go dry.

"Tell me you have good news," he said, leaning against my desk with a weariness that seemed bone-deep.

"The Jakarta team signed. Legal called ten minutes ago."

His whole face changed—tension bleeding out, replaced by something like relief. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. They want to move forward with phase two immediately."

"Elena Hartley, you are a miracle worker."

"I literally did nothing except answer the phone."

"You answered the phone with confidence and competence, which in my experience is rarer than you'd think." He glanced at his watch—nearly six. "Have you eaten today?"

The question caught me off guard. "I had a protein bar around two."

"That doesn't count. Come on."

"Come on where?"

"Dinner. There's a Thai place two blocks from here that does this thing with basil and chilies that might actually be proof of a benevolent universe. My treat—call it a thank you for surviving your first week."

Every instinct I had screamed danger. Dinner alone with the mark. Getting closer, getting personal, blurring lines I needed to keep razor-sharp.

But this was the job, wasn't it? Get close. Gain his trust. Make him see me as more than just an employee.

"I should probably—"

"If you say you should work late, I'm going to be very disappointed in my own management skills." He grabbed his jacket from the coat rack. "Besides, I'm the boss. I'm ordering you to stop working and eat actual food."

"Is that legal?"

"Probably not. Are you going to report me to HR?"

I found myself smiling despite every warning bell in my head. "Fine. But if this place gives me food poisoning, I'm holding you personally responsible."

"Deal."

The restaurant was small, tucked into a side street I'd walked past a hundred times without noticing. The kind of place that didn't advertise because it didn't need to—the people who knew, knew.

We slid into a booth in the back, and Zane ordered for both of us without asking, which should have annoyed me but somehow didn't. He seemed more relaxed here, away from the office and the weight of being Zane Frost, CEO. Just a guy who really liked Thai food and wasn't afraid to be enthusiastic about it.

"So," he said when the food arrived—fragrant and complicated and exactly as good as he'd promised. "Tell me something true."

I looked up, chopsticks halfway to my mouth. "What?"

"We've spent a week together in professional mode. Efficient Elena, always three steps ahead, never ruffled. But I don't actually know anything about you." He gestured with his own chopsticks. "So tell me something true. Something real."

This was dangerous territory. The more truth I gave him, the more ammunition I handed over for the inevitable moment when everything fell apart.

But lies only worked when they were wrapped in enough truth to taste real.

"I don't have any family," I said quietly. "My mom died when I was twelve. Foster care after that. I aged out at eighteen and have been on my own ever since."

His expression shifted—not pity, thank God, but understanding. "That's a lot to carry."

"It made me independent. Self-sufficient."

"Lonely."

The word landed like a punch. I looked down at my plate, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. "Sometimes. Yeah."

Silence stretched between us, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It was the kind of silence that meant someone was actually listening, actually hearing what you weren't saying.

"I lost my parents when I was twenty-five," Zane said finally. "Car accident. One minute they were flying to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary, and then they were just... gone."

"I'm sorry."

"It's been eight years, but sometimes it still feels like yesterday. Like I'm still that kid trying to figure out how to run a company I wasn't ready for, missing them so much I could barely breathe." He took a drink of his water. "I don't talk about this much. Just so you know. You've unlocked some kind of trauma-sharing protocol I didn't know I had."

"I'm good at that," I said, and meant it in ways he couldn't understand. "Getting people to talk."

"Is that your superpower?"

"One of them."

"What are the others?"

Lying. Stealing. Becoming whoever someone needs me to be until they trust me enough to destroy.

"I'm excellent at Tetris," I said instead. "And I can recite all of The Princess Bride from memory."

He laughed—a real laugh, surprised and genuine. "That's oddly specific."

"Foster home number three had a VHS copy. I watched it probably two hundred times. It was—" I stopped, caught off guard by the memory. "It was nice. Having something that was always the same, you know? When everything else kept changing."

Zane looked at me for a long moment, and I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with the con and everything to do with having said something devastatingly, dangerously true.

"As you wish," he said quietly.

My heart stuttered. "What?"

"That's my favorite line. From the movie." He smiled, and it was soft, intimate, the kind of smile that meant something. "I'm glad you survived your first week, Elena. I think you're going to fit in just fine here."

I smiled back, and it felt like falling.

My phone buzzed, a text from an unknown number Well done. Don't disappoint me.