Chapter Two : First Blood
745 Words
The elevator ride was silent.
Not the awkward kind. The deliberate kind where both people have quietly agreed, without saying a single word, that neither of them is going to be the first to break.
Zara was not breaking first.
She stood on her side of the elevator with her bag on her shoulder and her eyes forward and told herself very firmly that she had survived harder things than forty floors of silence with a man in an expensive suit.
What she hadn't accounted for was how completely, unnervingly still Damien Voss was.
Most people fidgeted. Shifted their weight. Found something fascinating about the floor numbers. It was human nature that small restlessness that came with being a person in a quiet space.
Damien had none of it.
He stood with his hands loose at his sides and his eyes forward like silence was something he had claimed as personal territory so long ago that discomfort in it was no longer possible for him. Like everything in this building belonged to him.
Including, apparently, the air.
It was irritating in a way Zara decided she wasn't going to examine too closely.
His office was at the end of the thirty-fourth floor corridor—floor-to-ceiling windows, Lagos spread out below like something arranged specifically for the view, a desk so dark and uncluttered it looked like nobody actually worked at it.
He sat.
She sat.
Neither of them reached for small talk, and Zara appreciated that more than she wanted to admit.
"First time in Lagos?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
"What do you think?"
She almost gave him something polite and forgettable. Then she thought why bother?
"It's overwhelming," she said. "In a way that feels intentional. "Like the city decided not to apologize for itself a long time ago and just committed." She met his eyes. "I respect that."
He looked at her for a moment longer than necessary.
"Good," he said quietly.
He turned a folder on the desk to face her. She hadn't noticed it sitting there, which irritated her because she noticed everything.
"Your contract," he said. "Take as long as you need."
She took her time. Read every word, every clause, every small paragraph most people skipped because they were too eager to slow down. Her father's voice sat quietly in the back of her head the way it always did in moments like this—never sign what you haven't read, Zara and she let it guide her hands through every page.
She read it twice.
Then she looked up.
"The probation period is three months," she said. "For this level it's usually six weeks."
"In other companies," he said. "Yes."
"Is there a reason yours is different?"
"I'm thorough," he said simply, "about the people who work for me."
"So am I," she said. "About the places I choose to work."
Something moved across his face. Not irritation quieter than that. She picked up his pen, heavy and expensive, and signed her name at the bottom of the last page. Slowly. Deliberately. Like every letter meant something.
She pushed the folder back across the desk.
He looked at her signature for just a second too long.
Then "Welcome to Voss Enterprises, Miss Cole."
"Thank you, Mr. Voss," she said. Same tone. Same energy. Giving absolutely nothing away.
She walked out without looking back.
He stayed long after the building emptied.
Lagos glittered darkly outside his windows. The office was quiet in the way he usually loved—no noise, no performance, nothing asked of him.
Tonight it felt different.
His mind kept replaying things it had no business replaying. The way she'd read that contract every single word, twice, without once glancing up to check his reaction. The way she'd signed her name. The way she'd said thank you, Mr. Voss, like it cost her absolutely nothing.
He reached into the bottom left drawer.
The one his assistant had never opened. The one that didn't appear on any office inventory.
He pulled out a plain brown folder and set it on the desk.
Opened it.
First page a photograph. Candid. Paris. Her outside her old office building with coffee in one hand, laughing at something with her whole face. Nothing like the composed, careful woman who had sat across from him today.
Beneath the photograph, printed in clean black type
ZARA COLE.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then he turned to the next page.
- Writer
