Chapter 1: The CEO's New Employee.
1001 Words
The sky over the city was still grey with morning haze as Damon Wu stood silently in his penthouse office, staring down at the world from behind crystal-clear glass. Thirty-five stories up, he could see the ants of traffic crawling below, the people who moved too fast, spoke too loud, and thought they understood power. But they didn’t.
He knew power. He wielded it.
Wutec Holdings was one of the top multinational corporations in the country, and he was its ruthless CEO, feared by rivals and admired by millions. Sharp suits, colder eyes, and a voice that could freeze a room.
Yet this morning, a strange stillness settled inside him.
A soft knock broke the silence. Damon didn't move.
"Sir," his assistant said, stepping in. "Top candidate from HR. They’re finalizing her onboarding today. Thought you should see the resume first."
The assistant placed the folder on the sleek black desk.
Damon didn’t reach for it immediately.
Eventually, he turned away from the window, picked up the folder, and opened it casually.
Then he froze.
Amara Li.
The name clung to his mind like smoke from an old fire.
There was something familiar. A pull in the pit of his stomach.
"She’ll be in your department," the assistant added. "Highly recommended. HR's top choice."
Damon said nothing. His eyes lingered on her photo.
The face was new.
Beautiful. Poised. Radiant, even.
But there was something in the curve of her smile. Something in the arch of her name.
A memory scratched at the back of his mind.
He closed the folder slowly, exhaling like someone had knocked the breath out of him.
It couldn't be.
Not after all these years.
She had left him a letter, five years ago. Back in university. A goodbye that came without warning.
She wrote that she was leaving. Not for weeks. Not for months. But for years.
And that he shouldn’t look for her.
That he deserved someone better—someone beautiful, someone with class.
He remembered how people used to whisper that she wasn’t worthy of him. That she had bewitched him. That he had lost his mind for even speaking to her.
She used to care what people said.
And so, she disappeared.
He’d never known where she went. She never said. Just vanished.
He had replayed that letter more times than he cared to admit.
But it had been five years.
This Amara Li—was it her?
Or just someone with the same name, the same quiet flame behind the eyes?
He set the file aside. "Bring her to orientation," he said coolly. "I want to observe her myself."
Across town, the sunlight filtered through the window of a modest yet tastefully decorated apartment.
Amara Li sat before her mirror, wrapped in a towel, her reflection partially hidden by the glow of morning.
Only her figure was visible—a graceful silhouette, curvy in the right places, elegant, feminine. Her long neck, her collarbones, the slight arch of her back as she applied the last touches of foundation.
But her face? Not yet revealed.
She stood and moved toward her bedroom, sliding into a fitted gown that hugged her new frame. She'd ordered it weeks ago, choosing it specifically for this day.
The first day of her new life.
She smiled, a curve of lips seen only in the mirror’s reflection.
She had no idea that the CEO of the company she was about to join—was the boy she once ran from.
The one who caught her when she fell.
The one who changed her life.
She didn’t plan to meet him again.
Certainly not like this.
Amara stepped out of her apartment and slid into her car, heart steady, face calm. She had become the woman the world always said she could never be.
The towering building of Wutec Holdings stood like a monument to ambition. Glass walls, steel edges, and guards who barely blinked as she passed.
Her heels echoed against the marble floors, each click drawing polite nods and intrigued glances.
She heard the whispers.
"Who is she?"
"Is she a celebrity?"
"God, she’s gorgeous."
"Is she married?"
Amara kept walking, head held high, though inside she trembled.
She hated it.
How they saw her now.
As if beauty was her permission to exist. As if only now she was finally worthy.
But would they still admire her if they knew the truth behind the face?
Five years ago, after Damon had saved her from the rooftop, she spent five days in hiding.
She didn’t return home.
She needed time to breathe.
To think.
To become.
She finally returned that Saturday to gather her things, prepared to leave for good.
But her mother was there.
Waiting.
She cried, begged for forgiveness, and confessed that what she had said that day—to those men in suits—was a lie to protect Amara from the consequences of being her daughter.
At first, Amara didn't believe her. It took days.
But she forgave her. Eventually.
Her mother had always tried to shield her, even if she failed. Even if she broke her.
Amara started school again. But after her second semester, she told her mother she wanted to go abroad.
Her mother opposed it.
But Amara had made her decision.
She would do the surgery. Change what had cursed her. And maybe give her mother a second chance at her job, her life.
She wanted her mother to feel her pain too—just once. To see how cruel the world could be to someone who looked different.
And her mother did. When she saw the way students treated Amara, she tried to sue them. But Amara stopped her.
"Someone already made me strong," she told her. "Someone made me feel human again."
And that’s when she wrote the letter to Damon.
And vanished.
Now, she was back.
Unaware that the ghost from her past was about to become her present.
Her CEO.
[End Of Chapter One]
- Writer
