Chapter 2
412 Words
Elliot
Elliot Blackwood did not lose control.
He built empires by controlling variables—markets, people, outcomes. Emotion had never been one of them.
Grief, yes. It sat like a scar he worked around. But chaos?
Impulse?
Never.
And yet, three days later, he was still seeing her.
Every time he closed his eyes, the image surfaced uninvited: brown hair drifting like smoke in water, blue eyes sharp with life and accusation, her body pulled from his worst memory and thrown back into his hands breathing.
Alive.
He slammed his office door harder than necessary.
Seattle stretched below his floor-to-ceiling windows, grey and orderly.
Safe.
Predictable.
Unlike the woman who had taken up illegal residence on his property and somehow crawled under his skin.
He hadn’t gone back to the pool house.
He hadn’t sent security.
He hadn’t done anything that made sense.
Instead, he’d memorised the property schematics pulled up on his tablet at two in the morning. Noted where lights had been switched on. Where water usage spiked. Where someone—she—had made herself at home.
It infuriated him.
And worse—it fascinated him.
“Find out who she is,” he’d told his head of operations that morning, voice clipped.
“Quietly.”
He didn’t want a file. He wanted… context.
Why her defiance felt like a challenge instead of an inconvenience. Why she hadn’t flinched when he towered over her dripping wet and furious. Why, for the first time in seven years, his body had reacted before his brain.
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
Dominance was easy when it was negotiated. When it was clean. When it didn’t come with eyes that looked straight through him and dared him to try.
Her eyes had done that.
A knock interrupted his thoughts.
“Mr Blackwood? Finance needs approval on the intern staffing.”
“Send it through,” he said automatically.
Interns.
Students.
The word landed differently now.
He paused.
“What departments?” he asked.
“Admin, research support, logistics.”
His jaw tightened.
Seattle University was three blocks from Blackwood Holdings.
The pool house was two.
Coincidence suddenly felt thin.
Elliot leaned back slowly in his chair, pulse ticking low and dangerous.
If she worked for him—
If she existed within his world—
The thought curled darkly in his chest.
Obsession didn’t announce itself loudly.
It brewed.
Quiet.
Patient.
And Elliot had the unsettling sense that it had already begun.
- Writer
