Falling for the Enemy

Ch.3

EROS'S POV

My office doors swing open, and a woman rushes in, her brown hair slightly tousled from the wind outside. Our eyes meet, and the world around me seems to freeze.

She enters with a white porcelain cup and the kind of measured composure that makes other people breathe easier. I do not breathe. I note the details: hair pushed behind one ear, clean lines, a faint scent like vanilla after rain. The porcelain cup doesn’t rattle when she sets it down. Her hands don’t shake.

No. It can't be. But it is.

Standing before me is my Althea. Althea Dawson. My college best friend. The one whose memory I've spent twelve years trying to forget.

I force myself to maintain composure, though my heart is thundering against my ribs. It’s been so long, and yet at the same time it feels like a day hasn’t passed. She’s older, of course. More beautiful. And those eyes… They’re narrowed at me like a dog about to lunge.

She settled into the butter-soft leather chair that I gestured to, across from my desk. "Right on time."

"So," I begin, leaning back in my chair with controlled stillness. "Tell me why you think you can handle this job." The question hangs between us, loaded with challenge and weight.

She forces herself to meet my gaze steadily, and my heart is hammering. "I'm excellent at making problems disappear. I'm organized, efficient, and I don't fall apart when things get complicated." She pauses, then adds, "I also make fantastic coffee." Something flickers in her expression—not quite amusement, but close.

"Hmm." I take a sip of the coffee. Exactly right. It shouldn’t matter, and yet it lands. She meets my eye without blinking, which tells me more than her résumé ever could. I test her the way I test everyone—precision, stamina, clarity under pressure. The words I give her are the same ones that have sent a dozen people to HR and then out into the street. Not because I’m impulsive or cruel—because I can read performance faster than most people can finish onboarding. They ace interviews and collapse under pressure. I don’t keep dead weight. When I let someone go, I make sure they leave with four months’ pay and a nondisclosure, not a lawsuit. Efficiency, not ego.

Her gaze doesn’t waver. When she adds that she’s here to work, not to fall for me, I feel something irrational and unhelpful flare through my chest. Annoyance? Disappointment? I bury it under the habit of a decade: logic first, instinct nowhere.

“Your schedule,” she says, and places a single page on my desk—clean, efficient, conflicts flagged, solutions already in progress. She doesn’t recite a laundry list like she’s reading off a receipt; she gives me what matters and holds my attention while she does it. The knot points of the day are already loosened. Places where past assistants fumbled, she’s simply… handled. Mensah. Asante. A site timing issue tomorrow she spotted before I did.

It’s the competence that irritates me. Not because I dislike competence, but because of what it does inside my head—how it rearranges the furniture I’ve carefully bolted down. Most people around me either need managing or want things I don’t give. She doesn’t need coddling and doesn’t want anything. She just fixes problems, then looks at me like she expects more.

“The budget meeting can move,” I say finally, conceding the only reasonable answer. She nods once. “I’ll handle it.” No smile. No wobble. No softening in her eyes as if my approval were oxygen. She stands to go and I hear myself say, “Your wardrobe.” Her chin lifts a sharp degree. I watch the emotion flash across her face—offense, steel, a dare—and then resolve into something cooler. I give her the truth: clients read us before they hear us. I expect her to be read correctly. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t fawn. She does what no one has managed in years—she tells me, lightly, that she cleans up well. We lock eyes. There’s a hum in the silence. I let her go before the hum turns into something with shape.

The rest of the morning does what mornings do—become noise. My staff operates at the speed of my expectations. Doors open. Calls connect. Deals move an inch. I sign documents worth more than most people’s annual salary and reject others as if I’m swatting flies. Somewhere in there I look up and catch Althea at her desk—head bent, fingers fast, eyes moving like she sees the whole board at once.

I don’t hire for pretty. I hire for outcomes.

But the way she focuses is… distracting. Intent reads like allure when you haven’t allowed yourself to want anything but victory for a very long time. “Colton.” I step out, voice low. He appears within seconds because he has excellent survival instincts.

“Observations.” He doesn’t pretend to know what I’m asking. “Clean execution. No drama. Already has two department heads thanking her for clarity. Vendor relations says she’s nice.’”

“Nice?”

“Smiles while she rearranges your day and makes you grateful.” I should be pleased. Instead, there’s a grain of sand under the eyelid. Not a problem—just enough to notice. She said she’s not here to fall for me. I required that boundary. Then why does it scrape? Because control without leverage is just hope in a suit. By early afternoon the office thins to the usual rhythm—assistants on headsets, coordination humming, Accra glittering like it forgave nothing and forgot less. I read through proposals I’ll reject, then draft the email that rejects them, then set the email’s tone down by two degrees so no one quits out of spite.

Althea sends me a meeting update in four lines, all signal, no noise. The instinct to write “good work” flickers and dies in my throat. Praise is currency; I don’t spend it casually. At six, my office feels like the inside of a metronome. I loosen my tie and step out. Althea is still at her desk, eyes on her screen, posture straight. Most people fold by this hour, slouch into their chairs, and drown in their own fatigue. She looks like she found a second wind and taught it tricks.

“Ms. Dawson.” She looks up at once. “Yes, Mr. Valenti?”

“You can head home. First day is over.”

“I’m finishing vendor coordination on the consultation. Fifteen minutes.” Not pleading. Information. There it is again—that wry honesty that dents my armor from the oddest angles. “You’ve handled today adequately,” I say.

A lesser sentence than the one I thought. And yet she accepts it like it’s enough, closes her laptop, and slides it into her bag. No gratitude.No hovering for more. “Tomorrow. Eight-thirty. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t be.” She stands, and for one beat we share the quiet between two people who know exactly what the other will do next. She turns. She doesn’t look back. The elevator doors swallow her.

I should go home. I won’t. Home is square footage and an astonishing view. Work is oxygen. Still, I find myself at the window again, Accra Central smearing itself into evening. I text Colton: Keep an eye on Dawson. I want a signal if performance dips. He replies in under ten seconds: Performance won’t dip. But I’ll watch. I put the phone down and tell myself I’m satisfied. I am not satisfied. I am thinking about a face and a voice that didn’t tremble.

I am thinking about how easy it would be to decide she’s like the rest—waiting, in some corner of her mind, for the door to open to something personal. It would be easier if she were. Desire is leverage. Ambition is leverage. Fear is leverage. The people who stay in my orbit need a tether I control. What do you do with someone who brought none of those into your office, only competence and boundaries? You test the system. My “rules” have never been written down, but they are as real as the desk under my hands: We do not date in-house. We do not make exceptions. We do not confuse proximity with permission. We are what the calendar says. We are the work. They have kept me from becoming my father’s son in every way that counts.

My phone lights up with a message from Legal; I answer it and pull the conversation into numbers and risk, my native tongue. When it ends, I watch my reflection blur in the window. For a suspended second, the city and I look like we’re breathing in time. Enough. I call it—day over—at a respectable hour that would still qualify as “late” for anyone sane.

I shrug on my coat and pass Althea's desk. Empty. Clean. The set of pens aligned as if she measured the space between them. A note for me, if I’m a man who can be bothered to notice: I keep things in order too. In the elevator, a junior analyst tells me he’s grateful for the opportunity to work on the Owusu account. I say, “Deliver,” because it’s the only blessing I know how to give.

The doors part; the lobby reflects me back—glass, light, the echo of morning. I step out onto the street and the city hits me in the lungs. Somewhere in this electric sprawl, a woman who told me she wasn’t going to fall for me is convincing department heads to move mountains with a smile. Somewhere, she’s riding a train that still clings to her blazer at the edges—why did I say that?—and telling herself that day one didn’t kill her. Somewhere, I suspect, she’s already winning a game she doesn’t even know I’m playing.