Romance-Con

Chapter 2: In The She-Devil’s Lair

The ascent to the penthouse was a drawn-out, nerve-shredding eternity. Inside the mirrored elevator, the world shrank to four glossy walls and the relentless tick of the floor numbers. Zoë fussed with his suit, smoothed his hair, straightened his glasses, then straightened them again, as if the ritual could ward off whatever fate awaited above. He caught sight of his own reflection—pale, wide-eyed, fixing a tie that suddenly felt like a noose.

“It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s just a meeting. You’ll be fine,” he whispered, voice trembling. “People survive meetings all the time. People survive… her. Sometimes.”

The elevator hummed upward, the silence broken only by his nervous drumming fingers and the frantic thump of his heart. With every passing floor, the suspense mounted; the air thickened with dread. He was still adjusting his glasses—again—when the elevator chimed their arrival, the sound so cheerfully at odds with the tension that Zoë nearly jumped. The doors slid open with a hiss, and there stood Darius, filling the frame like a slab of living stone—impossibly broad, draped in a black suit so severe it seemed to absorb the light, his jaw marked by a pale, jagged scar. Darius’s stare was flat and unreadable, as comforting as a locked vault door.

Zoë tried to summon composure and managed a strangled, “Hello, I—”

But Darius, without a word or hint of ceremony, reached in and seized Zoë by the elbow, yanking him out of the elevator with the efficiency of a butcher selecting the next lamb for slaughter. The elevator’s cheerful ding echoed behind them, sealing Zoë’s fate.

Darius’s grip was ironclad as they swept down the corridor, Zoë’s shoes barely keeping pace. “You really should’ve read the fine print, Sawyer,” Darius rumbled, voice low and doomsday-serious. “Most people know better than to lie in the interview. That’s why we interrogated you.”

Zoë’s pulse skipped. “L-lie? What? I answered everything! What are you talking about? What does that even mean?”

Darius’s scar twisted with a smirk. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Find out what?” Zoë hissed, trying to dig his heels in, but Darius hauled him along as if he weighed nothing. “Are you threatening me? Is this about the tequila? Because I swore—never again— Wait, is this about my s*x life? Because I can explain! That whole thing in college, the drunken threesome in the dorm—it was one time, I swear! And honestly, I don’t even remember if it was two girls or a girl and a guy, or maybe even the—look, I was very drunk, there was a lot of whipped cream, and I’m pretty sure the goat was just a very aggressive mascot. Besides, everyone was blindfolded! Nothing illegal, nothing permanent—except maybe that tattoo, but it’s somewhere I’d rather not discuss in a hallway. Also, the whipped cream eventually washed out. Probably.”

Darius paused, turning those glacial eyes on Zoë with a look that could make holy water boil. Then, with a devilish wink, he leaned in so close Zoë could smell the faint tang of gun oil and aftershave. In a low, conspiratorial whisper, he murmured, "Sawyer, there are things even the devil herself doesn’t want to hear. But hey—if you’re going to confess, save it for inside. Just a tip: that ‘whipped cream’ you’re so sure about? Probably wasn’t whipped cream." He pulled back with a dark chuckle. "Now, focus. You'll want to remember every last detail—for the autopsy report."

Zoë’s face drained of color, eyes wide and mouth working uselessly for a retort. The autopsy report? Was that a joke? Was that a threat? Was that—dear God—foreshadowing? He could practically hear the office rumor mill already composing his obituary.

Darius, catching the look, grinned like a wolf about to tear into its prey, clearly savoring every ounce of Zoë's terror. They stopped in front of a pair of towering, black-lacquered doors that looked sturdy enough to hold back a SWAT team—or trap a soul for eternity. Each door was adorned with golden handles so ornate they looked stolen from Versailles, and a gleaming name plaque in gothic script: DYLAN REYES, CHAIRWOMAN. With a theatrical flourish, Darius threw the doors open, letting a thick cloud of cigarette smoke billow out into the hall.

"Sir!" Darius announced, voice booming as if he were presenting a fighter to the ring. "I've brought Mr. Sawyer, as you requested."

Zoë stepped inside, instantly assaulted by a wall of cigarette smoke so thick it could have qualified as weather. He coughed—a series of sharp, embarrassing hackings that only seemed to make the smoke curl tighter around him. Blinking through tears, he could just make out the faint outline of a figure at the far end of the cavernous office—a silhouette haloed by the bleary glow of city lights and the orange tip of a smoldering cigarette. Without moving from her laid-back sprawl in a chair that was, Zoë was certain, at least the size of a throne, Dylan growled, "Come in." The words rumbled from the smoke like the opening of a pit beneath Zoë’s feet.

Zoë hovered awkwardly between the now-closed doors (with Darius looming like a sentry at his back) and Dylan's desk, still blinking away the sting of the smoke. Dylan didn’t bother to look up, her eyes half-lidded as if she’d already grown bored with the idea of conversation. "Mr. Sawyer," she drawled, the syllables curling like smoke. "Why do you think you’ve been called to my office?"

Zoë, still rattled, started to blurt out the litany he’d offered Darius in the hallway. "Well, if it’s about the tequila, or, uh, the whipped cream, or the goat—"

Dylan cut him off with a single, perfectly manicured hand raised in the air. "Enough. Let me get us to the point, Mr. Sawyer. Are you familiar with a man named Xander Sawyer?"

At the mention of the name, Zoë froze. The air went out of the room, replaced by a tension so sharp it could have sliced the smoke. He didn’t answer—couldn’t, really—not with his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his heart hammering somewhere in the vicinity of his socks.

Through the haze, Dylan’s lips unfurled into a terrifying, predatory grin, each perfect white tooth catching the stray light like a row of polished knives. It was the kind of smile you’d expect to see in a nightmare, or right before being thrown into a pit of wild animals on live television. Even the shadows seemed to recoil. Zoë shivered, the chill somehow crawling under her skin despite the room's oppressive heat, as Dylan finally began to rise from her throne—a movement as deliberate and menacing as a guillotine blade, smoke swirling around her like a conjured storm.

Zoë’s knees nearly buckled as Dylan strode toward him, her shadow stretching across the floor like the world’s most stylish executioner. Instinct screamed at him to run, but Darius’s brick-wall presence at his back left him with all the freedom of a death row inmate strapped in for the finale. With each step Dylan took, the air seemed to get thinner, the smoke thicker, and Zoë couldn’t help but feel like he was starring in a particularly expensive horror film—except this time, the monster was breathtakingly attractive and came with her own legal team. Now, up close, Dylan was an impossible paradox: several inches taller than Zoë, she radiated an overpowering masculinity and a striking, predatory beauty. It was the kind of presence that made every rumor—womanizer, man-killer, possibly demi-god—seem pitifully inadequate. Zoë was pretty sure Dylan could seduce a saint and then blackmail their ghost.