His Contract: Billionaire Boss, Fake Fiancée

Chapter 3: Viral, Apparently

The photo had 14,000 likes by the time I got home.

I know because I checked it four times on the subway, standing in the packed car with my broken tote bag wedged between my knees, watching the number climb the way you watch a fever thermometer — with the specific dread of someone who knows it's only going to get worse before it gets better.

The comments were the real problem.

"She's giving 'I just fixed his entire personality' energy and I'm HERE for it."

"Who is she??? She looks so NORMAL. I love her."

"Liam Knight looking at a woman like that?? In this economy??"

I locked my phone and stared at the subway map above the doors like it contained answers.

It did not contain answers. It contained the A, C, and E lines.

My apartment was cold in the particular way of New York pre-war buildings in February — the radiator producing just enough heat to make you think warmth was possible, then stopping. I dropped my bag on the couch, kept my coat on for another ten minutes while I made tea, and sat at my kitchen table with my laptop open and the mug from work wrapped in both hands.

I pulled up the Page Six article.

It had been updated since the alert. They'd added a second photo — this one from a different angle, slightly blurry, clearly a reader submission or a street-level shot from someone walking past the lobby this morning. In it, Liam was fully visible through the elevator glass, and his eyes were definitely directed toward me.

The article was four paragraphs. I will summarize: Liam Knight, 32, CEO of Knight Industries and perpetual occupant of "Most Eligible Billionaire" lists, was photographed this morning appearing to watch an unidentified young woman exit his company's elevator. Sources close to Knight Industries confirm the woman is a company employee. Knight's rep has not responded to requests for comment.

Sources close to Knight Industries.

I put my mug down.

Who was talking to Page Six about a man's elevator behavior within eight hours of it happening? And more importantly — why?

I opened a new tab and searched Liam Knight's name properly for the first time since I'd done my pre-internship research. Not just his Wikipedia page and his LinkedIn. The full picture.

What came up was a study in contrasts.

The business coverage painted him the way his Wikipedia page did: decisive, self-made, the kind of CEO who restructured struggling companies with the precision of someone solving a math problem. Knight Industries had grown from a mid-size acquisitions firm into a diversified conglomerate worth somewhere north of four billion dollars. He had testified before a Senate subcommittee on corporate transparency three years ago. He had a reputation for paying his junior staff above market rate and his senior staff exactly what they negotiated — not a dollar more.

The gossip coverage painted someone else entirely.

Three years ago: photographed at a charity gala with a French model named Isabelle Voss. The relationship lasted, according to various sources, "several months" before ending quietly with no public statement from either party.

Two years ago: linked, loosely, to a Chicago-based hotel heiress. One dinner, photographed, never confirmed.

Last year: nothing. Not a single photograph with a woman in a context that could be read as personal.

The pattern was clear and a little sad: a man who showed up at the right events, stood in the right places, and then went home alone to whatever a fifty-eighth-floor penthouse looked like at midnight.

I closed the laptop.

I was not going to feel sorry for Liam Knight. The man had four billion dollars and a jaw that probably had its own publicist.

I was going to feel sorry for myself, which was more appropriate and directly relevant, because I was in a Page Six photo I hadn't consented to, associated with a man I had spoken a combined twelve words to, and my student loan payment was due in eleven days.

I finished my tea and went to bed.

I slept badly.

Not because of the photo — or not entirely. It was the procurement report. The vendor account under internal review. Six weeks of flags, untouched. And that phrase of his, cool and certain in the corridor: The board sees what I show them.

I lay on my ceiling watching the water stain — Ohio, spreading toward Indiana now — and ran the logic.

Scenario one: the flagged items were administrative backlog. Normal in a company this size. The internal review was routine. His comment to Marcus was about presentation quality, not data manipulation.

Scenario two: something in the procurement pipeline was being managed carefully, and the six weeks of untouched flags weren't backlog. They were intentional quiet.

I didn't have enough information for scenario two. I had a pattern and an instinct, and instincts without data were just anxiety with ambition.

Continue flagging anything that looks inconsistent.

I would continue flagging. That was my job. That was what he'd asked me to do.

I closed my eyes and told myself to sleep.

The next morning, Diane met me at the elevator.

Not waiting — Diane didn't wait for people, she arrived at the same time as things she intended to address. She was holding two coffees and wearing the expression of someone who had already read the news, formed an opinion, and was choosing her words carefully.

She handed me one of the coffees. "You saw it."

"Page Six." I took the cup. "Yes."

"Half the floor saw it by eight last night." She started walking. I followed. "Some people think it's a PR setup. Some people think you slept your way onto the forty-fourth floor."

I stopped walking.

She kept walking. "I didn't say I thought that. I said some people think it. You should know what's in the air." She glanced back. "Keep up."

I kept up.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I think you flagged a procurement error on your first day that six analysts missed for six weeks," she said. "And I think someone with this company's best interests at heart moved you somewhere that error would get noticed." She pushed open the stairwell door. "Whether that someone knew what they were doing or got lucky is a question worth answering."

We took the stairs in silence.

The floor was different that morning. Not visibly — same gray cubicles, same whiteboard numbers, same motivational poster performing optimism at no one in particular. But the quality of the glances had changed. Eyes that slid to me and away too fast. A conversation that stopped in the break room when I walked in.

I poured my coffee, smiled at the two people standing there like everything was completely normal, and went to my desk.

Eight emails. Three forwarded news alerts about the Page Six item from colleagues who had helpfully included zero commentary, just the link, which told me everything. One from HR acknowledging my floor transfer with no explanation of reasoning. One from my mom, subject line: IS THIS YOU?? CALL ME.

And one, at the bottom, from L.Knight@knightindustries.com.

Subject line: This afternoon.

I opened it.

Ms. Moore — My office, 3 p.m. Use the executive elevator. Badge access has been updated. — LK

That was it.

I read it with the same feeling I got when I saw unexpected charges on my bank statement — not panic, exactly. More like the particular alertness of someone who recognizes they are about to have significantly less control over their day than they planned.

I typed back: Confirmed. — J. Moore

Sent it before I could add anything unnecessary.

At 2:55, I took the executive elevator to the fifty-eighth floor.

It was a different elevator. Quieter. Faster. The interior was dark walnut paneling and brushed steel, and it smelled faintly like cedar and something I couldn't name. The kind of elevator that communicated, without saying anything, that the people who used it regularly had decided that ordinary elevators were for other people.

The fifty-eighth floor opened onto a reception area staffed by a woman with the posture of someone who had professionally intimidated people for twenty years and found it deeply satisfying. She looked up when I arrived.

"Jenna Moore," I said.

"Ms. Moore." She gestured toward a set of glass doors. "Mr. Knight is expecting you."

I walked through the doors into an office that occupied the building's northeast corner. Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, the city laid out below like something assembled for the express purpose of making visitors feel small. A desk that probably cost more than my education. Two chairs angled in front of it.

Liam Knight was standing at the window with his back to me, phone in hand, jacket off, sleeves rolled up to the forearms.

He heard me enter. Didn't turn immediately.

"Close the door," he said.

I closed it.

He turned then, and set his phone face-down on the desk. He gestured at one of the chairs.

I sat.

He didn't. He leaned against the front edge of his desk instead, arms crossed, and looked at me with the same neutral expression he'd had in the elevator yesterday — like he was reading a document he hadn't decided what to do with yet.

"You saw the article," he said.

"Yes."

"Do you know who took the second photo?"

"No."

He nodded once. "Neither do I. Yet." A pause that had intention in it. "Ms. Moore, I'm going to ask you something, and I want a direct answer."

"Okay."

"Did you tip off Page Six?"

The question landed flat and clean. No accusation in his voice. Just the question, sitting there between us.

I looked at him steadily. "No."

He held my gaze for three seconds.

"I believe you," he said.

And before I could figure out what to do with that, he picked up a single folder from his desk and held it out toward me.

"There's something I need to discuss with you," he said. "And I think you're going to have questions."

I took the folder.

I opened it.

The first line read: Proposed Terms of Personal Representation Agreement.

The radiator in my chest knocked once, hard.

I kept reading.