I Was Hired To Seduce My Boss

 His photograph had been staring at me for three days. Dark eyes. Sharp jaw. A mouth that looked like it had never begged for anything. I hated how quickly I kept imagining what it would feel like if those lips ever touched mine. The envelope landed on my kitchen table like a bomb. I knew who sent it before I opened it. Evelyn Cole.   The woman who finds desperate girls and turns them into weapons. My mother was asleep in the next room. Westbrook Medical Centre had sent her home to die. The machines were gone, only the bills remained, stacked on my nightstand like a tower. I would never stop climbing. Twelve million dollars. I had twelve dollars in my pocket and a job cleaning houses for a woman who paid me late. I opened the envelope inside and there was a photograph of a man.   He sat in a glass office, and the city behind him spread like something he owned. His suit was dark, his tie loose, his face carved from sharp angles and shadow. He wasn’t smiling. But his eyes were black, focused, dangerous, and seemed to look straight through paper, through distance, straight into me.  Liam Cole. CEO of Crestwood Capital. I am thirty-two years old. Four hundred million dollars, heir to a fortune built on deals people pretended not to understand. A note was clipped beneath the photo to get close to him. Make him trust you. Make him want you. Then destroy him. Your mother’s life depends on it. My fingers tightened until the paper bent. I should have thrown it away. I should have refused. But my mother’s face came into my mind – pale, tired, still trying to smile like pain was something she could outgrow. She had worked herself into nothing for me. Bakeries, laundries, night shifts. Always saying she was fine.  She wasn’t fine. And I had nothing left to sell except myself. I looked back at the photo. The strange thing wasn’t fear. It was hot, low, unwelcome, and immediate. Why do I feel like I want him to kiss me? I pushed the thought down. I had to do this. Monday morning. Crestwood Tower, the building didn’t just rise. It dominated the sky. Forty floors of black glass and silence. I stood at the revolving doors with a fake résumé and a real fear pressing against my throat. My navy dress was too expensive for my life and too tight for my nerves. It itched at the collar and rode up when I walked, but it made my legs look long, and my waist looked small. Evelyn’s instructions echoed in my head. It looks expensive. It looks harmless. It looks desirable.  I walked inside, marble, chrome, perfume, and power. People moved past me like I didn’t exist. That was fine. Invisible people survived longer. The elevator was glass. It climbed too fast. My stomach dropped as the city shrank beneath me, cars into dots, people into noise, and life into distance. Top floor, my fake name pressed against my tongue.  Lena Madaki. Twenty-six. First-class degree, sterling bank, and a life built from lies. The receptionist barely looked up. “He’s in a meeting, wait.” I waited. Twenty minutes. Forty. One hour. I didn’t move. I studied exits, cameras, and security patterns. I learned spaces the way other people learned faces. Then, a door opened at the far end of the hall. and everything changed.  He stepped out. Liam Cole. Not the photograph, not the idea but real. larger, colder, and sharper. His presence didn’t fill the room. It controlled it. Three men followed him, but they weren’t with him. They were orbiting him.  “I don’t care what the law says,” he said, voice low but cutting clean through silence. “If the numbers don’t add up by Wednesday, the deal is dead. Tell them I said that.” The men scattered immediately , and his eyes landed on me. I felt it like a physical blow, a hand pressing against my chest, a door closing behind me, the moment before a fall. He walked toward me, slow, certain. Like he already knew where I would stand. I stood, too, because sitting felt like surrender.  “You’re the new assistant,” he said. His voice was quiet. I had to lean in to hear him. “Yes, Mr. Cole.” His gaze moved, not rushed, not obvious, but deliberate. My face. My throat. The line where my dress dipped slightly at my collarbone. I felt his eyes like a touch. “You’re not what I expected, but what did you expect?” “Someone who looks afraid.” He stepped closer, too close. I smelled his cologne clean, expensive, controlled, and beneath it something darker, something that made my pulse misfire. “You don’t look afraid I’m not, a lie.  His mouth tilted slightly. Not a smile. Something more dangerous than that. “Good. Follow me.” His office was all glass and the skyline. The world outside looked small from up here. He sat behind a desk big enough to swallow conversations and opened a folder, my folder. My fake life. He read it slowly. Too slowly.  “Lena Madaki,” he said finally. “Twenty-six. Sterling Bank. First-class degree.” He closed the folder. “It’s not your name.” The air left my lungs. I kept my face still. “I don’t know what you mean.” He stood and walked around the desk. Stopped too close. I had to tilt my head back just to meet his eyes. His hand lifted. Fingers brushed my cheek – warm, controlled, like he was deciding something without asking permission from the world. “I’ve been watching you,” he said quietly. “I know about the café. I know about Evelyn Cole. I know about your mother.” His thumb traced my lower lip, slow enough to make my thoughts break apart. “I knew before you walked through my door.” I should run. I should deny everything. But his touch was burning through me, and my body wasn’t listening to my fear.  “What are you going to do?” I whispered. His mouth moved closer to my ear. “I’m going to make you an offer.” His hand slid to my waist, pulling me against him. I felt the hard line of his body, the heat of him, the evidence that he wanted me. My hands pressed against his chest, but I didn’t push him away. “You will stay. You will play your role. You will report to Evelyn exactly what I allow you to know.” His grip tightened. “And in return, your mother gets everything she needs from the best doctors, the best care, no bills, and no waiting.” I stared at him. “Why would you do that?”  “Because I’ve been hunting Evelyn Cole for two years.” His hand tightened further. “And you are the bait she will not be able to resist.” Then he kissed me hard, immediately and with no hesitation. The world didn’t blur – it stopped. I forgot the room, forgot the plan, and forgot the lies. There was only him – his mouth on mine, his hands on my body, the way I wanted him even though I should not. I kissed him back. I could not help it.  When he pulled back, we were both breathing differently. He looked at me with those dark eyes hungry, broken, desperate.  “Do we have a deal?” he asked. My mother’s face flashed through my mind.   The machines. The bills. The silence waiting for her. I thought about what I wanted was to save her, to survive, to stop being the woman who always lost. And I thought about what I feared that I was already falling for a man who was using me as bait. “Yes,” I said. A faint smile crossed his lips, not warm, not safe. Lethal. “Good,” he said. “I don’t like losing.”   He released me and turned back to his desk like nothing had happened. But I didn’t move. Because something inside me had already shifted. I was not in control of this anymore. I never had been.   Across the street, somewhere I couldn’t see a camera, and Evelyn Cole smiled. My mother had three months left, and I had just stepped into a game where love and survival looked exactly the same.   I tried revamping this chapter 1. Help me check if it's okay or if it needs revamping, please, sir