Natalie Pierce looked up in surprise.
Issac Monroe was already standing in front of her desk, hands casually resting on the edge as though he belonged there. The office lights cast a soft glow across his features—clean-cut, resolute, unmistakably sharp—yet there was a hint of mischief curling at the corner of his lips, an almost reckless ease that contrasted sharply with the rigid professionalism of the room.
On the desk in front of her sat two items.
A container of red date and lotus seed soup, still warm, faint steam rising beneath the lid.
And a simple cake—plain, undecorated, the kind you could buy at any neighborhood bakery without thinking twice.
They were ordinary. Almost painfully so.
So ordinary, in fact, that Natalie realized she had never once eaten anything like them befo
