MY ONE NIGHT STAND BOSS

ONE LAST CHANCE

Chapter 4 – One Last Chance

I didn't sleep.

I couldn't. I lay there most of the night running the same three outfits through my head, discarding each one for a different reason, until the sky outside my window turned from black to gray and I gave up pretending rest was coming.

By six, I was standing in front of my closet holding a blazer I hadn't worn since my last real interview, two years ago, back before Amyra's diagnosis rearranged every plan I had ever made for myself. It still fits. Barely. I told myself that was a good sign.

Amyra was already awake when I came out, sitting cross-legged on the living room couch in her pajamas, sketchbook open on her lap like always.

"You look fancy," she said, looking up at me with that gap-toothed grin that undid me every single time.

"Fancy enough to get a job, you think?"

"Definitely." She said it with the kind of certainty only a five-year-old can manage, no hesitation at all. "You're the smartest mommy in the world."

I crouched down in front of her, smoothing back a piece of hair that had escaped her braid overnight. "I might be gone a while today, okay? Grandma's picking you up from school."

"Is it the hospital job?" she asked. "The one you said could help pay for my checkups?"

My chest tightened. I hated that she knew that. I hated that at five years old, she already understood the shape of our money problems well enough to attach them to a job interview.

"It's a building job," I said carefully. "But yes, if it works out, it will help a lot."

She reached out and pressed her small palm flat against my cheek, the way she did when she wanted me to really listen. "Then you have to get it, Mommy. So I can build my hospital when I grow up. You have to show them how good you are first."

I laughed, but it came out thinner than I meant it to, more like a breath than a sound. “I will try my best, baby."

"Not try." She shook her head, very serious. "You will."

I laughed again, softer this time, and pulled her into a hug she didn't quite understand the weight of, though I think some small part of her did anyway. She had this way of saying things, simple, direct…five years old but somehow wiser than half the adults I knew, that always managed to steady me when I needed it most.

I kissed her forehead before I could let myself cry in front of her, grabbed my portfolio off the counter, and left before my nerves could talk me out of the whole thing.

---

Mo Ting Global Holdings didn't look like a building. It looked like something that had been carved out of glass and light and left standing there to remind the rest of the city how small it was in comparison. I stood across the street for a full minute just staring up at it, sixty-something floors of mirrored windows catching the morning sun so sharply I had to look away.

I had researched the company obsessively over the past week. Architecture, energy, beauty, hospitality, half a dozen industries stitched together under one name, but nothing I had read prepared me for actually standing at the base of it, feeling like a single grain of sand outside a fortress.

*You will,* Amyra's voice echoed in my head. I straightened my blazer and walked in.

The lobby swallowed sound the way expensive places always do, marble floors, hushed voices, the quiet hum of importance. I gave my name at the front desk and was directed toward a young woman waiting near the elevators, clipboard in hand, smiles already in place like she had practiced it in a mirror that morning.

"Ms. Li? I'm Emily Zhao, I'll be walking you up." She fell into step beside me, easy and warm in a way that felt almost out of place in a building this cold and polished. "First time here?"

"That obvious?"

"You've got the look." She smiled, kinder than the comment sounded. "Don't worry. Everyone gets it their first time. The building does that on purpose, I think, makes you feel small before you even walk in the door."

"Is it working?"

"A little," I admitted.

Emily laughed, quiet and genuine. "You'll be fine. Your portfolio's the reason you're even here. They don't call people back for the final round unless they are serious."

I wanted to believe her. I wanted, badly, to walk into that interview feeling like I belonged there, instead of like an outsider who had wandered too far into a building meant for people with different lives than mine.

"Can I ask," Emily said, glancing sideways at me as we crossed the lobby, "why architecture? Most people who end up here either grew up wanting this, or fell into it. You don't seem like the falling-into-it type."

I thought about Amyra's sketchbook. The hospitals she drew. The dream she'd handed to me like it was already mine to carry too.

"Someone I love wants to build things that help people," I said. "I guess I wanted to show her it's possible first."

Something shifted in Emily's expression, softer, like the answer had landed somewhere she hadn't expected. "That's a good reason," she said quietly. "Better than most I hear around here. Most people just want the title."

"I need the paycheck too," I admitted. "I'm not going to pretend I'm above that."

"That's fair." Emily's smile turned wry. "This place pays well enough that a lot of people forget why they started caring about the work in the first place. Try not to lose that."

We reached the elevator bank, and Emily pressed the call button, glancing at her watch. "You're a few minutes early. That's good. He doesn't like waiting."

"He?"

"The CEO." She said it lightly, but something in her tone shifted, careful in a way it hadn't been a second ago. "You'll understand what I mean the second you meet him."

"That bad?"

"Not bad." She hesitated, choosing her words like they mattered. "Just... intense. Don't let him rattle you. That's exactly what he wants."

The elevator ride up was quiet. Emily didn't fill the silence with small talk the way she had downstairs, and I was grateful for it. I needed the quiet to keep my nerves from climbing any higher than they already had.

The top floor didn't look like an office. It looked like something built to remind you exactly how far you were from the top before you had even started climbing. Glass walls, low lighting, a hush so complete I could hear my own heels against the floor.

Emily led me to a small waiting area outside a set of dark double doors, where a woman at a sleek reception desk glanced up and offered a polite, practiced smile.

"Ms. Li? He's still finishing a meeting. Please, have a seat, it shouldn't be long."

I sat, portfolio balanced on my knees, hands folded tightly over it to keep them from shaking. Emily gave my shoulder a small, reassuring squeeze before excusing herself, promising she would check back before I went in.

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough that I had rehearsed my opening line four different ways and hated all of them. Long enough to hear raised, no, not raised, just clipped, precise words filtering faintly from behind those double doors, though I couldn't make out anything beyond the tone. Someone was being corrected. Whoever it was, they didn't sound like they enjoyed it.

A few minutes later, the double doors opened.

A man hurried out first, pale, gripping a folder like it might save him from something, not even glancing my way as he disappeared down the hall. Behind him, the secretary, an older man with sharp eyes and an even sharper suit stepped halfway out to speak to the woman at the desk.

That's when I saw him.

Just a glimpse, framed for a second in the open doorway behind his secretary. Dark hair, a suit so precisely tailored it looked poured onto him, eyes lifted briefly toward the door like he had felt someone watching. Something about him hit me sideways, familiar in a way I couldn't place, like catching a scent that pulls up a memory before your mind catches up to why.

Then the door swung shut again, and he was gone.

I sat there afterward with my heart doing something strange and unfamiliar in my chest, and no explanation at all for why.