Obsessed

Chapter Eight – Dominic

( Dominic pov )

He watched her through the glass wall from his private floor above the way most men would admire art.

Not casually.

Not sentimentally.

With intent.

The glass stretched from ceiling to floor, engineered to reflect nothing, to give everything. From where he stood, Valen Tower unfolded beneath him in perfect alignment: corridors intersecting at clean angles, offices arranged with mathematical precision, people moving within invisible lanes of order. It was a world designed to perform even when no one was watching.

That was the point.

Most men believed power announced itself. Dominic had learned early that true power preferred distance. It thrived in silence. In systems so seamless they felt inevitable.

And then there was Selena Ward.

Her image occupied every screen not because she demanded attention, but because his attention refused to leave. The surveillance feed displayed a dozen angles of the same quiet moment: Selena stepping into her new office, pausing just inside the threshold, her body still as though she were listening for something beneath the obvious.

She didn’t rush forward.

That mattered.

Most people did.

They crossed the room immediately, claimed the desk, opened drawers, touched things as if contact might prove ownership. Selena stayed where she was, absorbing the space first, her gaze lifting slowly, deliberately, mapping the ceiling height, the light, the windows.

She treated the room like a living thing.

Her fingers brushed the edge of the desk, light, exploratory not possession, not hesitation. Recognition. As if she were tasting the environment, committing it to memory.

Dominic didn’t blink.

Amid a world built on symmetry and performance, Selena stood out like a heartbeat. A quiet disruption. A subtle imbalance that didn’t collapse the system but altered its rhythm just enough to be felt.

That was what unsettled him.

Not her beauty though she was beautiful in a way that resisted precision. Not curated. Not ornamental. Real.

It was the way she existed inside the space without shrinking or overstating herself. She neither tried to dominate nor disappear. She simply was.

Valen Tower was designed to strip individuality down to function.

She resisted without effort.

He shouldn’t have been watching.

There was a board meeting in twenty minutes. A financial forecast awaited review. Two mergers hung in the balance, negotiations that required attention, calculation, restraint. His empire did not pause for personal indulgence.

And yet his hand remained still on the console.

He had watched thousands of people enter this building. Executives, consultants, rivals disguised as partners. He observed them the way surgeons observed anatomy clinically, efficiently, without attachment.

This was different.

“She fits the aesthetic,” Lyle said from the far end of the room.

Dominic didn’t turn. He had heard Lyle enter the soft press of shoes against carpet, the controlled stillness of someone who knew how to exist near power without provoking it.

“Smart choice for the project, sir,” Lyle continued. “Her portfolio is impressive. Clean lines. Controlled innovation. She understands restraint.”

Dominic watched as Selena removed her coat and draped it carefully over the chair. The gesture was small, deliberate. She didn’t toss it aside. She placed it.

“She understands observation,” Dominic said quietly.

Lyle paused. “Sir?”

“She’s watching the building,” Dominic added. “Not the other way around.”

Lyle glanced toward the screens then back to Dominic. He knew better than to challenge statements made in that tone.

“Send her the initial brief by noon,” Dominic said. “Nothing sensitive. No access beyond surface architecture.”

“Yes, sir.”

A beat passed.

“And the flowers?” Lyle asked. “Should we continue that detail?”

Dominic’s jaw flexed.

“She noticed them?” he asked.

“She did. Didn’t comment. But her attention shifted.”

Of course it had.

The roses weren’t there to impress. They were there to be noticed a detail placed deliberately out of rhythm with the rest of the room. Everything in Valen Tower obeyed rules. The roses broke one.

A controlled anomaly.

“Good,” Dominic said after a moment. “Keep it subtle.”

Lyle nodded and left, the door sealing behind him with a soft click that restored the room to silence.

Dominic exhaled slowly and leaned back in his chair.

He didn’t involve himself this early. He never had.

Distance preserves clarity. It prevented attachment. Attachment was inefficiency disguised as emotion.

And yet Selena’s interview replayed in his mind without invitation the calm cadence of her voice, the way she answered questions fully without oversharing, the restraint she carried like instinct rather than discipline.

She hadn’t tried to impress him.

That, more than anything, lingered.

Most people who entered his world came in two forms: afraid, or eager to please. Fear made them predictable. Desire made them pliable.

Selena entered as if she already belonged.

And yet there was something unprotected about her. Not weakness potential exposure. A softness she hadn’t yet learned to weaponize or conceal.

He reached for the remote on his desk and zoomed the feed in slightly.

The camera captured her face as she noticed the card tucked between the roses. He watched the moment unfold second by second the faint pause, the stillness that followed, the subtle shift in her breathing.

Her lips moved as she read the words.

Welcome, Selena.

No reaction. No outward alarm.

But something flickered behind her eyes.

Recognition.

Not understanding awareness.

As if some instinct deep within her responded to an unseen presence, a pressure she couldn’t name but couldn’t ignore either.

A ghost of a smile curved Dominic’s mouth before he realized it.

She’d felt him.

That realization landed heavier than it should have.

He had built his life on invisibility. On influence without exposure. On shaping outcomes without ever standing in the center of them.

And yet some part of him wanted her to know.

The thought irritated him.

He turned off the monitor.

The screens went dark, plunging the room into shadow once more. The hum of systems faded into near silence.

He hated how quickly the quiet felt empty.

It wasn’t supposed to.

Silence had always been enough. More than enough.

For a man who ruled through control, nothing was more dangerous than wanting to be seen not as power, not as authority, but as presence.

Dominic stood, straightened his tie, and looked once more through the glass at New York spread beneath him vast, restless, convinced of its own importance.

Then, softly, to no one at all, he said:

“Let’s see how long before she asks who I really am.”