OWNED BY THE STORM

CHAPTER ONE: THE WRONG INTERVIEW

The elevator doors opened on the forty-third floor, and Mia Calloway immediately knew she was in the wrong building.

Not the wrong floor. The wrong building.

She stood there, portfolio clutched against her chest, staring at the sleek obsidian reception desk and the enormous silver letters mounted on the wall behind it: STORM INDUSTRIES.

Her interview was at Sterling Creative, three blocks south.

"Can I help you?" The receptionist, a woman who looked like she'd been carved from marble and dressed by Milan, peered at Mia with polished suspicion.

"I think I got turned around." Mia forced a smile, backing toward the elevator. "I'm so sorry. Wrong floor, wrong building actually ."

"Miss Calloway?"

She froze.

A tall man in a charcoal suit was walking toward her, tablet in hand, reading her name off the screen like a verdict. He had the hurried, self-important energy of someone paid to solve other people's problems.

"I'm Davis, Mr. Storm's executive coordinator. You're seventeen minutes late."

Mia blinked. "I'm not, I don't have an appointment here."

"Mia Calloway. Interviewed for the creative director position." He looked up from the tablet. "That is you."

"I'm a junior graphic designer. I interviewed for an assistant position at Sterling Creative."

Davis stared at her. She stared back. Three full seconds passed.

"Well," he said carefully, "that's going to be a problem."

She should have left. She knew she should have left.

But Davis had the nervous energy of a man who feared for his job, and he'd said the words we apologize for the confusion and Mr. Storm has a very tight schedule enough times that Mia found herself sitting on a white leather couch, waiting.

The office around her was immaculate and cold. No warmth anywhere, no plants, no personal photographs, no color beyond black, white, and silver. It felt less like a workspace and more like a statement. Like whoever owned this floor wanted you to understand, immediately, that comfort was not on the agenda.

She was studying a massive abstract painting, black slashes on white canvas that looked expensive and vaguely violent, when the doors at the end of the hall opened.

She didn't look up right away.

She heard him first. Not his voice, he wasn't speaking. She heard the room change. The receptionist sat straighter. Davis went still. Even the air seemed to tighten, the way it does before thunder.

Then she looked up.

Ethan Storm was thirty-four years old, worth eleven billion dollars, and had been on the cover of Forbes twice. Mia knew this because her roommate Jade had a complicated obsession with him that she disguised as financial literacy.

In photographs, he was handsome in that cold, untouchable way, sharp jaw, dark eyes, the kind of face that looked better in black and white.

In person, he was something else entirely.

He was looking at her the moment she looked up. Not glancing. Not noticing. Looking. Like he'd been watching her for a moment already and had no interest in pretending otherwise.

She felt her face go warm.

"Miss Calloway." His voice was low, unhurried. He stopped a few feet away, and the distance felt deliberate. "You're in the wrong place."

"Yes." She stood, because sitting felt wrong under that gaze. "Your coordinator seems to disagree."

Something shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile. More like the idea of one.

"Davis disagrees with me often." He glanced at Davis, who appeared to stop breathing. "It never ends well for him."

"I have an actual interview," Mia said, "in twenty minutes. Three blocks south. So if you could just clarify the mix-up."

"Sterling Creative." He said it flatly.

She blinked. "You know them?"

"I own them." He tilted his head slightly. "I own the building too, which is probably how the scheduling system confused your paperwork with ours." A pause. "My apologies for the inconvenience."

The words were polite. His tone was not apologetic in the slightest.

Mia stared at him. "You own Sterling Creative."

"Among other things."

She laughed. She didn't mean to, it just came out, a short, slightly disbelieving sound. His eyes sharpened.

"Something funny?"

"No, I just," She shook her head. "I took three trains and walked six blocks in the wrong shoes to interview for a job that belongs to the same man whose building I accidentally walked into. It's either hilarious or a sign from God that I should go back to Ohio."

Another non-smile. Longer this time.

He was quiet for a moment, studying her face with an focus that made her want to look away. She didn't.

"Send her file to my office," he said, without looking at Davis. "The Sterling position has been filled. But I want her interviewed for something else."

Mia felt a sharp chill climb her spine.

"Mr. Storm "

"I'll be in touch, Miss Calloway." He turned away, like the conversation had simply ended because he'd decided it had.

"I haven't agreed to anything," she said to his back.

He stopped walking.

He didn't turn around.

"No," he said quietly. "Not yet."

Then he disappeared through the doors, and they closed behind him like the final page of a warning she hadn't finished reading.

On the elevator down, her phone buzzed. A job offer from Storm Industries. Salary: four times what Sterling had posted. Start date: Monday.

She should have deleted it immediately.

She read it four more times instead.

End of Chapter One