Chapter Two
1074 Words
The next morning Naya left home as early as possible.
She wasn't going to leave room for extra confrontation following the disgraceful act of her brother. She had imagined all night what Damian Voss would be like in person. What if he yelled at her for having the guts to take her time, what if he had already made decisions she couldn't undo before she even walked through the door. She had laid in bed running scenarios until two in the morning and then gave up on sleep entirely and simply waited for sunrise so she could get this over with.
She dressed carefully. Not to impress, she was clear with herself about that. She dressed to not be dismissed. There was a difference. She picked the most put-together thing she owned, checked herself in the mirror twice, and told her reflection the same thing she'd told it the night before. Then she left before she could talk herself into anything else.
Ryan had offered to drive her. He was already parked outside when she came down, coffee in the cupholder on her side, engine running, no fanfare. That was Ryan. She got in, accepted the coffee, and they drove to Midtown mostly in silence — the comfortable kind, the kind that had been built over years of knowing each other well enough not to fill every space with noise.
He pulled up outside 1 Meridian Plaza and put the car in park.
She looked at the building through the windshield and felt her carefully constructed composure take its first real hit.
She had put in her best to dress appropriately, at the same time determined not to be intimidated — but the building itself was beyond intimidating.It rose above her in dark glass and steel, fifty-two floors of deliberate, architectural authority, the kind of structure that didn't just house a company but announced one. Beautiful in the way that things built purely to project power are beautiful — cold, perfect, unbothered by anyone standing at the bottom of it looking up.
She had already lost this meeting in her subconscious. She recognized that feeling and straightened her spine against it.
"You don't have to go in alone," Ryan said quietly.
"I do," she said. "But thank you for bringing me."
He nodded. Didn't push. She got out of the car, smoothed the front of her outfit once, and walked toward the entrance without looking back because she knew if she looked back at Ryan's face she might not keep moving.
The lobby was worse than the outside.
Marble floors that reflected the light from above, a ceiling so high it felt like she didn't belong: well, she actually didn't belong and a reception desk staffed by a woman so polished she seemed less like a person and more like an extension of the building itself. Everything here communicated the same thing the exterior had — that this was a place where people came already knowing their place in it, and Naya's place was not high.
She walked to the desk anyway.
"Naya Cole," she said. "I have an — " she paused, because appointment wasn't the right word for what this was. "I received a notice. From the legal division. I was instructed to present myself."
The receptionist typed something, checked a screen, looked at Naya with the practiced neutrality of someone who had processed many uncomfortable situations without ever letting her face comment on them. "Forty-eighth floor. Someone will meet you at the elevator."
The elevator was mirrored on three sides. Naya watched herself rise — floor by floor, the lobby shrinking below her — and used the forty-eight floors to do the only thing left available to her, which was decide how she was going to walk into that room. Not what she was going to say. She didn't know enough yet to script anything. Just how she was going to carry herself when she said it.
Head up. Shoulders back. Whatever he said, whatever he decided, she was not going to give him the satisfaction of watching her fold in front of him.
The elevator opened.
A woman was waiting — sharp, composed, somewhere in her mid-thirties, with the kind of efficiency that radiated off her before she'd said a word. She introduced herself as Mira, Mr. Voss's senior PA, and turned without waiting to see if Naya would follow. Naya followed.
The 48th floor was quieter than she expected. Not the busy, noisy energy of a company in motion — controlled. Everything here moved with purpose and at a reduced volume, like the floor itself understood that the man at the end of it preferred it that way. Mira led her past a cluster of desks, through a glass-walled corridor, and stopped outside a set of double doors.
"He'll see you now," Mira said. Then, with no particular emphasis: "Don't take longer than he gives you."
It wasn't a threat. It was just information.
Naya nodded. Mira opened the door and stepped aside.
The office was exactly what the building had promised — large, precise, every surface clean and intentional. Floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, the city spread out below like something that belonged to him. And behind the desk, not looking up, finishing whatever he was reading with the unhurried calm of a man who had decided that her arrival was not yet the most important thing in the room —
Damian Voss.
He was younger-looking in person than the photographs had prepared her for, and colder. The photographs hadn't managed the cold. He had the kind of face that would have been arrestingly handsome if it had any warmth in it at all — sharp jaw, dark eyes, the sort of controlled stillness that didn't come naturally but had been built, deliberately, over years.
He finished reading.
Set the document aside.
Looked up at her for the first time — not with hostility, not with curiosity. With the particular, assessing blankness of someone who had already formed a conclusion and was simply confirming it.
"Ms. Cole," he said. His voice was even. Unhurried. "Sit down."
She sat.
Not because he told her to. Because her legs had made the decision independently and she was choosing, in this moment, to agree with them.
He looked at her for one more beat — cold, blank, intimidating and then he opened a folder on his desk and began to speak.
- Writer
