Nine Months of Deception: The CEO's Hidden Heir

Chapter 3

Sebastian's Point of View

The titanium watch on my wrist read 8:42 a.m., and every damn second that passed felt like a drop of acid falling directly onto my patience.

Standing in front of the immense window of my fiftieth-floor office, I watched New York traffic move like a river of ants in the gray drizzle. However, my mind wasn't on the millions of dollars flowing through those streets, nor on the stock market that had just opened. My mind was trapped in the irritating, incomprehensible, and unforgivable fact that my secretary was 42 minutes late.

Gianna Rossi was never late.

In three years, she had never walked through the glass doors of Volkov Industries a single minute after 8:00 a.m.

She was the perfect cog in my machine.

She was the woman who anticipated my problems before I even knew I had them, the one who made my black coffee exactly the temperature I liked it, and the one who organized the chaos of my corporate life with an efficiency that bordered on the obsessive.

But today, my desk was empty of reports. My coffee cup contained a lukewarm, bitter abomination some scared intern had left there, and my irritation was reaching dangerous levels.

"Where the hell are you, Gia?" I muttered to myself, clenching my jaw so hard my teeth ached.

I refused to admit, even deep down, that my bad mood wasn't solely due to a lack of work efficiency.

I'd been living on the edge for a damn month.

A month since that stormy night when I lost control, when I cornered her on that same mahogany desk and tasted what I'd secretly craved for three years.

It had been a tactical error.

I didn't get involved with my employees, much less allow anyone to penetrate the icy armor I'd worked so hard to build.

That's why I'd sent her away the next morning with the coldest words I could find. That's why I'd reminded her of her place. I needed her close, yes, but on my terms.

I paced the office, feeling like a caged lion. I'd sent Marcus back to her apartment half an hour ago. I just wanted him to bring her back, sit her at her desk so I could see her, reprimand her for her insolence, and, while I was at it, make sure she was okay.

Suddenly, the soft notification sound of my laptop cut through the tense silence of the room.

I approached the desk with long, quick strides, hoping it was the legal brief on OmniCorp's appeal.

I swiped my finger across the mousepad to turn off the screensaver. However, what appeared in my priority inbox had nothing to do with lawyers or multi-million dollar mergers.

The sender was Gianna Rossi. The subject line read: Immediate and irrevocable resignation.

The air left my lungs as if someone had punched me straight in the gut. I blinked twice, convinced my mind was playing tricks on me, brought on by stress or lack of sleep.

But no. The letters were still there, black, crisp, and absolute.

I clicked on the message with almost unreal slowness and began to read. Each line my eyes scanned was like a direct lash to my pride. It said she was leaving the company and the city. It said she had accepted an offer from a rival company. But what made my blood boil, what caused a blind, dark, and destructive fury to seize every inch of my body, were her next words.

“You are the most insufferable, cold, and empty man I have ever met in my entire life… You are not a leader; you are just a tyrant in expensive suits who is terrified of being left alone.”

“Damn it!” The roar escaped my throat with such force that it echoed off the glass walls of the office.

I grabbed the coffee cup the intern had left on my desk and smashed it against the nearest wall. The porcelain shattered with a deafening crash, splattering the dark liquid onto the Italian silk wallpaper, but the destruction brought me no relief whatsoever. On the contrary, it only fanned the flames of the fire that had just erupted inside me.

Competition? Was she going to go work for some imbecile who wasn't fit to lick her boots and who would value her "for her true potential"? And she dared to call me a coward and empty?

No one spoke to me like that.

Absolutely no one. And certainly not the woman who was meant to belong to me in every sense of the word. I had molded her; I had taught her everything I knew about this shark-infested world.

Gianna was my creation, my assistant, my shadow. She had no right to spread her wings and take off just because I had made the limits of our relationship clear to her.

At that precise moment, the cell phone in my inside jacket pocket started vibrating. I jerked it out, seeing Marcus's name on the screen. I answered the call without waiting another second.

"Tell me you have her in the car and that you're bringing her here, Marcus," I demanded, my voice so icy and lethal it would have made the entire board of directors tremble.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. That simple two-second silence was enough to set off all my alarm bells.

"Mr. Volkov... Miss Rossi isn't here," my head of security's deep voice sounded unusually tense. "I entered the apartment with the concierge's master key. The place is empty. Several items of clothing are missing from the closets, and there's no sign of luggage. Furthermore..."

"Furthermore what?" “Speak up!” I yelled, completely losing my temper.

“I found her cell phone in the bathroom trash can, sir. It’s wrecked. She ripped off the casing and snapped the SIM card in half. And there’s something else… the trash can reeks of fresh vomit. It looks like she left in a hurry just a few minutes ago, right before I got to her door.”

I closed my eyes, feeling a jolt of pure adrenaline rush down my spine.

She had escaped.

My sweet, submissive, invisible secretary had not only insulted me in the worst possible way via email, but she had also planned an escape worthy of a criminal. She had destroyed her phone so my cybersecurity team couldn’t track her location by GPS. She had timed it perfectly to send me the message and slip away from Marcus by the skin of her teeth.

This wasn’t an emotional tantrum. It was a full-blown declaration of war.

“Listen carefully, Marcus,” my voice dropped an octave, becoming a dangerously deadly whisper. “I want you to call Elias right now. Tell him to bring his entire tech-tracking team to the fiftieth floor. I want them to tap into the security cameras in Gianna’s building, the ones on the surrounding streets, the ATMs, the subway stations, the bus terminal, and every airport in upstate New York."

No one disappears in this goddamn city without leaving a digital trail, least of all a scared twenty-four-year-old girl.

“Sir, that will require bending a few federal privacy laws…” Marcus, ever the pragmatist, tried to warn me.

“I don’t give a damn about the laws!” I exploded, slamming my fist on the mahogany desk. “I’ll buy off the cops if I have to, bribe the judges, and burn this city to the ground if necessary, but you’re going to find her. You have unlimited funds, Marcus. Find her. Now."

I hung up before he could reply and threw the phone onto the desk.

I walked slowly to the window, pressing both hands against the cold glass as I gazed out at the vastness of Manhattan.

The city seemed to mock me, hiding the only person who had managed to throw my entire life off balance.

Gianna thought she was so clever. She thought she could call me a tyrant, pack her things, and simply disappear from my sight to run into the arms of a competitor. She thought she was free.

I let out a dry, dark laugh, devoid of any humor.

She didn't know what I was capable of. She didn't know that my ego and my sense of ownership were infinitely larger than any contract or corporate merger I had ever signed. If she thought I was going to let her go with a pat on the back, she was sorely mistaken. She had taken Sebastian Volkov's pride with her, and that was something that was paid for in blood.

“Run as fast as you can, Gia,” I whispered against the glass, seeing my own blurry reflection superimposed on the skyscrapers. “Hide in the farthest corner of this goddamn planet if you want. Because I swear to you, on my name and my empire, I will find you. And when I do, I’m going to make sure you never see the light of day again without my permission.”

The game of cat and mouse had just begun, but she had forgotten one fundamental rule: the mouse never, ever, beats the devil.