Marked by the Alpha Billionaire

CHAPTER 3

Elena’s POV

"Put the phone away before someone sees you staring at it like that."

Ruth's voice cut through my thoughts so sharply I nearly dropped it. I slid the phone into my pocket, screen dark, the last message still burning behind my eyes even though I couldn't see it anymore.

"Sorry," I said. "Family stuff."

"Mm-hm." Ruth didn't look convinced, but she didn't push either, which I was quickly learning was rarer than it should have been in a building full of people who wanted to know everything about everyone. "Come on. If I don't show you around now, you'll spend the next month getting lost between the break room and the copier."

I followed her down the hallway, grateful for something to do with my hands and my feet that wasn't sitting alone with my thoughts. The floor stretched wider than I'd realized from behind my desk, glass offices lining both sides like display cases, each one holding some version of the same tired, ambitious face.

"That's Legal," Ruth said, waving vaguely at a cluster of offices. "Don't go in there unless you enjoy being talked to for forty minutes about liability. That's Finance, obviously, given the crying. And that… " she pointed to a closed door with a brass nameplate, "... is where you don't go at all."

"Victor Kane," I read.

"Ah. You remembered." Ruth's mouth thinned. "Good. Keep remembering."

"You really don't like him."

"I don't trust him," Ruth said, correcting me gently but firmly, as the distinction mattered. "There's a difference. Liking someone's easy. Trusting them is earned, and Victor's never once tried to earn it from me."

"What did he do?"

"Nothing you could put in a report." Ruth kept walking, but her pace had slowed just slightly, like the question had cost her something. "It's smaller than that. The way he watches a room before he walks into it. The way he remembers things about you that you never told him. Call it instinct, if you want. I've learned not to argue with mine."

I filed that away too, another line added to the growing list of things that didn't quite add up about this place. We kept walking, past a kitchen with a coffee machine that looked more expensive than my old car, past a wall of awards that all seemed to have Damian's name engraved somewhere on them.

"How long have you worked for him?" I asked.

"Eleven years," Ruth said. It was a fact she was proud of, though something flickered behind her eyes when she said it, something that looked almost like grief. "Started right after his father died. Damian was twenty-four, thrown into all this without warning, without much choice in the matter."

"That must have been hard."

"Harder than you'd think." Ruth glanced at me sideways. "People assume money makes grief easier. It doesn't. It just makes it more private. He buried his father on a Monday and was back at his desk by Wednesday, like stopping wasn't an option he'd been given."

"Nobody made him take time?"

"You don't know Damian yet." Something almost fond crossed Ruth's face, tangled up with the sadness. "He decided grieving in front of people was a weakness he couldn't afford, and once he decided something like that, arguing with him is like arguing with a wall. A very well-dressed, very stubborn wall that somehow still remembers everyone's birthday."

I thought of my own father, of the quiet, aching mess that grief had made of our small apartment after he died, and for one unguarded second I almost said something true. I caught it before it left my mouth.

"He seems… " I searched for the right word. "Controlled."

Ruth laughed, short and sharp. "That's one word for it. Try working here during a bad quarter. You'll find better ones."

"That bad?"

"Elena." Ruth stopped walking and turned to face me fully, her voice dropping into something more serious. "I like you already, which is more than I can say for most new hires, so let me give you the real tour, not the postcard version. Damian Cross is fair. He's generous, more than people know, and he'll go to war for anyone loyal to him. But he has a temper underneath all that control, and when it comes out, it comes out fast."

"Define fast."

"Glass conference table, cracked down the middle, three years ago. Nobody talks about it, but everybody remembers it." Ruth's voice was quiet now, almost a warning wrapped gently in memory. "He apologized for a week straight afterward. Sent flowers to half the building. But I've never forgotten the sound it made."

My stomach tightened, an unwelcome image forming of those pale grey eyes gone dark, of stillness breaking into something violent. It didn't match the man from twenty minutes ago, the one who'd almost laughed, who'd looked at me like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve slowly.

"What set him off?" I asked.

"A reporter dug up something about his father. Personal, ugly, not even true, as far as anyone could tell." Ruth's jaw tightened. "Damian doesn't lose his temper over business. Numbers, contracts, lawsuits… none of that touches him. But mention his family, dig too close to what happened to his father, and something changes in him. Something you don't want pointed in your direction."

"Changes how?"

Ruth hesitated, choosing her words with more care than she'd used for anything else that morning. "His eyes go strange. Darker, somehow, even in bright light. I've worked for him for eleven years, and I still can't explain it properly. You'll understand what I mean if you ever see it. I hope you don't."

The words landed heavier than she probably meant them to, considering the file still sitting open on my desk with my own father's name buried inside it. I kept my face still, kept my voice light, even as my pulse climbed for the second time that morning.

"Good to know," I said.

"I'm serious, Elena." Ruth's hand landed briefly on my arm, warm and grounding despite the warning in her tone. "Whatever you're curious about, whatever questions you're tempted to ask… be careful how you ask them. He notices more than people expect. Always has."

"You make him sound dangerous."

"He is dangerous," Ruth said simply, no drama in it, just fact, delivered the way you'd warn someone about a steep drop or a live wire. "Just not the way people think."

I wanted to ask what that meant, but Ruth was already walking again, her heels clicking a brisk rhythm against the polished floor, the tour resuming like she hadn't just handed me something important wrapped inside a casual warning.

We passed a stairwell door propped slightly open, and for a moment I caught the faint, unmistakable scent of cedar drifting up from somewhere below, the same scent that had clung to Damian's office, following me even now like it had decided to live permanently in my lungs.

"What's down there?" I asked, nodding toward the stairwell.

Ruth's easy expression flattened instantly.

"Nothing that concerns you," she said, too quickly, already moving to pull the door fully shut. "Employee access only, and even most of them don't go down there."

"Ruth… "

"Elena." Her voice was gentle but final, the kind of tone that ended conversations rather than continued them. "There are things in this building you're better off not asking about on your first day. Trust me."

I nodded, even though every instinct I owned was screaming to push further, to ask what exactly sat behind a door that made Ruth's face change that fast. I let it go, for now, filing it beside Victor Kane's name and the strange scent that seemed to follow Damian everywhere. Somewhere beneath my feet, faint and almost imagined, I thought I heard something that sounded less like machinery and more like breathing.

We turned the final corner back toward my desk, and Ruth's phone buzzed in her pocket, the sound sharp in the quiet hallway. She checked it, and whatever color had been in her face drained out fast, leaving something tight and careful behind.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Nothing," Ruth said, too quickly, sliding the phone away. "Just… stay at your desk for a bit, alright? I need to handle something."

She walked off before I could answer, faster than her earlier pace, heels clicking an urgent rhythm down the hallway toward the very stairwell she'd just told me to forget existed. I almost called after her, but something about the set of her shoulders told me she wouldn't have stopped even if I had.

I stood frozen for a moment, watching her disappear through that propped-open door, and my phone buzzed once again in my pocket, the same unknown number lighting up the screen with three new words that made my blood run cold.

*Don't follow her.*