The heavy oak door of the executive office clicked shut, and the sound of the deadbolt sliding home felt like the final execution of my self-control.
The firm was mostly empty, the rest of the staff long since dispersed into the rainy Seattle evening. But inside Julian’s office, the air was thick, heavy, and practically vibrating with unspent electricity. We had spent the entire day playing our assigned roles—distant, professional, coldly detached across a vast expanse of polished mahogany. But the memory of that board meeting, of the way he had dismantled Arthur to protect me and the secret smile we had shared, was a live wire running straight under my skin.
I turned around, clutching a stack of final audit reports to my chest like a shield. Julian was standing by the floor-to-ceilin
