Chapter 1 - Caught in the Glass Tower
“If I had known you found the canvas so accommodating, Miss Roberts, I would have commissioned a bronze bust for your desk.”
The voice was low, smooth, and laced with a quiet, lethal amusement.
My heart did not merely leap into my throat; it detonated. The blood drained from my face so violently that my vision went black at the edges. My lips were still pressed against the varnished oil paint of the portrait, my hands clutching the ornate gilded frame.
I froze. Every muscle in my body locked into stone.
Slowly, with the agonized precision of someone turning toward a firing squad, I lowered myself off my toes, stepped back from the wall, and turned around.
Adrian Kane stood framed in the arched doorway of his private terrace.
He had removed his suit jacket, wearing only a crisp white dress shirt with the top two buttons undone and the sleeves rolled to his forearms. A glass of vintage Scotch rested loosely in his right hand, the amber liquid catching the ambient glow of the Manhattan skyline behind him. His slate-gray eyes, sharp enough to cut diamond, were fixed entirely on me.
He had heard everything. The rant. The coffee instructions. The couriers.
And he had watched me kiss his painted mouth.
“Mr. Kane,” I choked out. The sound was barely a squeak. I reached down frantically, slipping my bare feet back into my discarded black heels, nearly losing my balance on the Persian rug. “I... I thought you had departed for the evening via the private garage.”
“Evidently,” Adrian murmured, taking three slow, unhurried steps into the office.
The scent of cedarwood, rain, and cold leather preceded him. He was six-foot-three of coiled, aristocratic power, moving with the quiet, predatory grace of a man who owned the ground beneath his feet and every building within a ten-mile radius.
He walked past the mahogany desk, stopping less than two feet from where I stood pinned against the wall. He set his Scotch down on the blotter with a faint, crystalline click.
“Four clockwise stirs,” Adrian said softly, his gaze dropping to my lips before rising back to my terrified hazel eyes. “And one counterclockwise. You find that psychotic, Clara?”
My breath hitched. In two years of grueling service, managing his multi-billion-dollar empire and his clandestine syndicate operations, he had never once called me by my first name. It had always been Miss Roberts—formal, distant, and cold.
“I was... venting after a twelve-hour workday, Mr. Kane,” I stammered, crossing my arms over my chest in a desperate attempt to summon professional armor. “I apologize for the unprofessional conduct. It will not happen again.”
“No,” Adrian said, leaning in until his shadow swallowed me completely. “It won't. Because as of tonight, Miss Roberts, you are relieved of your administrative duties.”
The floor seemed to vanish beneath my heels. A sickening wave of cold terror washed over me.
My mother’s experimental chemotherapy. The eighty-thousand-dollar quarterly hospital invoices. The private security detail guarding her hospice wing in Connecticut.
“You’re firing me?” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Because I lost my temper at a painting?”
May you like
Adrian reached out. His fingers, warm and scarred along the knuckles, lightly grazed my burning jawline, tucking a stray strand of dark hair behind my ear. The touch sent an electric shock straight down my spine.
“I am not firing you, Clara,” Adrian whispered, his slate-gray eyes darkening with an intensity that stole the air from my lungs. “I am promoting you. Pack your laptop and your passport. At midnight, you become my fiancée.”
