Chapter Five
Eliza
Dreaming about Valor was not part of my itinerary – but last night… had been a damn trip.
The elevator hummed up toward the office floor.
I could see my reflection in the burnished elevator doors; crisp, cream-colored silk blouse with a bow at my throat, burgundy pencil skirt, black heels that made me look a full two inches taller than my actual five-five.
Hair slicked back into the kind of low, architectural bun that said “control freak” in HR language but “try me” in mine.
My phone vibrated. Once, twice, five times rapid-fire. I didn’t even need to check, it was Margot, already on my case.
The only thing more reliable than my heels was Margot’s sixth sense for existential panic.
I ignored her, for now, even as the elevator opened and my excuse of dropped signal vanished. Stepping out, I made my way toward my office and rest of the floor materialized to judge my every move and compare it to the day before.
The glass walls amplified everything; failures, successes, sweat stains, red eyes. The only thing private in this building was your browser history, and even that was debatable.
I slid my keycard through the scanner, which gave a despondent beep. Once. Twice. It finally flashed green. The door to my office opened with a soft pneumatic gasp, like it was sighing at the effort of accommodating me again.
With measured steps and a deep hope not to bump into Valor this morning, I made my way to my door. Only when I was inside did I exhale.
My desk was a minimalist’s wet dream; no family photos, no clutter, just a laptop, a legal pad with my own feminine shorthand, and a single stress ball I never actually squeezed.
The window behind me offered a panoramic view of the river and the brownstone horizon, but today the glass acted as a mirror; I could see the exhaustion in the set of my jaw, the slight tremor when I reached for the mouse.
I booted up.
Notifications began their relentless march across my screen.
MARGOT: Emergency status?
ME: Wouldn’t you like to know.
MARGOT: Don’t get sassy. I’m tracking the situation from my bed, wrapped like a human burrito in the weighted blanket you once mocked. Updates?
ME: Still have a job. For now.
MARGOT: “For now” isn’t going to cut it, babe. You need to SLEEP.
ME: I’ll sleep when I’m dead or promoted, whichever comes first.
The messages felt like a lifeline and a garrote, both at once.
I checked my calendar. Triple-checked, actually.
Board review at 8:30, prep call with marketing at 7:15, and that mysterious “check-in” with Gabriel Valor at 9:45.
Just the thought of him made my head ache in a special, dangerous way.
He had the kind of presence that dominated the airspace, the kind you felt even before you saw him in the room.
I’d spent years engineering the exact routines that would keep me from ever being caught off guard by a man like him.
The shared Google Sheet for the quarterly numbers was open in another tab. My cursor hovered over the total’s column, watching for discrepancies, decimal points gone rogue, numbers that no longer added up the way they did at midnight. Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Except; wait. My Monday at 1:30 call with the audit team wasn’t in the calendar anymore. I checked my email: no mention, no cancellation, nothing in the trash. My fingers moved on their own, opening every folder, searching for the meeting. It was gone. Like it never existed.
I pasted a smile onto my face and clicked into the audit channel.
ME: @audit just checking, did we move the 1:30 call today?
NOAH (AUDIT): wasn’t aware we had one
ME: Must be losing my mind. thanx
NOAH (AUDIT): lol join the club
I opened a new browser tab and pulled up the backup calendar I maintained for exactly this reason. The meeting was there, a perfect record, timestamped two weeks ago. Someone had scrubbed it from the official schedule, but not mine.
My phone vibrated again. I let it go to voicemail, then immediately regretted it. I played the message.
“Ms. Reeves, this is Jerry with facilities. Wanted to let you know your desk request is going to take another week. Hope that’s not an issue. Let us know if you need a temporary solution.”
What the hell was going on?
I’d never filed a facilities request. I didn’t even know you could. I checked my Sent folder, found nothing. But in my inbox was the confirmation, sent yesterday morning, from my own account, requesting a new ergonomic setup and a monitor arm.
I double-checked my Outbox. Clean as a nun’s diary and I texted Margot.
ME: Is it possible to sleep-email yourself into a new standing desk then wipe all evidence?
MARGOT: Are you asking if you’ve developed a sleep disorder, or if you’re being gaslit by the system?
ME: Both.
MARGOT: That’s a Tuesday, honey.
The click of polished, high-end shoes on tile is sharper before eight a.m. I heard him before I saw him.
Gabriel Valor. Six-foot-whatever, shoulders made for magazine covers, charcoal suit with an open-collar shirt so sharp it could slice steak.
He walked like a man who expected the earth to rotate to meet his stride, and somehow it usually did.
I knew he’d make a beeline for my office, even before the glass wall turned his reflection into an approaching phantom. I pretended to be absorbed in my screen. He waited in the doorway, not knocking, just an expectant pause.
“Eliza,” he said.
“Gabriel,” I said, not looking up.
“I take it you’re already aware of the day’s… adjustments,” he said.
I risked a glance. His dark eyes were unreadable, but the slight arch in his eyebrow told me he was as amused by the chaos as I was irritated by it.
“I make it my business to know,” I said.
He walked in, closer than was strictly necessary, and perched on the edge of my desk like a goddamn crow. His jacket opened, revealing a lean, deliberate torso. He didn’t need to posture, but he did anyway. Old habits.
“I need a favor,” he said.
“Shocker,” I said, not missing a beat.
He leaned in, and I could smell the faintest hint of vetiver, soap, and the kind of expensive aftershave that was probably flown in weekly from Paris. He watched me for a reaction, but I gave him nothing.
“I need your team to finalize the merge analysis by this afternoon. There’s a board subcommittee that moved up their timeline.” His tone was casual, but his posture was predatory.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen until next week,” I said, voice icy.
“Priorities shifted.” He shrugged, a perfect little gesture of masculine indifference.
I leaned back, careful to keep my expression neutral. “Is this me doing you a favor, or you throwing me under the bus?”
“I’d never throw you under the bus, Eliza,” he said, a faint smile flickering. “Maybe tie you down, but never under a bus.”
Goosebumps prickled across my skin. “You’d have to catch me first.”
He watched me, eyes dark and dangerous. “Are you getting sleep?”
I blinked. “I hear you need to worry less about my REM cycles and more about your subcommittee.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Just a suggestion. Fatigue affects judgment.”
“So does narcissism.”
He actually laughed, low and throaty, the kind that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. “I can count on you for the numbers?”
I nodded, concise. “You’ll have them.”
He stood, towering over the desk. “I like the new hair,” he said, and I hated that it worked, that it made me flush.
I didn’t respond. He left, unhurried.
I stared at the computer, forcing my hands not to shake.
I started going through the emails, line by line, and found another one I didn’t write: a message to the audit team, sent at 2 a.m., offering to “defer responsibility for the quarterly overage discrepancy pending further review.” My words, but not my style.
Someone was either ghostwriting me, or they’d gotten access to my account.
I texted Margot again.
ME: This is getting weird.
MARGOT: How weird?
ME: Gabriel-level weird. He’s moving up the board timelines, someone’s deleting my meetings, and now I’m sending emails in my sleep.
MARGOT: Are you still using that dumb password you picked in college?
ME: No, but thanks for the confidence.
MARGOT: Just checking.
My hands hovered over the keyboard. I needed to call IT, but that would set off a chain of investigations I couldn’t control. I needed to handle it myself. I checked the outbox one more time. All clean.
For the first time in months, I felt an electric pulse in my chest that had nothing to do with caffeine. Someone was trying to screw me, and the usual suspects were not in my immediate line of sight.
I picked up my phone and dialed Gabriel. He answered on the first ring.
“Miss me already?” he said.
“Funny. I want to know why you’re fast-tracking the merge,” I said, keeping my tone low and steady.
He was quiet for a moment, and I knew he was weighing how much to tell me. “You’re the only person here I trust to get the numbers right. The board wants answers before the weekend. I figured you’d want to be the first to present.”
“So this is a test.”
He let out a breath. “You can call it that.”
“Don’t patronize me. Is there something I should know? Is someone coming for my job?”
He hesitated. “I’d tell you if there was.”
I almost believed him.
Instead, I said, “Then tell your goons to stop deleting my calendar events.”
A pause. “No one on my team touches your schedule.”
“Sure.” I hung up before he could respond.
I pulled up my security logs, which required a ridiculous three-factor authentication process that I’d invented to keep out exactly this kind of interference.
There were three logins from my account in the past twenty-four hours: one from my phone, one from my laptop, and one from a location in Midtown I’d never even visited.
I screenshotted the logs and emailed them to myself, attaching the backup calendar, and encrypted it with a key only Margot would know. I texted her:
ME: Something’s up. I’m sending you something. Open if I go dark.
MARGOT: You watch too many spy shows.
ME: I mean it.
MARGOT: Noted.
The merge analysis took the rest of the morning. My eyes felt like someone had sandpapered them, but I was running on a high-octane mix of adrenaline and righteous paranoia.
As I walked down the hall to the boardroom, Gabriel fell into step beside me. “You look like hell,” he said, almost admiring.
“Good, means it’s working,” I replied.
He smiled. “I respect your hustle.”
“Don’t make it weird,” I said, but it already was.
The boardroom was cold and overbright, and everyone was already assembled, all thirty million dollars of tailored suits and veneered teeth.
The analysis went fine. Better than fine.
I saw two members of the board exchanging glances when I finished, and I allowed myself the smallest sliver of satisfaction.
After, Gabriel closed the door behind us as we stepped into the hall, trapping me in the little glass vestibule that separated the boardroom from the rest of the world. He stood close, too close, and lowered his voice.
“Someone’s targeting you,” he said. Not a question.
I looked up at him. His pupils were dilated, or maybe it was just the light. “No shit,” I said.
“Any idea who?”
“Other than you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “If I wanted you out, you’d already be gone. You know that.”
“Maybe you like to watch me struggle.”
That made him smile, slow and dangerous. “Not in this context.”
For a second, neither of us said anything, the tension humming at a frequency only we could hear.
He reached out, almost brushing a strand of hair that had slipped loose from my bun, then thought better of it. “Let me know if you need backup,” he said.
I wanted to say something cutting, but all I could muster was, “Don’t hold your breath.”
He watched me walk away.
Trusting him was stupid and a mistake I wouldn’t make. I made it back to my office, shut the door, and dialed Margot. She picked up after one ring.
“Are you alive or am I talking to a ghost?” she said.
“I’m being set up,” I said, letting the words tumble out. “Someone’s logging into my account from Midtown, they’re sending emails, canceling meetings, the whole nine. And they want me to fail, in front of the board, in front of Gabriel.”
A pause. “That’s actually hot.”
I snorted. “You’re such an asshole.”
“Only to balance out your perfectionism,” she said. “Have you slept at all?”
“I can sleep when-”
“You’re dead, I know. I know,” she said. “But listen. You need to eat. You need to take a nap. Then you need to come back with evidence. At which point, I will help you destroy this motherfucker, whoever they are.”
I stared at my reflection in the black glass of my laptop screen. I looked like someone who bit back, even when she was already bleeding.
“I’ll call you after the nap,” I said.
“You better.”
I ended the call, locked my computer, and shut the blinds. For the first time in months, I let myself lie back, shoes and all, and closed my eyes.
Whoever was coming for me, I’d find them.
And when I did, they’d wish they’d just stayed away.