Chapter Seven
Eliza
I beat everyone to the office, except the cleaning crew methodically vacuuming carpets that didn’t need it. Good. The building was at its best like this - obedient, quiet, predictable.
My workspace was exactly as I’d left it. No clutter. No surprises. Just the faint hum of electronics, the hushed roar of the cleaning crew’s tools, and the tangle of charging cords hidden in the bottom drawer, where chaos belonged.
Few minutes later I heard a knock at the door-three crisp taps against the glass. I looked up, obviously it was him.
Gabriel didn’t wait for an invitation; he just stepped inside. His jacket perfectly pressed, tie loosened just enough to suggest intention rather than fatigue. He scanned the room before looking at me, as if he was checking inventory.
I was included.
His reflection lingered in the glass and his dark suit was tailored with precision, the kind that didn’t wrinkle no matter how long the day stretched on.
He met my gaze with the easy certainty of someone who expected to be seen.
Of course, he didn’t knock to greet - he knocked to challenge.
“Early as ever, Eliza,” he said. “Rest of the team’s still filing in with coffee in hand. Mind if I steal the fishbowl for a bit?”
“It’s all yours,” I said, not looking up from my screen. “I’m only defending my territory until the real predators show.”
He smiled, an upward twitch at the corners of his lips, not a show of teeth; his smile reminded me more of a concealed weapon than a show of amusement or joy. “I’ll try not to drip blood on the carpet.”
He stepped in, closed the glass door, and took a call. His voice dropped to that low, surgical register he reserved for high-stakes negotiations or firing people. I tuned him out with noise-canceling earbuds but still felt the pulse of his cadence. Every sentence was a surgical incision.
I tried to ignore him, but I was attuned to every movement.
The way he tugged his sleeve to the perfect length with his other hand when he was getting ready to eviscerate someone.
The split-second thumb-tap on his phone before he said anything that mattered.
The way he sat at the edge of his seat, as if the chair was an accomplice instead of support.
I watched around my six-monitor set up that I plugged my laptop directly into as he sliced through his call and then hung up. My code review now felt trivial. He was on the move. I braced.
He didn’t disappoint. The door hissed open and he strode to my desk, hands in pockets, wearing that gentle predatory calm.
“Got a second?”
I turned, but not all the way. “Technically, I bill by the millisecond.”
He looked over my setup, the six-screen command center. “You always run a process monitor at root level?”
“I prefer not to be owned,” I said, glancing at my shell window. “Unlike some people.”
His eyebrow twitched. “Is this about that time in college-”
“I got over it,” I lied.
He accepted this with a slight nod, then dropped the bomb. “There’s a leadership huddle at 8. They’re rolling out a major change. I want you on my side.”
I snorted. “You always want me on your side, Gabriel.”
“Because you’re smarter than most of the people here. Possibly smarter than me.”
It should have been a compliment. It felt like a shot across the bow.
“Why do I feel like you’re about to pitch something I’ll hate?” I closed my laptop. “Fine. You’ve got my attention.”
“Perfect. Let’s walk.”
He didn’t wait for my response, just led the way down the corridor. Our shoes echoed different rhythms; mine sharp and quick, his longer and measured. We passed the closed offices, the cubicles, the break room, without a glance.
In the elevator, he stood too close. I could smell the hint of expensive soap and that cologne that annoyed me. He watched the floor numbers tick down, then, almost absent-mindedly, leaned in.
“They’re merging our teams for the next project,” he said. “You and I will be sharing a workspace. Effective immediately.”
My stomach did a full autopsy. “That’s… strategically inefficient. Our teams have different codebases, different workflows-”
“Not anymore. C-suite wants ‘synergy.’” He pronounced it like an allergy.
I crossed my arms. “Let me guess. You’ll be ‘leading’ this little experiment?”
He gave a full smile now, the one that melted venture capitalists and HR liaisons alike. “We’re co-leads. You get half the headache.”
“And twice the blame when it all implodes.”
He reached to tap the door open, but stopped, blocking my exit with his body in a way that made my pulse jump. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said, voice low. “You don’t sabotage me, I don’t sabotage you. We run this like equals. Even if it kills us.”
I looked up, meeting his eyes. Dark, impossible to read, but the challenge was unmistakable. “What’s the catch?”
He leaned just close enough. “You have to trust me. A little.”
I exhaled, sharp. “Fine. But if you cross me, I’ll make your life a living hell.”
“I wouldn’t expect less.”
The doors slid open and he shifted to the side, letting me pass. I could feel his gaze on my back all the way to the glass-walled “Innovation Suite,” which would probably be our new shared habitat.
The next hour was a crash course in enforced proximity.
We sat across from each other, our laptops, tablets, and legal pads forming Maginot Lines of personal space.
His hands hovered over the keyboard, fast and precise, while mine curled around my mechanical pencil — a habit from before the world digitized all thought.
Every time his knee brushed mine under the table, I told myself it was accidental.
After the third time, I stopped believing myself.
Time ticked by with typed lines, scribbled notes, the soft shuffle of paper between us. Our devices formed a tidy border down the center of the table, an unspoken agreement neither of us acknowledged.
Gabriel worked fast, fingers moving with quiet confidence across the keyboard. I gripped my mechanical pencil hard enough to feel the ridges bite into my thumb, the faint click grounding in a way glass screens never did.
Under the table, his knee kept brushing mine and by this time I had stopped adjusting my chair.
Our teams filtered in, each carrying the skepticism of the recently re-org’d. Gabriel kicked off the meeting with a cold tone.
“Forget everything you knew about the pipeline,” he said, projecting diagrams onto the glass with a wave. “As of today, we’re one team. One vision. We’ll be iterating on the product, shipping weekly, and nobody leaves until bugs are zeroed out.”
He paced. I took notes, but mostly watched him pace.
He fielded questions, most of them lightly hostile or sarcastic, with calculated patience. I answered the technical ones. By the end of the hour, I was shaking from either caffeine or adrenaline or both.
He waited until the others left, then turned to me.
“Was I too harsh?”
I shrugged. “You were you.”
He set his jaw. “You need anything, you come to me. No gatekeeping.”
I snorted. “I don’t need a protector.”
He didn’t smile. “I’m not your enemy, Eliza.”
I tapped my pencil, hard. “That’s what all the best enemies say.”
*
By seven o’clock, the building was nearly empty. The lights outside our glass walls clicked off one by one, leaving us exposed.
“That assumption doesn’t hold,” I said, tapping the edge of my tablet. “You’re treating the risk window like it’s static. It isn’t.”
Gabriel leaned back slightly, fingers steepled, eyes on me instead of the screen. “It stabilizes after the second quarter. The data-”
“The data you’re using is six months old,” I cut in, keeping my voice even. “It doesn’t account for regulatory lag or human error, which is where this actually breaks.”
I didn’t look up right away. I felt his attention settle - steady, assessing, heavy.
When I finally met his gaze, his jaw flexed once, a muscle jumping in his cheek, before he nodded. “All right,” he said. “Then walk me through your alternative.”
I did. Cleanly. Thoroughly. No wasted words.
Halfway through, I shut down one of his counterpoints before he could finish it. He stopped himself mid-sentence, lips pressing together briefly, then easing as he listened. No interruption. No pushback. Just focus.
When I finished, he seemed to be searching for errors or mistakes, which started getting my hackles up. He still didn’t trust me.
“Okay,” he said finally, softer now. “That’s better.”
He didn’t say it like it was a concession. It sounded like recognition.
And in the quiet that followed, with the rest of the floor dark and the glass around us reflecting our own shapes back at us, I became uncomfortably aware that the argument had done nothing to cool the air between us.
“I’m going home. Want me to walk you out?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, I have a few more things to do to wrap up.”
I breathed a sigh of relief that I had the fishbowl to myself.
I was deep into audit logs when I noticed it: file access at 3:41 a.m., under my credentials, from a remote IP I didn’t recognize.
Followed by two more, identical access patterns.
No logs of physical badge swipes, no security video - because who checks the security video unless something’s already on fire? My skin went cold.
I tried to reconstruct the breach, but the trail was sanitized. Too clean. Either someone wanted me to notice, or someone was very, very good.
Panic began to bubble up in me. How could I protect myself from a ghost? A clever ghost obviously hellbent on ruining me?
The office was officially closed. But I heard the soft tone of the elevator and, sure enough, Gabriel was back, carrying two cold-pressed juices.
He stopped in the doorway, catching the look on my face. “You look like you found a zero-day.”
“Someone’s been in the logs,” I said, voice taut. “Using my credentials.”
He set down the drinks. “You think it’s an inside job?”
“I don’t think,” I snapped. “I know.”
He crouched beside me, scanning the audit log over my shoulder. Close enough that his breath tickled the hair behind my ear. He smelled like citrus and those bodice-ripper old paperback books that I used to read when grandma was in bed, a ridiculous combination.
He pointed. “They’re using your shell alias. But the behavior is… off. Why leave a trail at all?”
“Either an amateur, or a pro with a message.” I turned, finding his face inches from mine.
We locked eyes. For a split second, I forgot the code, the crisis, the job. His lips parted like he was about to say something that mattered.
He stood up abruptly. “I’ll have Security run the badge logs. Nobody’s getting away with this.”
I scoffed. “You sound like you’re trying to reassure me.”
He didn’t answer, just watched me with that clinical intensity.
Before I could break the silence, my phone buzzed. New calendar invite: Business Class flight to San Francisco, 5:55 p.m. a week from tomorrow. Required: Gabriel Valor, Eliza Reeves.
My insides did the freefall thing they always did when flying loomed.
I hated flying. Hated the loss of control, hated that the only thing between me and the ground was a tube of aluminum and hope.
I was about to say no - to push back, to set a boundary - but then I caught his eye.
He was waiting. Waiting to see if I’d flinch.
I squared my shoulders. “Guess we’ll have to share a row.”
He grinned, and it was disarming, like a man who knew every outcome was already in his favor. “Try not to rip off someone’s cufflink this time.”
Of course, my brother told him I hated flying. The only response I could give was an eyeroll.
I packed my things in silence and he walked me out, got me into a cab, and sent me off.
The city lights streaked by as my brain pondered all of the things: flying, the breach, being on a plane with Gabriel…
And when I got home and let myself in, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep.
So I did the next best thing; I opened a fresh, encrypted document and started logging everything: dates, times, file hashes, access attempts.
Even the way Gabriel watched me, how he sometimes hovered just a beat too long, or how his voice softened only when he said my name.
If this was war, I intended to win. If it was something else… well, I’d document that, too.