Kimberly
A house built by the same hands can still have rooms that never see the light.
I turned around. The man leaning against the doorframe was watching me like I was a private comedy show staged just for him.
I’d seen Logan Whitlock exactly once before—at his mother’s funeral.
He’d sat at the opposite end of the pew from his brother, close enough to share a hymnal, far enough to share absolutely nothing else.
He looked like Jackson the way a photograph looks like its negative.
Same dark hair, same height, same sharp, aristocratic jawline, but everything that had frozen solid on Jackson ran warm on Logan.
He had coffee-brown eyes instead of smoke-gray, and a face built for a laugh rather than one built to lock a door and throw away the key. He was handsome in that easy, magazine-cover way that probably made waitresses forget his order and then bring him dessert on the house just to keep him talking.
"You must be Kimberly." He said it like he’d already solved the riddle and was just being polite about the paperwork. "My mother used to talk about you."
"She did?"
"All the time. You were her favorite subject right after the roses." He pushed off the doorframe, tilting his head toward the corridor. "Walk with me. Emergency meeting, whole floor. You’ll want to be in that room before my brother decides your empty chair is a signed confession."
My heart slammed against my ribs. I fell into step beside him, catching a look from Sophie over her coffee cup that clearly communicated good luck and quite possibly nice knowing you.
"Mr. Whitlock, I didn’t leak anything," I said, keeping my voice low. "I’ve been here for five minutes. I don’t even have access to—"
"Logan," he corrected, cutting me off the way you'd steer someone clear of a puddle.
"Mr. Whitlock is my brother, and trust me, mixing us up is exceptionally bad for your health.
" He shot me a sideways glance. "And breathe.
My mother was an excellent judge of character.
I highly doubt a woman Greta Whitlock trusted with her secrets would sell out the family business. "
It was such a small thing, being believed. But standing in a hallway where the whole building was busy whispering my name for all the wrong reasons, it was the first real breath I’d taken since crossing the lobby.
The relief lasted about forty-five seconds.
The executive conference room was glass-walled and gray-lit, and Jackson Whitlock was already anchoring the head of the table like a storm system waiting to break.
Two department heads flanked him—a woman with reading glasses pushed high into her hair and a man in a tailored vest who was aggressively checking his phone under the table.
Jackson didn’t look up when the door clicked. He was scrolling through a tablet, and his absolute stillness was worse than any glaring stare. He was choosing the exact second to acknowledge me, and making me wait for it was the whole point.
I took a seat. Logan claimed the chair directly across from me, sprawling back with his coffee like a man who’d wandered in for a refill and accidentally stumbled into a corporate execution.
Jackson set the tablet down. His eyes found mine, and there it was—the accusation, fully loaded and aimed.
"Did Airende send you?"
It wasn’t a question. It was a verdict delivered flatly, like he was reading an entry off an inventory sheet.
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but Logan beat me to the draw.
"Jack, come on. She walked into the building yesterday. You think our biggest competitor planted a mastermind mole who doesn’t even have an assigned parking pass yet?"
Jackson's expression darkened, a shift I wouldn't have thought possible if I hadn't watched it happen.
"The lady has a voice," Jackson said, his tone dropping an octave as his eyes locked onto mine. "Let her use it."
Logan leaned back, raising both hands in a theatrical surrender that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He gave me a tiny nod, barely there. "You're up."
"No," I said, looking Jackson straight in the eye. "I don’t even know who Airende is. I heard the name for the first time about a minute ago."
"And I'm supposed to take your word for that." My escalating panic was a minor scheduling glitch to him.
"You seem to have a habit of not taking my word for anything," I muttered.
The second the words cleared my lips, I wanted to swallow them back down. Jackson’s gaze sharpened into a blade, and the two department heads exchanged a brief, uncomfortable look.
I sat up straighter, refusing to shrink.
"I started yesterday, Mr. Whitlock. My keycard opens exactly two doors: a supply closet and the women’s restroom.
I don’t have access to the development servers, project folders, or any floor above the third without a babysitter.
I wouldn’t know a product specification from a takeout menu if they were sitting side by side on my desk.
If you want to check the system logs, check them.
My entire digital footprint in this company consists of a completed tax form and a terrible badge photo. "
Jackson leaned back, crossing his arms, and let the quiet stretch. It pressed down like a hand on my chest, daring me to fill it. I bit the inside of my cheek and kept my mouth shut.
Logan opened his mouth to break the tension.
"This is my company," Jackson said, his voice cutting through the air without his eyes ever leaving my face. "And she is my secretary. Stay out of it, Logan."
Logan held his brother’s gaze for a long, quiet beat.
His expression remained perfectly pleasant, a mask that refused to slip, before he stood and buttoned his jacket.
He walked out of the conference room without another syllable.
He didn’t look angry; he didn’t look defeated.
He looked bored, which bothered me far more than a slammed door would have.
It meant this theater was normal for them.
This was how they coexisted. Or failed to.
I watched the glass door swing shut, my mind flashing back to Greta—to the way she used to say their names together like a quiet prayer she was terrified wouldn’t be answered.
My boys. How did a woman that radiant and warm raise one son who was a tyrant in a bespoke suit, and another who lets himself be dismissed from a room in his own building like an unwanted guest?
I turned back to the head of the table. "Is that footprint enough to prove my innocence, or do you need to audit my supply closet access?"
Jackson studied me. I held his gaze and refused to be the one who looked away first. At the edges of my vision the department heads shifted in their seats, someone’s pen tapping, a throat clearing, all of them waiting for me to fold. I didn’t.
"That remains to be seen," he said coolly. "Go do your job, Ms. Bishop."
He turned to the department heads, and just like that, I was erased from existence.
I stood up and walked out on legs that desperately wanted to tremble. I didn’t let them, purely out of spite. The heavy glass door clicked behind me, and I stood in the corridor letting out a breath so deep I was surprised my lungs had the capacity.
Greta Whitlock was the kindest soul I had ever known, but the apple hadn’t just fallen far from the tree—it had rolled down a hill and landed in a completely different orchard.
I wasn’t raised to curse, but standing there, I wanted to use every colorful word my mother had spent eighteen years telling me to avoid.
I went back to my desk, and I worked.
The next few days were an education in the very particular madness of Jackson Whitlock.
He took his coffee black, zero sugar, a lesson I learned by fire when he silently pushed my first attempt—perfectly creamed and sweetened—to the far edge of his mahogany desk without a glance.
The second cup, black as ink, stayed put.
He didn’t say thank you, but he drank it, and the absence of rejection became the closest thing to praise I was ever going to receive.
I started printing out his analytics reports thirty minutes before he asked, because Sophie had warned me he loathed repeating himself, and I believed her implicitly.
For the most part, he treated me like a piece of office furniture.
He only ever called me "Ms. Bishop," in a tone that made my own name sound like a moving violation. But furniture doesn’t get watched. And he watched me. I felt it every time he passed my desk—a fraction of a second’s pause in his stride that cost me half my composure.
Once, late in the afternoon when the Seattle sky turned the color of wet slate and my computer monitor reflected the office behind me like dark glass, I caught his silhouette standing in his doorway.
Coffee cup in hand, eyes locked onto the back of my head.
By the time I actually turned around, the doorway was empty.
Suspicion, I told myself. He still thought I was the mole, or the thief, or whatever flavor of villain he’d cast me as for the week. I forced my eyes back to my spreadsheet and successfully didn’t think about it again for an entire eleven minutes.
Logan’s floor, however, was a different planet entirely.
His office was directly below ours, and his assistant, a guy named Derek who wore retro sneakers with his slacks and kept a massive jar of sour gummy bears on his desk, spent most of the day leaning back like a man on a paid vacation.
I’d dropped by on an errand earlier in the week and just stopped to stare. Derek had his feet up. On the desk. While his boss was actively in the room. They were living in a parallel utopian universe where CEOs didn’t use meat thermometers on their macchiatos, and I clearly hadn’t been invited.
Sunlight followed Logan into every room, warming it the second he crossed the threshold. People laughed around him. They breathed easier.