3. Nick
— ? —
Nick
Something is wrong with Joanna Holland.
The color drains from her face the instant she sees Matthias, not a gradual fade but a complete evacuation, every drop of it gone at once.
One second she’s nervous but composed, clutching her portfolio with white knuckles, and the next she has the face of someone who has seen something that should have stayed dead.
Reading people is what makes me good at my job.
Clients, contractors, competitors, everyone tells a story with their body language, and learning to read those stories has been the difference between success and failure more times than I can count.
Right now, Joanna Holland’s story is written in capital letters across every inch of her face.
Fear. Fury. And under all of it, unmistakable, heartbreak, compressed into a single frozen moment.
Then she pulls herself together. It’s visible, the effort it takes, a straightening of the spine, a smoothing of expression, a controlled breath that makes her shoulders drop half an inch. Professional mask firmly back in place.
Impressive.
My attention shifts to Matthias, and what I see there is less impressive.
He’s looking at her the way he looks at anything beneath him, something unpleasant tracked in on a shoe.
It’s a look I’ve seen before, usually directed at women who’ve made the mistake of expecting something from my brother, honesty, commitment, basic human decency.
The information files itself away in the back of my mind as introductions begin, but paying attention to the meeting becomes impossible.
Instead, there’s Jo holding herself together with white-knuckled control on one side of my vision, and Matthias trying to undermine her at every opportunity on the other.
“I hope you’re more prepared than your entrance suggested,” Matthias says when Jo presents her credentials, that charming smile plastered across his face, helpfulness worn over cruelty.
“Her portfolio spoke for itself.” The words come out sharper than intended. “That’s why I hired her.”
Matthias’s jaw tightens. Jo doesn’t look at either of us, her eyes fixed on the papers in front of her, hunting them for the secrets of the universe.
The meeting drags on. Projects get discussed, timelines reviewed, budgets examined. Normal business. Except nothing feels normal, because the tension between my brother and the new hire is thick enough to choke on, and everyone in the room can feel it even if they can’t identify the source.
When the meeting finally ends, Jo rushes out at a near run, the building on fire behind her. Matthias follows.
Thirty seconds pass. Forty.
The hallway outside the conference room is quiet when my footsteps enter it, but voices drift from around the corner, low, heated, unmistakably hostile.
“Joanna, didn’t think I’d let you waltz in here.” Matthias’s voice, dripping with contempt. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you should leave. Now. Before this gets ugly.”
“I didn’t know you were here.” Jo’s voice is steady, but there’s a tremor underneath. “Believe me, if I had, I would have run the other direction.”
“Still bitter after all these years? That’s pathetic, Jo.”
“The only pathetic thing here is you.”
The corner reveals them standing in the alcove by the elevators. Matthias has Jo’s arm in his grip, and she’s yanking it free with enough force that she stumbles backward. Her eyes are blazing, but there’s fear there too, buried deep, carefully controlled, but present.
She walks away without seeing me. Matthias watches her go, and the look on his face makes my blood run cold.
It’s not just contempt. It’s possession. Like she’s something he owns, something he has the right to control. Like her existence is an offense he’s personally been tasked with correcting.
The urge to step between them, to shield her from whatever history is written in that look, rises up so fast it’s almost disorienting.
“What was that?”
Matthias startles at my voice, then smooths his expression into something approximating innocence. “Nothing. Old history.”
“History with an employee I just hired?”
“Seems the world isn’t big enough.” That smile again, the one that doesn’t reach his eyes, the one that’s fooled everyone our whole lives except me. “Ask her yourself, if you’re so curious. I’m sure she’ll have a fascinating version of events.”
He walks away before more questions can be asked, and the certainty settles into my bones like lead.
My brother has done something unforgivable.
The break room is empty except for Jo when I find her twenty minutes later. She’s gripping the counter, the only thing keeping her upright, shoulders hunched, head bowed. The fluorescent lights wash her out, make her look fragile in a way she hasn’t seemed before.
“Jo.”
She flinches. Actually flinches, like my voice is a threat, and then recognition kicks in and she straightens, that professional mask sliding back into place.
“Mr. Anderson.”
“Nick.” The correction is automatic by now. “Do you want to tell me what that was about?”
“No.”
Fair enough.
The coffee machine hums as two cups fill, black for me, and something tells me she takes it the same way. The cup slides across the counter toward her, and our fingers brush when she takes it.
“But if my brother is going to be a problem,” the words come out carefully measured, “I need to know.”
She laughs, and it’s hollow, bitter, nothing like the warmth that briefly surfaced in the lobby when talking about first-day nerves. “Your brother has been a problem since the day I met him.”
No elaboration follows. Pushing doesn’t feel right, so silence stretches between us instead. But leaving doesn’t feel right either, so staying happens, leaning against the counter, drinking coffee, existing in the same space without demands.
Eventually she takes a sip. Then another. Some of the tension bleeds out of her shoulders.
“Thank you.” Her voice is quiet, directed at the cup rather than at me. “For before. In the meeting.”
A nod acknowledges this. “You work for me now. That means you’re under my protection.”
Her guard slips, just for a second. Hope, maybe, folded back down fast, like she’s learned the hard way not to trust it.
“That’s... not something anyone’s said to me in a long time.”
“Then the people around you haven’t been doing their jobs.”
Her laugh this time has an edge of genuine warmth in it. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know your work. I know you didn’t flinch when my brother tried to humiliate you in front of the entire team. And I know that whatever history exists between you two, you’re handling it with more grace than he deserves.”
Her eyes find mine, and for a moment the mask drops entirely. There’s exhaustion there, and pain, and a fierce determination that pulls my chest tight without my permission.
“It’s a long story,” she says finally.
“I’ve got time.”
“Maybe someday.” She sets down the coffee cup. “But not today. Today I just need to survive my first day without committing a felony.”
“That seems like a reasonable goal.”
“You’d be surprised how often I have to remind myself.”
She leaves with something that’s almost a smile, and the break room feels emptier without her in it.
My brother’s ex.
It has to be. The intensity of the reaction, the history implied, the possessive look on Matthias’s face, it all adds up to something more than a casual acquaintance. An ex-girlfriend, maybe. Or worse.
She’s my brother’s ex, and she works for me now.
And she’s fucking gorgeous.
Not in the obvious way, not the kind of beauty that announces itself and demands attention. But in the way she holds herself, the fire in her eyes, the sharp intelligence that showed in her portfolio and the even sharper wit that surfaces when she’s not terrified.
The coffee cup she used still sits on the counter, a faint lipstick mark on the rim.
This is going to be a problem.