1. Nina
NINA
By eight-thirty, Luka Kazan has already ruined my day.
I’m at my desk outside his office, sorting through the disaster that’s his schedule, when his door opens and he steps out like he owns time itself.
Which, to be fair, he nearly does. Men twice his age wait for him.
Ministers return his calls. CEOs smile too hard when they shake his hand.
Women forgive him things they absolutely should not.
And me?
I’m apparently in charge of making sure none of them overlap.
“Nina,” Luka says.
I look up from my screen. “Good morning to you too.”
He ignores that. He usually ignores anything that sounds too much like a normal human exchange. “Come in.”
I rise, take my tablet, and follow him into his office.
His office is exactly like him—severe, expensive, and impossible to relax in. Dark wood. Glass walls. Clean lines. No personal photos. No clutter. No sign that an actual person spends time here. Only proof that money does.
Luka moves behind his desk and places a folder in front of him. He doesn’t sit. He never sits when he wants to make someone feel like they’re already under interrogation.
But I stay standing too. “What now?”
“You’ll clear tonight.”
I blink. “I’m sorry?”
“Tonight,” he says. “You’ll move everything after seven.”
I stare at him for a second. “Everything?”
“Yes.”
I let out a slow breath. “Do you know how unhelpful that word is in this office?”
Luka finally looks at me properly. “You’ll survive.”
“That is not the standard I aim for in administrative work.”
His face does not change, but I know that look. He thinks I’m being dramatic. I think he’s being annoying. This is the foundation of our professional relationship.
I tap my screen and pull up the evening schedule. “You have dinner at eight-thirty.”
“Cancel it.”
“With who?”
He glances at the tablet in my hand. “You tell me. You keep the records.”
I hate when he says that.
Not because he’s wrong.
Because he says it like it’s a perfectly normal thing for a woman to manage her boss’s dating life along with board meetings, internal briefings, and quiet payoffs to men who should know better than to cross him.
I open the private diary section I keep for him. Not the company calendar. Not the official itinerary. The other one. The one no one knows about except Luka and me.
My own little book of horrors.
Name. Age. Where he met her. How long she lasted. What flowers not to send. Which restaurant she prefers. Whether she cries, throws things, or asks for jewelry on the way out.
I used to think this part of the job was temporary. A weird favor. A one-off.
Then two women named Elena turned up at the same charity event wearing the same bracelet, and I spent forty minutes in a bathroom talking one of them down from causing a public scene.
So now there is a diary.
A leather-bound, alphabetized, color-coded record of Luka Kazan’s women.
If I ever die, I want it burned.
“Tonight,” I say, scrolling. “Dinner with Yelena Markova. Private room at Maison. She requested white roses and specifically asked whether you’d be in a good mood.”
“Cancel her.”
“Reason?”
“I’m busy.”
“She’ll ask with what.”
“She doesn’t need to know.”
“She’ll still ask.”
Luka’s gaze shifts to me, cool and unreadable. “Then tell her something believable.”
I fold my arms. “Your idea of believable and mine are not the same.”
He gives me a look. “Use yours.”
“That’s generous. Thank you.”
He says nothing.
I should probably be more respectful. He is my boss.
He is also one of the most dangerous men I know, though nobody in this building would ever say that out loud.
Officially, Luka Kazan is a billionaire investor with interests in shipping, energy, security, and real estate.
Unofficially, though… That’s another story.
Unfortunately for both of us, I’ve known him too long to be properly intimidated every second of the day.
“Why am I clearing tonight?” I ask.
“You’ll come with me.”
I look up. “Absolutely not.”
His expression hardens by half an inch. On Luka, that’s the equivalent of most people flipping a table. “It wasn’t a request.”
“It should have been.”
“It wasn’t.”
I set the tablet down on the edge of his desk. “Luka, I already worked late twice this week. Yesterday I had to send flowers to one woman, cancel a weekend in Vienna for another, and talk a model out of leaking photographs because you forgot her birthday.”
“I didn’t forget.”
“You remembered at six in the evening.”
“I still remembered.”
I laugh once. “That’s an insane defense.”
He finally sits, which somehow makes him more imposing, not less. He leans back in his chair and watches me with that same calm, infuriating focus that makes grown men confess things they never planned to say.
“You are paid well,” he says.
“I’m underpaid for the emotional range this job requires,” I sniff.
“You like the job.”
I narrow my eyes. “Parts of it.”
“Which parts?”
“The parts that don’t involve all your girlfriends.”
“They are not my girlfriends.”
I give him a long look. “Of course. Silly me. They’re just women you fly across countries and disappoint in luxury settings.”
A flicker passes through his eyes. Not quite amusement. Not quite warning. With Luka, the line between the two is always thinner than it should be.
“Watch your mouth, Nina,” he says.
“My mouth is not the problem in this office.”
I feel it immediately—the shift in the air, the tiny tightening at the corners of his eyes, the dangerous stillness that settles over him when something has caught his attention in a way he doesn’t like.
Or likes too much.
I straighten my spine. “What do you need tonight?”
Luka’s voice is even when he answers. “There’s a dinner.”
“I gathered that.”
“You’ll sit in.”
“At a dinner?”
“At the restaurant before the dinner,” he says. “Then you’ll leave.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s work.”
“That is the second least convincing thing you’ve said today.”
He rests one hand on the desk. “You’ll be there to take notes.”
“For dinner.”
“For the meeting before dinner.”
I study him. “And the date after?”
“You’ll make sure she’s handled.”
Ah… There it is.
The line that makes me want to throw things.
Handled.
As if the women he dates are just another item in the day’s operations. A car to be sent. A file to be moved. A problem to be smoothed over.
Sometimes I think Luka’s incapable of seeing people as actual human beings if they’re not immediately useful to him.
Sometimes I think that’s a lie I tell myself so I don’t notice the rest.
I pick up the tablet again and gaze down at the schedule. “So let me get this straight. I’m rearranging tonight, taking notes during some secret meeting, and then staying behind to babysit the woman you’ve chosen for dessert?”
His jaw tightens. “Don’t speak like that.”
“Like what?”
“You know what.”
He’s right. I definitely do know what.
I keep my eyes on the screen, so I don’t have to look at him. “Who is she?”
“Alina.”
I scroll. “Which Alina?”
He doesn’t answer.
I look up slowly. “You cannot possibly expect me to work with that.”
“There are two?”
“There are four.”
He says nothing.
I turn the tablet toward him. “Alina Sokol, jewelry designer. Alina Petrova, divorced politician’s daughter.
Alina Vostrikov, twenty-six, equestrian, allergic to saffron and commitment.
And Alina Karelin, the brunette with the impossible cheekbones who cried in the Maybach because you took a call during dessert. ”
Luka glances at the screen. “Karelin.”
I type the change in with far more force than necessary. “You know, one day I’m going to publish this diary.”
“No, you won’t.”
“It would sell.”
“It would get you killed.”
I meet his gaze. “By you?”
A pause.
Then he says, “By several women before I got the chance.”
That nearly makes me smile, but I don’t let it.
Instead, I close the schedule and set the tablet down. “Why me?”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “Because I trust you.”
The answer comes quickly and simply.
And for one stupid second, it catches me off guard.
Luka trusts very few people. My brother, maybe. Two men in security. One accountant I’m fairly sure has buried bodies. Me, apparently, which feels less flattering when I remember I’m trusted to manage lipstick shades, champagne preferences, and the emotional debris of his dating life.
“That’s not a good enough reason,” I say.
“It is for me.”
“But not for me.”
His gaze drifts over my face like he’s reading a document he’s already memorized. “What’s the problem, Nina?”
I laugh under my breath. “You really want me to answer that?”
“Yes.”
I shouldn’t.
I absolutely should not.
But I’m tired, he’s impossible, and maybe I’m sick of being the woman who keeps every other woman in his life comfortable while pretending I don’t mind.
“The problem,” I say, “is that I’m your secretary, not your fixer.”
He says nothing.
“The problem,” I continue, “is that I spend half my week arranging your dates with women who look like they were born on yachts, and the other half cleaning up after them when they realize you’re emotionally unavailable even though they’ve literally puked themselves into becoming size zero.”
His expression goes flat and dangerous. “Careful.”
I ignore that. “The problem is that you hand me impossible tasks and act like I should be grateful you said my name before doing it.”
“Nina.”
“And the problem,” I say, because I’m already falling and might as well hit the ground hard, “is that I know too much about the women you take to dinner.”
His voice lowers. “Meaning?”
I swallow once. Then I say it anyway.
“I know what kind of flowers they like. What perfume they wear. Which one pretends not to drink. Which one lies about her age. Which one wants a ring. Which one wants a headline. Which one thinks she can change you.”
Luka doesn’t move. “And?”
I should really, really stop now.
But instead, because I’ve always been slightly stupid where he’s concerned, I say, “And I’m tired of keeping a diary of your women like it doesn’t make me want to scream.”
His face changes then, but only a little. A shadow at the mouth. Something sharper in his eyes.
“Why?” he asks.
The question is soft.
This is what makes it dangerous.
I stare at him. He stares back.
And suddenly it feels like the wrong answer might ruin everything.
So naturally, I give him one.
“Because it’s pathetic,” I say.
“For whom?”
“For all of us.”
Luka rises from his chair, and I hate how aware I become the second he stands. He’s too tall, too solid, too controlled.
Every instinct I have tells me to step back.
But I don’t.
He comes around the desk slowly and stops in front of me.
Not touching. Not close enough to call it inappropriate.
Just close enough that I can smell cedar, clean starch, and whatever dark expensive thing clings to his skin by noon.
“For all of us,” he repeats.
My throat goes dry. “Yes.”
“And you include yourself in that?”
I force myself to hold his gaze. “I’m the one keeping the diary.”
His eyes drop to my mouth for a fraction of a second. Then lift again. “You sound jealous.”
The word burns.
I laugh, but it comes out brittle. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
I hate him.
I hate the way he sees so much. I hate the way he waits. I hate the way one quiet sentence from him can peel the skin off every lie I tell myself.
“I don’t care,” I say.
He tilts his head. “Poorly done.”
“Believe whatever you want.”
“I usually do.”
He’s so close now that it feels deliberate, even though he still hasn’t touched me. If he lifted one hand, if he leaned in a fraction, if he gave me the smallest excuse, I’m not entirely sure I would do the sensible thing.
“You’re impossible,” I whisper, a mixture of anger and something else crushing my chest.
Luka’s eyes darken. “And yet you’re still here.”
I should leave. I should walk out, hand in my notice, go work for a normal executive who only cheats on his wife and commits tax fraud like everyone else.
Instead I say, “Only because you’d fall apart without me.”
He almost smiles. “Tonight,” he says. “Seven-thirty. Wear something appropriate.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“For the restaurant.”
“I know what restaurants are.”
“Then dress for one.”
“I always dress for one.”
“Not like yesterday.”
My mouth falls open. “What was wrong with yesterday?”
“It was too distracting.”
The words sit there, and I stare at him, certain I’ve heard wrong.
He watches me absorb it.
Heat crawls up my neck. “You don’t get to say things like that and then pretend this is a normal work conversation.”
“This has never been a normal work conversation. You know that.”
I take one step back because I need the air. “You’re asking too much.”
“No,” Luka says. “I’ve been asking too little.”
I can’t think when he looks at me like that.
Worse, he knows it.
My phone vibrates in my pocket and breaks the moment clean in half. I jerk like I’ve been caught. Luka steps away first this time, turning back toward his desk as if he didn’t just tilt the whole room off its axis.
I pull out my phone.
A text from my brother.
How’s the tyrant today?
I almost laugh.
Across the room, Luka picks up a file and says, “You’ll answer Alina personally. Make sure she confirms.”
I lock the screen and shove the phone away. “Anything else?”
He looks at me over the file in his hand. “Not for now.”
“Sure, boss,” I say, and I walk out without looking back.