Chapter 1
TO: KYARA@
From: shayla@
Subject: No such thing as a white lie.
Always.
Deep breaths, deep breaths, you can do this.
Kyara pinned a smile on her lips and entered the diner.
It was the working-class type, with mostly everybody too busy to mind other people’s business.
More importantly, though, it was two stations away from Manhattan, and in rush hour on a weekday, that might as well have meant she was heading to Alaska.
Or was that too close and maybe it should be Antarctica?
Geography had never been her finest suit, and that was why she was totally where she belonged—
“Babycakes, over here.”
—which was in the arms of Cyrus, the guy she had been secretly dating for three years, and yes, she was honestly hoping that the more times she told herself this, she would eventually believe it.
Cyrus watched in satisfaction as his secret girlfriend of three years came rushing to his table. She was still a pretty little thing, and he was confident that this year, he was finally going to score big.
Just gotta be patient, he reminded himself.
“I’m so sorry I’m late.”
“It’s fine,” Cyrus said expansively.
Kyara was about to sit opposite him when he made a tut-tut sound. “I missed you. Come sit by me.” Cyrus patted the space next to him.
Kyara forced herself to smile as she joined him in the booth and did her best not to flinch as his arm brushed against the side of her breast. An accident, she reminded herself.
Yes, it happened all the time, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t an accident.
Some people were just...clumsy, and that was why it was better to focus on. ..on...the booth.
The booth vinyl was sticky under Kyara’s thighs, and her coat sleeve had caught on something tacky on the table edge. Anything was okay, anything than the possibility that the man she had been secretly dating for years might not be clumsy after all.
“So...”
Cyrus was smiling at her, and that smile...that smile was as harmless as ever, and that was additional proof he was just clumsy. Right?
“How is it, working for The Executioner?”
The usual unease crossed her expression, and Cyrus pinched her cheek. “Oh, c’mon. You know I was just joking, babycakes.”
Kyara did her best to smile. Yes, of course, Cyrus was just joking. However—
She didn’t have a chance to speak since Cyrus was already talking about something else.
“I just remembered something.” Cyrus set his mug down with a thunk. “I’ll be away for the weekend. I’m joining Marketing in their trip to Vegas.”
“O-Oh.” Kyara tried to make sense of this, and while she knew she wasn’t stupid, she...she just couldn’t figure it out. “You work in Accounting,” she blurted out. “So why would you—”
Cyrus was winking at her, and she could only shake her head. “I’m sorry, I still don’t get it.”
He pinched her cheek as soon as she admitted this, and she quickly pulled away because honestly, his pinching hurt. He always told her he did it because he found her adorable, but he didn’t have to hurt her for it?
“I’m the numbers guy, babycakes. That means I can help them win in the casino.”
Kyara finally saw the light. Or maybe it was the opposite, and she was once again struggling not to see how Cyrus’s actions were the opposite of light. Then again, who was she to judge? Maybe they were just planning to hit the tables after office hours? But in the daytime—
“Does that mean you’re going to work remotely? And your boss—”
Cyrus cut her off with a groan. “How can you still not get it, babycakes? My boss isn’t really my boss. Not when I’m Henry Wallace’s one and only beloved son.”
A waitress came to their table at that moment, tired-eyed and silent, setting two glasses of water down between them and saving Kyara from replying.
..because she still didn’t know how to react every time Cyrus talked about the one thing that everyone had already known three years ago. Everyone but her.
Cyrus wasn’t the first-placer she thought he was. And the reason she thought he was popular? It wasn’t what she thought it was either. Small-town idiot that she was, she had not known that Cyrus was actually the only son of Wallace International’s CEO, and...and...
He wasn’t evil, she reminded herself.
That mattered.
Cyrus might not be the man she thought he was before, but he wasn’t evil like the men her mother dated, and so it was very, very important that she didn’t be greedy and take that for granted.
Cyrus wasn’t tall, dark, and handsome like they all were, and.
..and she shouldn’t forget that he also had a job, never mind if it wasn’t something he actually earned for himself.
No one was perfect anyway, and in fact, Cyrus would be the first one to admit he was no angel, just like she’d also be the first one to defend him for not being a monster, and that. ..
That mattered.
All of those things had to matter.
Because otherwise...
“Good morning, Mr. Havington.”
She would be completely defenseless against this.
This being her boss’s sky-blue eyes following her every move as she entered the office of her boss, and just like before, it was like crossing one world to another, and in this world, there was unfortunately just her...and him.
“Good morning, Kyara.”
This being everything that had to do with Lyrius Havington, VP of Operations, and the man who still never failed to make her heart pound and her knees knock against each other every time she was in his vicinity.
I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus.
She had been studiously chanting these words to herself for three years now, never mind if they didn’t make her blind to her boss’s smoldering good looks. She had long accepted that her body had an incurable reaction to his presence. Nevertheless—
I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus.
The words did the job where it mattered, and that was to prevent anything internal from turning external...even if the way her boss was looking at her now, well...
How did he do it?
She had been around other billionaires, but none of them had made her feel like this.
None of them were like Lyrius Havington, with the way his presence dominated any room he was in.
He didn’t just make everything smaller. He only had to be there, and he laid claim on everything.
The very air they breathed, the people around him, herself included—it felt as if they all automatically belonged to him.
But that...that was just something she had learned to accept as another one of those incurable things. Incurable and inevitable, but it didn’t have to mean everything because of one important thing.
I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus, I’m loyal to Cyrus.
Lyrius’s lips slowly curved in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes at all.
Kyara had been working for him for three years.
Thirty-seven months to be precise, and in all those months she had been on his payroll, he had learned to identify the moments where her mind was completely focused on.
..him, the boy who had beaten him to asking her out by several minutes.
He’d also learned, somewhere in those thirty-seven months, that she Googled things at her desk and read them out loud to her screen as if the screen needed convincing.
Paper types — what makes cardstock different from cover stock, oh, never mind, found it.
Carpet pile, commercial versus residential, with a small huh at the end she hadn’t known he’d heard from twenty feet away.
He’d never looked up when she did it. He’d also, somewhere in those thirty-seven months, started waiting for it.
“I have your coffee, sir.” Kyara was extra careful not to bump into her boss in any way as she placed his coffee on the side of his table.
It took about twenty-five seconds to complete this task, which she considered the most difficult part of her job.
..and it was also the same reason why she had only made one request on Cyrus.
Breakfast dates every day, to protect her heart from feeling anything inappropriate—
“Thank you, Kyara.”
—so why wasn’t it enough?
When she first made the request to Cyrus, he had told her she was so cute, with how infatuated she was with him. And at that time, all she had been able to do was smile because that...that was what she wanted. To be in love with a man like Cyrus, who wasn’t tall, dark, and handsome.
“What do you have for me today?”
But three years had already passed, and it still hadn’t happened. She still wasn’t in love with Cyrus while her boss, however...
“You have a scheduled call with the Tokyo office in an hour.”
Managing his schedule was like playing Tetris with all the people who wanted and needed to talk to him, and honestly, everything about her job was fun. Challenging but fun.
“We also have a new investor deal in South Korea...”
What she had never been able to “solve”, however, was this.
Her boss making her feel so self-conscious even though he was simply gazing at her as she continued with today’s schedule.
She wished she could say he had grown uglier over the years.
Looks-wise, character-wise, reputation-wise—she would take anything-wise at this point.
But sadly, he was, like, she didn’t know, Keannu Reeves?
He didn’t age. He just got, well, more terrifyingly and impossibly—
Don’t even finish that sentence, Kyara.
Shayla had warned her about that. Slippery slopes were to be avoided, not tested, period.
It was how even the noblest of men fail, like how David should have just walked away after “accidentally” seeing Bathsheba outside his window.
He saw her, and it should have ended there.
But instead, he asked about her, sent for her, and well.
..the rest was history, along with the unfortunate Uriah resting in peace.
“That’s it for today, Mr. Havington.”