CHAPTER 8
Miley’s POV:
The interior of Helisa Smith’s custom-built, midnight-black Nissan Patrol Nismo didn’t just smell like a new car; it smelled like the pristine vault of an elite Swiss financial institution.
It was a heavy, suffocatingly expensive atmosphere—a combination of diamond-stitched black leather, raw cedarwood oil, and the ghostly, intoxicating trace of whatever exclusive French fragrance Helisa had misted onto her collarbone at five in the morning.
I sat back against the leather, my knees pressed so tightly together that the fabric of my charcoal pencil skirt stretched taut against my thighs.
My fingernails dug into the leather strap of my purse, the raw skin of my split knuckles—the ones that had never truly healed right after that violent, rainy night on the Buffalo State campus—throbbing in a dull, rhythmic ache.
I was nervous as fuck. My heart was executing a frantic, erratic tempo against my ribcage, a wild cadence that made the air feel thin in my throat.
Just twenty minutes ago, I was an intern pulling international shipping data from a mainframe, trying to blend into the background of E-Tech Corporation.
Now, I was trapped in the private, rolling sanctuary of a woman who regularly dictated market fluctuations, watching the Midtown skyline blur past the heavy tinted windows like a vertical maze of glass and iron.
Helisa was sitting directly across from me in the spacious rear cabin.
Her long legs were crossed elegantly at the knee, her posture completely fluid yet unmistakably regal.
Her fingers moved across the glowing screen of her corporate smartphone with a terrifyingly efficient rhythm—tap, tap, tap—as she authorized transactions that could probably buy my entire block in Harlem.
She looked entirely unbothered by the sudden disruption of our schedule, her slate-blue blazer looking like it had been molded onto her frame by a high-end sculptor.
Suddenly, the tapping stopped. Helisa lowered the device into her lap, her sharp, dark eyes sliding over the top of her designer sunglasses to fixate directly on the rigid alignment of my shoulders.
A slow, knowing smile crept onto her lips—the kind of smile that meant she’d already read my internal panic monitor and compiled the data before I could even clear my throat.
"Hey," Helisa said, her voice a low, smooth purr that vibrated through the quiet cabin. "Loosen up a bit, will you?"
She reached down into the central console, her long, manicured fingers wrapping around the neck of a green glass bottle resting inside a custom-fitted stainless steel bucket packed with crushed ice.
I hadn't even noticed the ice bucket until that exact second.
The label on the bottle was written in gold, elegant script: Dom Pérignon.
I blinked, looking from the bottle to the digital clock on the dashboard. It was exactly eleven-thirty-five in the morning. I had never seen anyone, let alone a billionaire CEO, pull a bottle of vintage champagne out of a chilled bucket before the afternoon news had even started.
"I'm nervous as fuck," I blurted out, the raw Harlem vernacular slipping through my teeth before my corporate filter could catch it.
The second the words left my mouth, my eyes went wide, and I instantly clapped my hand over my lips, my cheeks burning with a sudden, hot flush of embarrassment.
"Oops—sorry. I am so sorry for cursing, Ms. Smith.
I didn't mean to use that kind of language in front of you. "
Helisa let out a low, rich chuckle that started deep in her chest, the sound completely devoid of the icy judgment I had expected. She waved her hand through the air, dismissing my apology like a bad spreadsheet metric.
"Relax, Miley. That’s perfectly okay," Helisa said, her eyes twinkling with genuine amusement as she gripped the cork.
"You need not censor yourself on my behalf.
Just be yourself. I didn't bring you out here to listen to a rehearsed HR script.
Tell me what's actually running through that brain of yours. "
With a soft, professional pop, the cork yielded to her fingers, a tiny, white cloud of vapor escaping the mouth of the green bottle.
Helisa lifted two crystal flutes from a hidden magnetic tray in the armrest, pouring the pale, bubbling liquid into the first glass with a steady, practiced hand before passing it across the space between us.
"Drink up, girl," she said, pouring a second glass for herself, the golden bubbles rising frantically against the crystal.
I took the glass from her hand, my fingers still trembling slightly as the cold condensation wet my palm.
I took a hesitant sip, the crisp, dry liquid exploding against my tongue with a sharp taste of green apples and toasted brioche.
It burned all the way down my throat, but the minute it hit my stomach, a strange, beautiful warmth began to spread outward into my limbs, loosening the tight coil of anxiety in my lower back.
I let my head tilt back against the headrest, my eyes wandering around the interior of the massive vehicle.
"What is this, real leather? For real, Helisa...
this Jeep is absolutely lit. It literally costs more than my entire apartment rent and my college tuition combined.
Like, easily. I feel like I'm sitting in a rolling penthouse. "
Helisa took a slow, elegant sip of her champagne, her eyes never leaving my face as she leaned back against her seat.
The movement caused her blazer to shift, and her gaze slid downward, tracking the thick, substantial curve of my thighs where the grey skirt had ridden up an inch or two from sitting down.
It wasn't a casual look; it was a deliberate, lingering appraisal that felt heavy with an unspoken intent.
"Nothing is costly when treating oneself in life, Miley," Helisa revealed, her voice dropping into a softer, more intimate frequency.
"And I am a woman who very much likes the finer things in life.
If you work hard enough to move the global market, you earn the right to sit in whatever leather you want.
Don't ever apologize for recognizing quality. "
I could feel something heavy, warm, and distinctly electric coming from her direction, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it yet.
I didn't know if it was pure lust, or just the natural, intoxicating aura of a woman who was used to possessing everything she laid her eyes on. My brain instantly flashed back to this morning—back to my apartment where my roommate, Terra, had been getting all worked up and wet during our little playtime before I left for work. It felt like the universe was running some kind of wild, high-stakes game on me today. I figured I’d find out exactly what Helisa wanted soon enough, but at the moment, I knew I had to just play it cool, even though it was hard as fuck to keep my composure with a billionaire looking at my legs like they were on the menu.
Thankfully, the champagne was making the game a whole lot easier to play.
"I can tell," I said, a playful smirk finally replacing the nervous tension on my face as I took another deep gulp of the bubbles. "I can only imagine how immaculate and pristine your actual penthouse must be if this is just how you get to work. Do you have a waterfall in the living room too?"
"Oh, you’ll see exactly how it looks when you stop by tomorrow night for dinner," Helisa said, a beautiful, coy smile showing her perfect white teeth. She looked over her shoulder toward the glass partition, her voice rising slightly as she addressed the front seat. "Marcus?"
"Yes, boss?" the driver’s voice came through the small intercom, his eyes meeting hers in the rearview mirror.
"Put some music on for us, please," Helisa ordered, sensing that the silence of the cabin was still keeping me slightly on edge. "Let's get something with a little more rhythm in the air. Let's change the mood in here."
"Gotcha, boss," Marcus replied instantly.
He tapped the dashboard screen, and within three seconds, the massive Bose surround-sound system built into the doors came alive with a low, heavy bassline that rattled the glass of my champagne flute. It was the unmistakable, ethereal intro chords of SZA’s Good Days.
The music filled the cabin, the deep sub-bass rolling over the leather seats like a wave, and I let out a soft breath, my body instantly recognizing the track. But before I could even say anything, Helisa did something that completely blew my mind.
***
“Good day on my mind, safe to take a step out…”
Helisa didn't just listen to the music; she leaned her head back against the leather frame, closed her eyes, and began to sing along with the track, her voice rising softly over the studio production.
My jaw almost hit the floorboards of the Nismo.
Her voice wasn't the standard, pitch-corrected nonsense you hear from amateur singers; it was a rich, smoky, incredibly soulful contralto that captured the exact, melancholic beauty of the song.
It had this velvety, liquid texture to it that literally began to melt my insides, vibrating through the small space between our seats with an intensity that made my skin break out in goosebumps.
She was singing way better than SZA herself, her tone carrying a natural, effortless depth that I didn't know existed inside a corporate boardroom.
Even Marcus was vibing along in the front seat, his heavy shoulders bobbing rhythmically against his suit jacket as he steered the massive vehicle through the afternoon traffic on Sixth Avenue.
Helisa open her eyes slowly, the dark iris catching the sunlight through the tinted glass as she looked across at me, her face alive with a playful, unbothered warmth.