Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
NINE YEARS AGO
The office was almost unrecognizable after hours. Gone was the whirr of printers, the dry shuffle of paper, the low clatter of keys. The air felt thicker, stiller. Only a few lights remained on, strategic pools of glow that made the hallways seem longer and the shadows deeper.
Lucía stood outside Javier’s office door, smoothing her blouse.
She wore black tonight, a high-neck silk shell tucked into fitted slacks, and no jewelry but the slim silver watch she never took off.
Her hair was pulled back sharply, as if the right hairstyle could armor her against the undercurrent of whatever this was.
The meeting had been scheduled that morning. A calendar invite. No details. Just:
7:30PM – Esquivel. Mandatory.
She knocked once.
“Enter.”
Javier sat behind his desk in a dark shirt—the cuffs rolled neatly to mid-forearm, no jacket, the top button undone.
She stepped in. The door clicked shut behind her.
He didn’t rise.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from him. His tone was easy. Even…casual. But the air felt wrong.
Lucía sat and crossed her legs, trying to appear composed.
Javier picked up a pen and gestured to the portfolio. The desk was mostly clear except for one thick, bound portfolio. “You’ve been working on this case, yes? The restructuring of the Biomarx shell network?”
“Yes. I updated the compliance map last week. And flagged the three accounts that didn’t reconcile against the Costa Rica filings.”
A small smile touched the corner of his mouth. “I saw. No one else caught that.”
“I know,” she said, before she could stop herself. Then flushed.
Javier leaned back slightly in his chair. “You’re aware the entire Lima division botched the offshore filings. Not just the transfers, but the timestamping. That error could’ve cost us twelve million in retroactive penalties.”
“I was just—” Lucía started.
“Looking,” he interrupted, but not unkindly. “You look deeper than most.” His eyes met hers. “And you understand what you’re looking at.”
Lucía felt the skin along her forearms ripple. She swallowed. “I try to.”
“No. You do.” He tapped the pen once on the desk. “It’s rare. Rarer than beauty. And your beauty, Ms. Duarte, is already rare enough.”
There it was again. That slow, disarming cadence. The way he said her name like he enjoyed the feel of it in his mouth.
Lucía’s pulse picked up speed. She tried to hide it by shifting in her chair. “Is there something wrong with the portfolio?”
“No. You did well.”
Lucía’s throat felt suddenly dry.
He didn’t look at the documents. He looked at her. “You know what I admire most about you?” he asked.
She said nothing.
“You’re not impressed by power. Not in the way most people are. You’re intrigued by it. You want to understand how it works. You want to reverse-engineer it.” He tilted his head. “You want to build your own.”
Lucía’s mouth parted, but no answer came.
He rose to his feet and walked slowly around the desk toward her. Had he always been this tall? This imposing? Her head dropped back to take him all in.
“You thought I didn’t notice?” he asked, softly. “The way you study everything. Everyone. Even me.”
Lucía’s gaze dropped for half a second.
He noticed. Of course he did. “Good,” he said.
Then he looked down at her and said, quietly: “But you’re still a little afraid of me.”
He wasn’t touching her—he wasn’t even that close to her—and yet she felt glued to her seat. She lifted her eyes to meet his. “Maybe.”
“Good,” he said again, and then he leaned down over her, placing both hands over her wrists on the armrests. His touch was light, but he was still pinning her in place.
The silence stretched. Heavy. Charged. Lucía’s breath came shallow now.
He leaned closer. “You like this,” he whispered. His mouth hovered over her throat. His knee pressed against hers, separating them.
Lucía froze, unsure. Torn between fear and thrill.
He laughed softly. “Such a serious expression,” he murmured. “Relax, mi cielo. You know I would never hurt you.”
His mouth found hers and the kiss was immediately all-consuming.
There was no slow build-up, no tentative exploration, just his tongue sliding against hers, his lips crushing hers, his teeth nipped her bottom lip.
Desire pumped into her veins, but it was mixed with something else, something that burned almost as much.
He broke off the kiss, breathing heavily, then stepped back releasing her. But only for a second, it seemed. Because, with a flick of his hand, he said, “Get up.”
She did, her legs shaking so much she had to grip the edge of the desk.
“Take those fucking clothes off.”
It was the way he said it, the demand laced with absolute certainty that it would be obeyed, that made her fingers go to the buttons on her blouse.
She was so turned on, she could feel the dampness between her legs.
Her body was operating on desire and adrenaline alone and it was happy to take the lead.
She had nearly reached the last ones, when suddenly the burning turned to ice in her stomach.
He had undone his belt, the gold buckle clinking as his erection strained against the expensive fabric of his trousers. His hand moved to the zipper—and stopped. His eyes snapped back up to her face, noticing that she wasn’t moving.
“I…” she began, voice thin and frayed. “I can’t.” Her fingers started retracing their steps, fumbling over each of the buttons. “This isn’t what I want.”
The heat in his eyes flickered, then vanished. In its place: rage. Cold, sharp, and immediate. It was like a switch had been flipped.
She took one step back—then another—her movement clumsy and hurried. But he didn’t go after her, and he didn’t speak. He just stood there, belt hanging open, watching her with that same blank fury, like he was already recalculating her value.
Lucía reached the door and opened it with trembling fingers.
Then, with as much control as she could summon, she closed it behind her. Firmly. Deliberately. And with a calmness that seemed to come from somewhere outside her body, she kept walking.
Her heels echoed down the empty hallway. She reached the elevator, hand trembling slightly as she hit the call button.
It was then she saw him.
Mateo. Leaning against the wall near the elevators, a folder under one arm, his eyes dark and unreadable.
Lucía stopped. “Mateo.”
He nodded once. “Hey.” His voice was soft. But something inside it was wrong.
She stepped forward. “What are you—”
“Working late,” he said. His eyes went to her blouse, buttoned wrong. “Like you.”
There was a pause. The elevator arrived. She hesitated, then stepped inside.
He didn’t follow. As the doors slid shut, their eyes held for just one moment too long. And Lucía knew: Something had changed.
And it would never change back.
In the days that followed, Lucía had expected something to happen. A message. A signal. A shift in behavior. But Javier remained precisely as he had always been: cool, sharp, unreadable. He didn’t treat her differently. He didn’t treat her at all.
In the morning meetings, he addressed her like everyone else. In emails, he cc’d her as needed. If anything, he seemed to take greater pains to remain impersonal. And that—somehow—was worse.
It made her feel like a secret even to herself.
Mateo had noticed. Of that, she was sure.
His jokes at her desk had stopped. No more long walks to the break room. No more shared coffees or quiet sarcasm in the elevator. He answered her questions with nods and clipped phrases. Smiled, but without his eyes.
Lucía could feel the change like humidity in the air, dense and invisible.
Late on a Tuesday, she found him alone in the print room. He was feeding documents into the heavy black-and-white copier, the green light dragging slowly across each page.
Lucía stepped in and shut the door behind her. “Hey.”
Mateo didn’t look up. “Hey.”
She stood awkwardly beside the paper bin. “You’ve been scarce.”
“Busy.” The machine whirred. “I’m on the Roji-Fuentes account now. They’ve got a three-day audit window.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
He glanced over. “You didn’t ask.”
The copier beeped.
Lucía’s fingers curled against her hip. “Mateo—”
He pulled the fresh stack of papers off the tray and turned to her, suddenly. “I liked you, you know.” The words hit like a physical shove.
“I know,” she said quietly.
He nodded. “And I knew I didn’t stand a chance.”
Lucía’s jaw tightened. “It’s not like that.”
“No?” His voice was soft, but not kind. “You don’t have to explain, Lucía. You’re brilliant. And he sees that. Maybe that’s enough.”
“Nothing happened. I walked out.”
Silence fell again, thick as dust.
Mateo handed her a single sheet from the stack. “This is for your review. Tomorrow.” He brushed past her and opened the door. Paused. “You’re better than him. You know that, right?”
He didn’t wait for her answer. He left her in the small fluorescent-lit room, alone with a sinking weight in her chest.
She worked late that night. Or tried to. The office was quiet again, the open floor dim except for her pool of light and the humming blue screen.
She stepped away for coffee. No more than five minutes, but when she returned to her desk, her browser was closed. Her keyboard was crooked.
Lucía stared. She hadn’t closed her browser. She never angled the keyboard like that.
She sat down slowly. Logged in. There was nothing missing or changed. But something was off. She checked the access logs on the internal terminal. Someone had pinged her machine. Briefly. A local IP. No login attempt. Just…ping.
Lucía shut off the monitor. Her reflection looked back at her in the black glass. Blank-eyed. Tight-lipped.
It wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t curiosity.
It was a message.
Someone had been at her desk. She looked across the open office floor, rows of cubicles now ghostly in the dark.
Lucía reached for her bag, packed her things slowly, and left.
She didn’t look back. But the sensation followed her out, across the marble foyer, into the night, and down every empty block.
Someone was watching. Someone had always been watching.