Chapter 1 - The Breaking Point of Alexa SummersThe digital clock on the edge of my dual-monitor setup glowed a mocking, fluorescent blue: 8:14 PM.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling glass walls of the executive suite, downtown Manhattan twinkled like a circuit board of cold neon and indifferent lights. But inside, the air was dead, thick with the lingering scent of stale espresso, laser-printer ozone, and the distinct, suffocating weight of sheer, unadulterated failure.
For exactly three hundred and sixty-five days, I, Alexa Summers, had been the invisible grease keeping the gears of a multi-million-dollar criminal and corporate empire turning. My employer, Ethan Hawkins, was a man whose very name made rival syndicate bosses check the locks on their doors and corrupt politicians clear their schedules. At thirty-two, he possessed the kind of ruthless, sharp-edged intellect that didn't just climb ladders; it dismantled the building and built a better one from the rubble.
To the rest of the world, Ethan was a ghost in a bespoke Italian suit—unflappable, terrifyingly competent, and impossible to read.
To me, he was a walking list of impossible demands, micro-managed schedules, and a bottomless pit of high-stakes paranoia. I knew he took his black coffee with exactly two drops of stevia and a splash of oat milk; I knew he preferred his contract reviews printed on heavy linen paper; I knew the exact tone of voice he used when a shipping container from Antwerp was delayed versus when a rival capo was stepping out of line.
And what was my reward for twelve-hour days, skipped lunches, and weekends spent tracking offshore wire transfers while my friends went to brunch?
"Adequate, Miss Summers."
The memory of that single, soul-crushing word burned behind my eyelids.
Just that morning, I had walked into his glass-walled office holding a comprehensive, forty-page restructuring proposal for our shipping logistics—a project I had built entirely from scratch over three sleepless nights after discovering a vulnerability in our European supply chain. I had laid it on his desk, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, hoping for a nod, a sign of recognition, anything that proved he saw me as a human being rather than a high-end office appliance.
Ethan hadn’t even opened the binder. He had glanced at the cover, looked up with those piercing, glacier-green eyes, and delivered the sentence that had slowly poisoned my sanity all day long:
"Interesting, Miss Summers, but no."
No explanation. No critique. Just a casual dismissal that reduced seventy-two hours of my life to a scrap of trash tossed into the recycling bin of his monumental ego.
"Adequate," I hissed to the empty room, my voice bouncing off the glass and steel walls.
I slammed my palms flat against my mahogany desk. The sharp crack echoed through the silent floor. Every other executive, assistant, and security guard had long since cleared out, leaving me alone in the corporate citadel of Hawkins Enterprises. My apartment was a twenty-minute subway ride away, but the thought of going home to my tiny studio apartment—where my biggest problem was a leaky faucet—felt infinitely more depressing than staying right here in the cage.
My eyes burned with hot, furious tears. I refused to cry. I had sworn to myself years ago that I would never let this job break me. I was smart, I was capable, and I was worth infinitely more than a dismissive nod from a man who wore a three-piece suit like a suit of armor.
"I am done," I whispered to the flickering monitor. "I am walking out right now. I'll write my resignation letter, leave it on his keyboard, and let him find a new assistant who doesn't know how he likes his files color-coded."
I grabbed my leather tote bag, shoved my tablet inside with enough force to crack the screen protector, and stormed out of my cubicle.
The main hallway stretched out before me like a runway of dark marble and polished brass. The cleaning crew wouldn't arrive for another hour, leaving the executive reception area cloaked in a moody, dim twilight cast by the city lights filtering through the blinds.
And then, I saw him.
Or rather, I saw it.
Mounted on the central wall of the reception gallery, right beside the bronze plaque commemorating the company’s founding, hung an enormous, gilded portrait of Ethan Hawkins.
It was a masterclass in psychological warfare. The artist had captured him in a charcoal-gray suit, standing with his hands casually tucked into his pockets, his shoulders broad and imposing. His dark hair was styled with ruthless precision, and those striking green eyes stared down from the canvas with an expression that managed to be simultaneously bored, judgmental, and violently attractive.
Standing there in the quiet gloom, staring up at the smug, two-dimensional face of the man who had ruined my day, something inside my brain simply snapped. A fuse blew, a wire crossed, and every ounce of professional inhibition I possessed evaporated into thin air.
I dropped my bag to the floor with a heavy thud, marched right up to the portrait, and pointed a trembling, accusatory finger directly at the painted bridge of Ethan's nose.
"You," I muttered, my voice dripping with venom. "You absolute narcissist."
The painted version of Ethan kept smiling that infuriating, subtle smirk.
"You think you're so untouchable, don't you?" I continued, taking another step closer until I was standing toe-to-toe with a piece of expensive canvas. "One year! Three hundred and sixty-five days of my life I’ll never get back! I memorize your coffee order, I organize your entire chaotic existence, I fix disasters before you even know they exist, and what do I get? 'Adequate.' Do you have any idea how much I loathe that word? It sounds like a participation trophy given to a mediocre middle-schooler!"
Naturally, Portrait Ethan said nothing. He just stared down at me with those cold, perfect green eyes.
"You don't even see me," my voice cracked slightly, the anger suddenly giving way to a raw, aching vulnerability that hurt worse than the rage. "You notice the models. Women like Sienna from marketing with her mile-long legs and hair that probably costs more than my rent, women who probably don’t even know which meetings you secretly hate because people boring you makes your jaw tick."
I crossed my arms, glaring up at the masterpiece.
"And the worst part—the absolute, humiliating, unforgivable part—is that you’re hot."
The silence in the lobby seemed to deepen, as if even the building itself was holding its breath in sheer disbelief at my audacity.
I covered my face with both hands and groaned aloud. "God, you’re so annoyingly, ridiculously hot. It’s a public health hazard. Who gave you the right to look like a mob boss straight out of a prestige HBO drama while I’m sitting two rooms away drowning in Excel spreadsheets?"
At that point, I knew I had crossed a threshold from which there was no return. I had officially lost my mind. My sanity had packed its bags and caught the last train out of Penn Station.
Since I was already standing in the ruins of my professional reputation, I decided to finish the job.
Dropping my hands, I stared up at his painted mouth. It was ridiculous. It was a painting. It couldn't talk back, it couldn't critique my logistics proposals, and it couldn't call me adequate.
"You know what?" I whispered defiantly. "Screw you."
Before my remaining shred of common sense could tackle me to the ground, I leaned forward on my tiptoes, pressed my lips directly against the glossy surface of the portrait, and kissed Ethan Hawkins right on his printed mouth.
It wasn't a quick peck. It was a full, deliberate, five-second press of lips against cold lacquer, fueled by pure exhaustion, caffeine, and an unhinged cocktail of workplace frustration and repressed attraction.
When I finally pulled back, my heart was hammering against my ribs like a jackhammer. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, staring at the canvas in wide-eyed shock.
"Five seconds, Miss Summers."
The blood in my veins turned instantly to liquid nitrogen.
Every muscle in my body seized up. The air vanished from my lungs. The marble floor seemed to tilt at a forty-five-degree angle.
"That wasn't stress," a deep, rich, unmistakably real voice continued from ten feet behind me in the shadows of the corridor. "That was commitment."
My head whipped around so fast my neck popped.
Standing at the edge of the hallway, leaning casually against the marble pillar with one hand in his trouser pocket, was Ethan Hawkins.
He had discarded his suit jacket, his crisp white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, the sleeves rolled up to reveal strong, lightly veined forearms. His dark hair was slightly tousled, and those piercing green eyes—the real ones, warm and dangerous and terrifyingly alive—were locked entirely on me.
He wasn't smiling, but the corners of his mouth twitched upward with a slow, devastating amusement.
"You..." I choked out, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth as my brain scrambled desperately to find a reboot button that didn't exist. "You're... you're supposed to be in Geneva. Or at a syndicate summit. Or robbing a bank. Why are you here?"
Ethan pushed off the pillar, taking a slow, measured step toward me. The sound of his leather-soled shoes clicking against the marble echoed like a countdown to an execution.
"I missed my flight," he said smoothly, his voice dropping into that rich, gravelly baritone that had haunted my daydreams for twelve solid months. "And I came back to the office to grab my forgotten ledger. Imagine my profound surprise when I walked in and found my executive assistant aggressively critiquing my portrait before aggressively making out with it."
The room spun. A bright flash of white light danced across the edge of my vision.
"You..." I whispered again, my knees wobbling like jelly. "You heard that?"
Ethan tilted his head, closing the distance between us until he was standing close enough that I could smell his signature cologne—sandalwood, dark tobacco, and rain.
"I heard considerably more than that, Alexa," he replied, his voice dropping to a low, intimate hum. "Specifically the part about my jaw ticking during boring meetings. And the part about me being ridiculously hot."
May you like
The floor rushed up to meet me.
My eyes rolled back, my legs gave out completely, and the last thing I felt before darkness swallowed me whole was a pair of impossibly strong arms catching me right before I hit the marble.
Related Stories
