LOVE ME OR HATE ME

Aria's POV I did not sleep well. I had told myself I would. I had gone through the whole routine deliberately. Tea. Book. Lights off at ten. All the things a sensible woman does when she needs to reset her mind and approach the next morning like a professional with her feelings completely under control. I stared at my ceiling until past midnight instead. The problem was not the two minutes in his office. The problem was not the question he had asked or the answer I had given. The problem was what happened after. The way he had said *it's okay Aria* like those three words were carrying something heavier than their surface. Like a man lifting something carefully because he knows it might break if he puts it down wrong. I had replayed those three words approximately forty seven times before I finally fell asleep. .... I arrived at Cole Enterprises at eight fifteen the next morning with my portfolio pressed against my chest and a very firm internal speech already prepared about professionalism and appropriate workplace conduct and the importance of keeping personal feelings exactly where they belonged which was nowhere near the 34th floor of this building. The speech lasted until the elevator doors opened. Then the familiar cool air of the office settled around me and I walked to my desk and sat down and pulled up the morning schedule and told myself today was a new day and yesterday was a closed chapter and Daniel Cole was my employer and nothing about the last twenty four hours had changed that fundamental fact. I believed approximately thirty percent of that. I was reviewing the Singapore correspondence when his office door opened. I did not look up immediately. This was deliberate. I had practiced not looking up immediately approximately three times on the elevator ride up and I was committed to it. I kept my eyes on my screen and my expression professional and my breathing steady and I felt him cross the floor toward my desk with that unhurried certainty he carried everywhere and I was very proud of myself right up until the moment he stopped in front of me and I had to look up. He was in a charcoal suit today. No tie yet. That came after the first meeting. His expression was exactly what it always was. Composed. Focused. The carefully maintained blankness of a man who had decided long ago that showing nothing was safer than showing anything. I had spent eight months learning to read what lived underneath that blankness. This morning underneath it something was different and I could not name it cleanly but I felt it the way you feel a change in weather before the sky shows any evidence. "Miss Blackwood," he said. "Schedule." "Clear until noon sir," I said. "Singapore call confirmed at two. The Meridian review has been pushed to Thursday per your instruction last week." "Good." He did not move. This was the part that was different. He always took the schedule update and turned immediately. Efficient. Purposeful. No pause. No extra seconds. That was Daniel Cole's rhythm and I had memorized it the way I had memorized everything about him without meaning to. He stood at my desk and did not move and I kept my eyes on my screen and felt the silence between us settle into something that had weight and texture and was absolutely not professional in any way I could document. Then he walked back to his office and closed the door and I exhaled. I was still exhaling when Becca appeared at my shoulder at half past ten with her coffee and her radar. "You seem focused this morning," she said in the tone that meant she had noticed something and was deciding how directly to address it. "Always am," I said. She made a sound that was not agreement and drifted back to her desk. It was eleven fifteen when I heard his door open again. I was deep in the quarterly projections and I registered the sound and processed it and filed it under background office noise and kept working. His footsteps crossed the floor. Stopped at my desk. I looked up. Daniel Cole was standing in front of me holding two cups of coffee. He set one down directly in front of me. No explanation. No preamble. Just the cup placed quietly on the edge of my desk with the same purposeful efficiency he brought to everything. I stared at it. In eight months I had delivered his coffee every single morning without fail and he had never once acknowledged it beyond the slight easing around his eyes that I had learned to read as thank you. He had certainly never returned the gesture. That was not how anything worked in this office. That was not how Daniel Cole worked. "Sir?" I said. He met my eyes with that expression I could never fully decode. "Black," he said quietly. "Two sugars. Same as yours." He walked away before I could form a single word in response. I sat at my desk with both hands wrapped around that cup and stared after him until he disappeared back into his office and closed the door. Three seconds of silence. Then Becca's voice arrived at my shoulder like she had been waiting in the wings for exactly this moment. "In fourteen years," she whispered, "I have never seen that man bring anyone anything." I lifted the cup slowly and took a sip and said nothing at all. But I suspected something.