Chapter 4: The Unthinkable Realization

Six weeks of morning briefings where she’d handed him his coffee and his schedule with the same calm efficiency as always.

Six weeks of late nights where they’d worked side by side. Their fingers brushing as they passed documents. Their voices low in the empty office as they strategized.

Six weeks of her sitting three feet away from him. Smelling like vanilla and something floral he could never name.

While apparently, she’d been building a relationship with his enemy.

“How nice,” Jordan said, the words tasting like acid.

“I hope you’re enjoying the evening. If you’ll excuse me, I see Senator Morrison. We have business to discuss.”

He turned away before he could do something catastrophic.

Like tell her the dress was wrong. Not wrong. Perfect. Too perfect.

Or ask Marcus how much those diamonds cost.

He made it exactly twelve steps before Vivian caught up with him.

Champagne in hand. Mischief in her eyes.

“Well, that was painful to watch,” she said cheerfully.

“How long have you been in love with her?”

Jordan stopped walking.

The question hit him like a physical blow. Knocking the air from his lungs and the lies from his lips.

“I’m not—”

“Darling, please. I’ve known you since Harvard. I’ve seen you lose a twenty-million-dollar deal without blinking. But watching your secretary walk in with another man? You looked like someone had reached into your chest and ripped out your heart with their bare hands.”

Jordan’s silence was answer enough.

Vivian laughed, the sound both sympathetic and cruel.

“Oh, Jordan. You brilliant, stupid man. How long?”

He thought about lying. Thought about deflecting. Thought about walking away.

Instead, he downed his whiskey in one burning swallow.

“I don’t know. Maybe always. Maybe never. Maybe tonight, when I watched her walk down those stairs looking like every fantasy I didn’t know I had.”

“And you never told her.”

“She’s my secretary.”

“She’s a woman, you idiot. A brilliant, beautiful woman who’s been invisible to you because you were too busy conquering the world to notice the one person who already saw you as human.”

Vivian shook her head, her expression unusually serious.

“And now Marcus sees what you missed. And trust me, darling, Marcus Ashford doesn’t do anything by half measures. If he’s pursuing her, it’s because he sees exactly what she’s worth.”

Jordan’s gaze found Martina across the ballroom.

She was laughing at something Marcus said.

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