Page 13 of Claimed By the Boss
I go back to my desk.
Roman watches this exchange from the doorway with an expression he’s professional enough to keep almost invisible. Almost.
Thursday afternoon, we have a meeting with two men from a private equity group on the forty-second floor. I sit to Zane’s left with a notepad, which is where he told me to sit, and I take notes on everything said while running a parallel track in my head of everything not said.
There is a lot that’s not said. These men want something Zane has not agreed to give them. The whole meeting is a performance of civility stretched over that fact.
After they leave, Zane stands at the window with his jacket open.
“Your notes,” he says.
I hand them over, his gaze pausing for a moment on his ring on my finger. I’ve started wearing it all the time now. I tell myself it’s easier than trying to remember when to wear it and when to take it off. More practical. I try not to think about how I like the way it looks on my hand.
He reads through my notes, still at the window, the city doing its late-afternoon thing behind him.
“You flagged the Harmon clause,” he says.
“They mentioned it twice. The second time felt deliberate.”
He turns the page. Reads. Turns it back.
“It was,” he says.
He hands the notes back. Goes to his desk. Sits. Pulls the afternoon’s folders toward him as though I’ve already left the room.
I gather my things, and I go.
Friday evening, the penthouse is quiet in the way that large, expensive spaces are quiet. A different quality from the house on Mercer.
I’m on the couch with my laptop and Lena’s video call open on one side of the screen when Zane walks through. He doesn’t stop. He goes to the kitchen, pours something, and comes back through. Pauses.
“She’s settled?” he asks, looking at the screen.
Lena waves at him from her hospital room in Zurich. “Hi. You must be the very kind boss.”
Something moves at the corner of his mouth. “How are you feeling?”
“Better than yesterday,” Lena says. “Thank you. For everything.”
“Get some rest,” he says. He moves toward the corridor and looks at me. “You should eat something.”
“I ate.”
He looks at me like he does not fully believe me. Then he goes.
I look at the screen. Lena is wearing an expression I recognize from twenty-three years of being read by her.
“Celine,” she says.
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Lena. Go to sleep.”
She goes to sleep, eventually. I close the laptop and sit in the quiet of a penthouse that’s not mine, in a city that is, listening to the faint sound of the floor settling and somewhere down the corridor a door closing.
Rain hits the window in waves.
