Chapter 4
The penthouse was a maze of cold luxury. Lily spent the next day trying to navigate it, feeling less like a resident and more like a trespasser. She found her room—a spacious suite with its own bathroom and a view of the city. The furniture was just as minimalist as the rest of the apartment, but she tried to personalize it, unpacking her worn books and a framed photo of her grandfather, a bright smile on his face as he held a freshly baked loaf of bread.
The rest of the day was spent exploring the place, and she found it to be a fortress built for one. The kitchen was pristine, clearly used by a chef and not a resident. There was a home gym filled with intimidating, state-of-the-art equipment. The library was the most interesting room, with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books on finance, architecture, and business. But even there, the spines looked untouched, as if they were for show.
As she ran her hand along the spine of a book on modern infrastructure, she noticed a small, leather-bound journal tucked away in a corner of the lowest shelf. It looked old and out of place among the pristine hardcovers. Curious, she pulled it out. The leather was worn, the pages inside yellowed with age.
It wasn't a diary. It was a sketchbook.
The first page showed a crude, childish drawing of a house with a stick figure family in front of it. The next few pages were filled with more sketches: a boy playing with a dog, a woman with a kind smile, a man with a tired but proud look on his face. The drawings were simple, but they were full of warmth and love—a stark contrast to the man who now lived here.
As she flipped through the pages, the drawings became more detailed, more skilled. She saw sketches of old buildings, their grand architecture captured with a keen eye. There was a drawing of a young boy—he looked to be about twelve—standing beside a woman who looked like the one in the earlier sketches.
Then the drawings stopped abruptly. The rest of the journal was filled with complex architectural blueprints and schematics, precise and sterile, just like the man she'd met. There was no more warmth, no more stick-figure families. The boy had disappeared, replaced by the man who was now Alexander Cross, the architect of his own cold empire.
The sketchbook was a window into his past, a past she now realized was far more complicated than she'd ever imagined. He hadn't always been the ruthless CEO she saw on magazine covers. He'd once been a child who drew houses and families, a young man who saw beauty in the old buildings he now bought and sold.
A voice from the hallway broke her trance. "What are you doing?"
Lily jumped, the book clutched in her hand. Alexander stood in the doorway, his eyes narrowed. His gaze fell on the book in her hands, and his face, usually a mask of indifference, hardened into a look of cold fury.
"That," he said, his voice a low growl, "is not for you to touch."