Isabella's heels struck the marble floor of Cross Global's lobby with a sharp click-click-click that seemed to announce her presence to every soul in the cavernous space. Each step sent tremors up through her calves, or maybe that was just her body's betrayal—the way her muscles had locked up the moment she'd pushed through the revolving doors and seen that logo. The silver "CG" twisted into an infinity symbol, mocking her with its promise of endless entanglement.
Breathe. Just breathe.
But breathing meant inhaling the scent of money—leather and fresh flowers and something indefinable that spoke of power. Her lungs constricted. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, September sunlight poured in like liquid gold, refracting through the glass walls and casting diamond patterns across the white marble. The light should have been warm. Instead, it felt clinical, exposing, like walking into an operating theater where she'd be dissected piece by piece.
"This way, Miss Chen."
The executive assistant moved with the effortless grace of someone who belonged in spaces like this. Her black Chanel suit probably cost more than Isabella's monthly rent. The woman's perfume—something expensive with notes of jasmine and amber—created an invisible wake that Isabella followed like a ship trailing a lighthouse. But this lighthouse led toward rocks, not safety.
Isabella's fingers tightened around her portfolio, the leather embossed edges pressing into her palm hard enough to leave marks. Inside: a resume that told carefully curated truths, references who knew only the sanitized version of her life, and a cover letter she'd rewritten seventeen times. None of it mentioned Hong Kong. None of it mentioned him.
They approached a door of dark mahogany, so polished that Isabella could see her distorted reflection—a woman in a grey suit that suddenly felt too tight, too cheap, too obviously bought off the rack at Macy's. Her black hair, swept into what she'd hoped was a professional chignon, now seemed severe. Her lipstick, carefully applied in the lobby bathroom, felt like war paint before a battle she couldn't win.
The assistant's hand moved toward the handle. Time slowed. Isabella watched the woman's red nails—perfect ovals, not a chip in sight—wrap around the brushed steel. The mechanism clicked. The door swung open.
And there he was.
Alexander Cross stood silhouetted against the panoramic windows, Manhattan sprawling behind him like a conquest already claimed. Fifty-three floors up, the city looked like a toy—miniature yellow cabs, ant-sized pedestrians, buildings that from here seemed conquerable. He didn't turn immediately, and Isabella had one suspended moment to observe him: broader shoulders than she remembered, filling out a charcoal suit that had definitely been tailored on Savile Row. His dark hair, once slightly unruly, is now cut with military precision. His hands—those hands she'd once known intimately—clasped behind his back, relaxed. Confident.
Everything about his posture said, "I own this room." This building. This city.
Then he turned, and Isabella forgot how to breathe entirely.
Five years had sharpened him. The boyish softness she remembered from Hong Kong had been carved away, leaving stark cheekbones and a jaw that could cut glass. But his eyes—God, those steel-gray eyes—they slammed into her with the force of a physical blow. For one fraction of a second, something flickered across his face. Shock? Pain? Recognition that went soul-deep?
Then it vanished, replaced by an expression of such cold calculation that Isabella felt ice crystallize in her veins.
"Miss Chen." His voice cut through the air between them like a blade through silk—smooth, sharp, deliberate. Each syllable precisely enunciated. "You have five minutes to convince me why I shouldn't have security escort you out."
The door clicked shut behind her. The assistant's footsteps faded. They were alone.
Isabella's mouth had gone desert-dry. She could taste copper—she'd been biting the inside of her cheek without realizing it. Her resume trembled in her grip, the slight rustle of paper obscenely loud in the silence. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but she'd come too far. Lily needed her to be brave. Lily needed the salary that went with this job, the health insurance, and the stability.
So Isabella lifted her chin, meeting those steel-gray eyes that had once looked at her with tenderness, and forced her voice to steady.
"Mr. Cross, my qualifications speak for themselves. I have five years of experience in international market analysis, I'm fluent in three languages, and I've successfully managed—"
"Cut the script." He moved then, circling his desk with predatory grace. Each step deliberate, measured. "We both know you didn't walk into my building by accident. So tell me the truth for once in your life, Isabella. Why are you really here?"
The way he said her name—sharp, almost angry, but underneath it something raw and bleeding—made her stomach clench. He stopped three feet away, close enough that she could smell his cologne: sandalwood and something crisp, expensive. The same scent that used to cling to her skin the morning after, that she'd press her face into pillows to find.
"I need this job." The truth came out barely above a whisper. "I'm… I'm good at what I do. You need a director of market analysis. I need—"
"What you need," Alexander interrupted, his voice dropping to something dangerous, "is irrelevant. What I need is an explanation. Five years, Isabella. Five years of silence. And now you show up in my lobby with a resume and a smile as if nothing happened?"
His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. Isabella watched his hands curl into fists at his sides, then deliberately relax. Control. He was all about control now.
"I can explain—" she started.
"No." He turned away sharply, striding back to his desk. "You had your chance to explain five years ago before you disappeared from Hong Kong without a word. Before you blocked my number, my emails, every possible way I had to reach you." He yanked open a drawer and pulled out a file folder. Dropped it on the mahogany surface with a soft thump that somehow sounded like a judge's gavel. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to sit. You're going to show me exactly what you can do. And if—if—you prove yourself valuable enough, I might consider overlooking the past."
The past. As if it were some minor business error, not the fact that she'd loved him with everything she had, not the fact that his mother's threats and money had torn her away, not the fact that she'd discovered she was pregnant two weeks after leaving and had raised their daughter alone because she'd been too terrified to come back.
Isabella forced her legs to move. The leather chair across from his desk was buttery-soft and probably cost more than her car. She sank into it, opened her portfolio with shaking hands, and began to talk. Market trends. Data analysis. Strategic forecasting. Her voice grew stronger as she found her footing in familiar territory, the language of business and numbers creating a shield between them.
Alexander listened in silence, his face an unreadable mask. But his eyes—those eyes tracked every movement she made. The way she tucked a stray hair behind her ear. The subtle rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. The nervous habit she'd never broken of twisting her grandmother's ring on her right hand.
Time became elastic. Five minutes stretched to ten. Ten to fifteen. She was mid-sentence about emerging markets in Southeast Asia when Alexander's phone buzzed. He silenced it without looking. It buzzed again. Again. Finally, he glanced down, and something shifted in his expression.
"Get out," he said abruptly.
Isabella's heart stopped. "I—what?"
"That's not— I mean, wait here." He stood and buttoned his suit jacket with sharp, precise movements. "I need to take this call. Don't move."
He strode to the windows, turning his back to her as he answered. "Mother, this isn't a good time."
Even from across the room, Isabella could hear the imperious voice on the other end. She couldn't make out words, but the tone was clear: demanding, controlling. Alexander's shoulders tensed.
"The gala is two days away. I'm aware." A pause. "No, I don't have a date. Because I don't need—" He exhaled sharply. "Fine. Yes. I'll handle it."
He ended the call with more force than necessary, standing motionless for a long moment before turning back. When he looked at Isabella again, something calculating had entered his expression.
"You want this job?"
"Yes," Isabella said immediately.
"Then here's your first assignment." He moved back to his desk, pulling out a contract from another drawer. "There's a charity gala Saturday night. The Blackwood Foundation. Manhattan's elite will be there—potential clients, investors, competitors. You'll attend as my date and provide real-time analysis of every conversation, every interaction. I want to know who's positioning for what, who's vulnerable, who's lying."
Isabella's pulse hammered in her throat. "As your… date?"
"Problem?" The word was sharp, challenging.
Yes. A thousand problems. Lily's at her grandmother's only until Sunday. I can't be seen publicly with you before I figure out how to tell you about our daughter. Your mother will recognize me, and she terrifies me more now than she did five years ago.
"No problem," Isabella heard herself say.
Alexander's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Good. Because here's the thing, Isabella. I'm hiring you. Director of market analysis. Seventy-five thousand dollars more than you asked for. Benefits, stock options, the works." He slid the contract across the mahogany surface. "Sign it."
Isabella stared at the paper, not quite believing what she was seeing. It was everything she needed. Everything Lily needed. Her hand reached for the pen he offered.
"There's a catch," Alexander added softly, and she froze. "You work directly for me. Report only to me. And Isabella?" He leaned forward, close enough that she could see the flecks of darker gray in his irises. "I will find out why you left. Every secret you're keeping. Every lie you've told. Consider that your real interview—and it's already begun."
Isabella's hand trembled as she signed her name, the ink bleeding into expensive paper like a contract written in something more than just language.
Twenty minutes later, she pushed through the revolving doors into the September afternoon, contract clutched to her chest like a shield. Behind her, fifty-three floors up, Alexander Cross stood at his window, watching her silhouette disappear into the Manhattan crowd.
His hand moved to his phone—one button press. A voice answered on the first ring.
"Dominic. It's me." Alexander's reflection in the glass looked older, harder. "I need you to run a comprehensive background check. Isabella Chen. Everything from the last five years." He paused, jaw clenching. "Start with Hong Kong. The week she left. And Dominic? Leave nothing hidden. I want to know what she had for breakfast every morning. I want to know who she talked to, where she lived, what she's hiding."
He ended the call, but his eyes stayed fixed on the street below, where Isabella's dark hair was just visible in the crowd.
"You came back," he murmured to the empty room. "The question is why. And I will find out, Isabella. Even if the truth destroys us both."