Emma had gone to bed that night with a smile on her face.
The board meeting had been a triumph. She'd watched Alexander's poker face crack—just barely, just for a moment—but she'd seen it. The hunger in his eyes before he'd crushed it back down. The way her presence affected him despite his iron control. The electric silence in the conference room when it had just been the two of them.
I'll crack you open one day, Alexander Sterling, she'd thought as she drifted toward sleep. And when I do, I'll find the real man underneath all that ice. The one who needs warmth. The one who's forgotten what it feels like to be truly seen.
She'd fallen asleep with that quiet certainty wrapped around her like a blanket.
At 3:00 AM, the nightmare came.
It was vivid in the way only the worst dreams are—hyper-real, saturated with dread. Emma watched from somewhere outside her own body as Jessica stood in Alexander's darkened office, her voice low and deliberate, each word a carefully placed poison dart.
"She's not here for the job, Alexander. Look at her—the perfume on her pulse points, the way she dresses, the way she looks at you. She's hunting. And you're exactly what she's looking for. A provider. A protector. A man with power and money. She's playing you."
And Alexander—her stoic, unreadable Alexander—listened. Absorbed every word. His face hardened into something she'd never seen before. Not cold. Not controlled.
Betrayed.
Emma woke up gasping, her hand pressed to her chest, heart slamming against her ribs. The room was dark, her sheets tangled around her legs. She sat up slowly, trying to shake the residue of the dream from her mind.
It was just a nightmare, she told herself. Jessica is petty and territorial, but she wouldn't go that far.
Except Emma's gut—that hyper-vigilant internal scanner she'd developed from years of navigating difficult people—was screaming at her that it wasn't just a nightmare.
It was a warning.
She'd been so focused on Alexander, so caught up in their charged silences and stolen glances, that she'd left her flank completely exposed.
Jessica already made her move.
Emma stared at the ceiling until sunrise, unable to go back to sleep.
She knew something was wrong the moment she stepped off the elevator onto the 35th floor.
The energy had shifted overnight. Colleagues who'd smiled at her yesterday after the presentation now looked away. The whispers that stopped when she walked past. The deliberate way people suddenly found their phones intensely interesting whenever she approached.
But worst of all was Alexander.
Emma had barely set her bag down when his office door opened. He walked past her desk without stopping, without the brief eye contact she'd come to expect, without even acknowledging her existence. His jaw was tight, his posture a wall of rigid control, his eyes fixed somewhere ahead of him like she was simply furniture.
Not cold. Not professional distance.
Something else entirely. Something that felt like deliberate erasure.
Emma's chest tightened painfully. She'd worked herself to near exhaustion proving her value. She'd given that board meeting everything she had. She'd earned his "exceptional" the night before, stood in his conference room and felt the electricity arc between them like a live wire.
And now he was looking through her like she didn't exist.
Jessica.
The word landed in Emma's mind like a stone dropped in still water, sending ripples of furious clarity through her whole body
She sat at her desk, opened her computer, and began working with a calm exterior that absolutely did not reflect what was happening inside her. Her hands were steady on the keyboard. Her expression was professionally neutral. But behind her eyes, something cold and sharp had crystallized.
By noon, the tears came.
Not at her desk—Emma had too much pride for that. She slipped into the small private bathroom near the copy room, locked the door, and allowed herself exactly five minutes to fall apart. Silent tears tracked down her cheeks as the full weight of the injustice pressed down on her shoulders.
She'd worked so hard. She'd been so careful. She'd let her work speak for itself, let her expertise and dedication be the loudest things about her. And in one conversation—one poisonous, calculated conversation—Jessica had dismantled all of it in Alexander's mind.
She told him I'm hunting for a provider. That I'm using my appearance and scent and work to seduce him. That I don't actually want the job.
Emma pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, swallowing the sob that rose in her throat.
The worst part wasn't that Jessica had lied. The worst part was that Alexander had believed it. Had taken one woman's jealous whispers and used them to cancel out everything Emma had demonstrated with her own hands.
She splashed cold water on her face, straightened her spine, and walked back out.
Five minutes. That was all the falling apart she was allowed.
Marcus found her at her desk an hour later, sliding into the empty chair beside her with the careful approach of someone defusing a bomb. He set a coffee cup beside her keyboard and said nothing for a moment, just watching her face.
"You already know," he said quietly. It wasn't a question.
"Tell me exactly what she said." Emma's voice was controlled. Dangerously controlled.
Marcus sighed heavily. "Emma—"
"Marcus." She turned to look at him, and whatever he saw in her eyes made him straighten. "Tell me. Now."
"Okay." He lowered his voice, leaning closer. "Yesterday, right after the meeting. The moment you left the conference room, Jessica requested a private word with Alexander. Told him she had concerns about a new hire. Said that you're not here for the job—that you're looking for a masculine provider and protector, and Alexander fits the profile perfectly. That the perfume, the way you dress, the way you look at him, your work ethic—it's all calculated seduction.
That you're playing a long game to trap him."
Emma absorbed each word like a physical blow. Her jaw clenched. Her fingers tightened around her coffee cup.
"She said I'm trying to trap him."
"Yes."
The silence stretched between them, taut as a wire.
"And he believed her."
Marcus's expression said everything his words didn't. "He's... guarded, Emma.
Whatever trust he was building toward you, whatever wall was starting to come down—Jessica knew exactly which brick to pull to make the whole thing collapse."
Emma set down her coffee cup very carefully. The kind of careful that meant she was holding something explosive together with both hands.
"I'm going to rip her face off," she said quietly.
"Emma—"
"I'm kidding." She exhaled slowly, turning back to her computer screen. "Mostly."
"Listen to me." Marcus gripped her arm gently. "I know exactly how you feel right now. I know how badly you want to walk into Jessica's office and scatter her carefully constructed life across the floor. But here's the thing about people like her—" He waited until Emma looked at him. "Drama feeds them. Conflict is their native language. If you explode, you become exactly what she told Alexander you are: an unstable, attention-seeking woman who can't handle professional environments."
Emma stared at him.
"But if you give her zero reaction," Marcus continued, his eyes intense, "zero drama, zero acknowledgment that she even touched you? And instead you just keep producing work so undeniably brilliant that it becomes impossible for Alexander to maintain doubt?" He sat back, spreading his hands. "You don't just erase what Jessica planted. You bury it under six feet of irrefutable evidence."
Emma was quiet for a long moment, processing.
"Zero drama," she said slowly.
"Zero drama. Maximum excellence. Silent, authentic, devastating competence."
Marcus pointed at her screen. "You make her narrative impossible to believe because the evidence of who you actually are speaks too loudly."
Emma thought about the nightmare. About Alexander's face going cold and betrayed. About the way he'd looked through her this morning like she was invisible. About the way it had hurt—far more than it should have, far more than was professionally appropriate, far more than she was comfortable admitting.
She thought about the inner child she'd seen flickering behind his ice. The man who needed warmth and simply didn't know how to ask for it. The man who flinched away from vulnerability because he'd been burned by it before.
And she thought about the fact that Jessica had used that wound against him.
Something quiet and fierce settled in Emma's chest.
"You're right," she said. "No drama."
"That's my girl."
""You're right," she said. "No drama."
"That's my girl."
"But Marcus—" She turned to look at him, and her expression was calm in a way that was somehow more dangerous than anger. "When my work ethic and authenticity have buried her narrative so deep that Alexander can't ignore it anymore, I want to be standing right there when he realizes what she did."
Marcus grinned slowly. "Now that's a revenge plan I can support."
Emma worked until 9 PM that night.
She produced a comprehensive expansion of her nutritional framework that incorporated new market research, updated clinical data, and a three-year implementation roadmap that would take Alexander's wellness app from concept to industry leader. She went beyond what anyone had asked for, beyond what anyone expected, beyond anything Jessica could have anticipated.
When she finally gathered her things to leave, she noticed the light still on in Alexander's office. Through the frosted glass, his silhouette sat motionless at his desk.
She paused at her desk. Hesitated. Then picked up her completed report and walked to his door.
She knocked twice.
"Come in."
Emma opened the door and crossed to his desk, setting the report in front of him without preamble. "The expanded nutritional framework you'll need for next week's investor presentation. I've included a three-year roadmap and updated market analysis."
Alexander looked at the report. Then up at her. His expression was carefully, deliberately neutral—the mask firmly in place.
"I didn't ask for this," he said.
"No," Emma agreed. "But the company needs it. So I built it."
The silence between them was heavy with everything unsaid.
Emma could see it—the war happening behind his eyes. Jessica's words pulling him one direction. The irrefutable evidence of Emma's excellence pulling him another. The attraction he was fighting with every controlled breath.
"Are your motives here purely professional, Ms. Hart?" His voice was quiet. Almost rough.
Emma met his gaze without flinching, without looking away, without giving an inch.
"What do you think, Mr. Sterling?"
She let the question hang in the air between them—deliberate, unwavering, daring him to choose doubt over evidence. To choose Jessica's poison over everything Emma had proven with her own two hands.
Alexander's jaw tightened. Something flickered in his eyes—something that looked like shame. Like a man who'd made a mistake and wasn't sure how to walk it back without losing ground.
Emma didn't wait for his answer.
"Goodnight, sir." She turned and walked toward the door with measured, unhurried steps. She didn't look back.
She didn't need to.
The ball was firmly in his court now.
And Emma Hart had never lost a game she was willing to play to the end.