Chapter 3 - The Secretary
Marcus survived.
The bullet had passed through his shoulder, missing the artery by less than an inch.
The rest of his message proved considerably harder to survive.
What your mother hid inside you.
Doctors found nothing unusual. No implant. No surgical scar Lena could not explain. Nothing beneath her skin except old injuries from childhood and the ordinary evidence of a difficult life.
Marcus remembered almost nothing after waking.
Someone had grabbed him outside the café. He had been blindfolded, questioned about Lena, and dumped from a moving car.
Adrian doubled his security.
Lena tried to leave anyway.
“You can't keep me here.”
Adrian stood behind his desk.
“No.”
“Good.”
“But I can explain what happens if you walk outside.”
“I already know.”
“You don't.”
He slid a folder toward her.
Inside were surveillance photographs from the previous twelve hours.
Men outside her apartment.
Another beside the café.
One near Marcus's hospital.
Lena closed the folder.
“What do you want from me?”
“To keep you alive long enough to discover why they want you.”
“And how exactly do I pay for this?”
“You don't.”
“I don't accept charity.”
“It isn't charity.”
Adrian leaned back.
“My executive secretary resigned yesterday.”
Lena stared.
“You want me to work for you?”
“I need you somewhere I can protect you without making it obvious you're being protected.”
“I wait tables.”
“You completed three years at NYU before dropping out.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You investigated me.”
“Of course.”
She should have walked away.
Instead, two days later, Lena Park entered Voss International wearing a borrowed blazer and carrying a temporary security badge.
She lasted four hours before telling Adrian his calendar was ridiculous.
He looked up from a contract.
“Excuse me?”
“You have three meetings scheduled simultaneously at eleven.”
“My previous secretary handled it.”
“Your previous secretary apparently hated you.”
Victor coughed to hide a laugh.
Adrian stared at Lena.
“Fix it.”
She did.
Then she fixed six months of neglected correspondence, discovered an accounting discrepancy his finance department had missed, and reorganized an acquisition schedule that had been costing his executives hours every week.
By Friday, nobody questioned why Adrian Voss's new secretary came from a diner.
By the following month, people had begun asking how he had functioned without her.
Adrian wondered the same thing.
Lena challenged him.
She refused to fear him in the ways everyone else did. She brought him coffee but told him when he was being unreasonable. She corrected him when he interrupted people. Once, when he worked thirty hours without eating, she placed a sandwich directly over the document he was reading.
“Move it.”
“Eat it.”
“Lena.”
“Adrian.”
Victor left the office before he laughed.
Something changed between them.
Slowly.
Dangerously.
Six months passed.
The investigation into Grace Park continued in secret.
Then one rainy December evening, Adrian discovered Lena asleep at her desk.
Her cheek rested against folded arms. A spreadsheet glowed on her monitor.
He removed his coat and placed it over her shoulders.
Lena woke.
“You're terrible at sneaking.”
“I wasn't sneaking.”
“You run a criminal empire. You should work on that.”
His expression changed.
“Is that what you think I do?”
“I think you do things I don't want to know about.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“I think you're a man who learned to become frightening because somebody taught you being vulnerable was dangerous.”
Adrian stopped breathing.
No one spoke to him that way.
No one saw him that way.
“Go home, Lena.”
She stood.
Neither moved.
The distance between them seemed suddenly impossible.
Then Adrian kissed her.
Lena should have stopped him.
Instead, she gripped his jacket.
One kiss became another.
Months of restraint collapsed in minutes.
That night changed everything.
And afterward, Adrian made the worst decision of his life.
He became afraid.
Not of enemies.
Of needing her.
Three days later, Lena overheard him speaking with Victor.
“She can't stay.”
Victor frowned. “Because you slept with her?”
“Because she's becoming leverage.”
“That's not her fault.”
“No.”
“Then don't punish her.”
Adrian turned toward the window.
“Arrange somewhere safe. Chicago. Seattle. Anywhere.”
Lena walked away before hearing the rest.
She understood only one thing.
Adrian regretted her.
The following morning, her resignation waited on his desk.
By the time Adrian found it, Lena was gone.
He searched.
She had learned from him too well.
She abandoned her apartment, changed her number, used cash, and disappeared into a small town in upstate New York.
Adrian told himself it was better.
Then two months later, Lena stood inside a drugstore bathroom staring at two pink lines.
Pregnant.
She sank onto the closed toilet.
Her hand moved to her stomach.
Adrian's child.
Her first instinct was to call him.
She even typed his number.
Then she remembered the sentence she'd heard.
She's becoming leverage.
Lena deleted the number.
“No,” she whispered.
Whatever darkness followed Adrian Voss would not follow their baby.
She would disappear completely.
And she almost succeeded.
Until seven months later, in a Manhattan restaurant she had entered only because her new employer needed an emergency replacement server, Lena leaned toward a seated customer and whispered:
“Don't drink that wine.”
The man slowly turned.
Gray eyes met hers.
Adrian Voss stared at the woman who had vanished from his life.
Then his gaze dropped.
To the unmistakable curve beneath her white apron.
May you like
His wineglass slipped from his hand.
And shattered.
