I look at the monitor screen on the forty-eighth floor. It’s seven in the morning. As the CEO of an artificial intelligence startup, my life is calibrated by algorithms, performance metrics, and fifteen-minute meetings. Everything in my existence is predictable, efficient, and cold. Except for her. Marina walks into my office without knocking, carrying a leather folder and two to-go coffee cups.
She’s the Chief Operating Officer and the only person in this building who doesn’t look at me as if I were a marble bust. She sets one of the cups on my walnut desk, right on top of the quarterly projections that have been keeping me up since Tuesday.
“The coffee has oat milk and a double shot of espresso,” she says, adjusting her cream-colored blazer before sitting down across from me. “If you’re going to review the balance sheet with that sour look on your face, at least do it with some decent caffeine in your system.”
I take the cup. The warmth of the cardboard soothes my icy palms.
“I didn’t hire you to watch over my diet, Marina,” I reply, trying to keep my voice neutral—that professional tone I practice in front of the mirror.
“You hired me to save you from yourself,” he smiles, and that slight curve of his lips completely shatters the armor it took me ten years to build.
He leans over the table to point at a number on the screen. His shoulder brushes against mine. It’s a fleeting touch, barely a second long, almost imperceptible, but I feel an electric spark run down my forearm and send my pulse racing to a hundred beats per minute. His cologne—a subtle blend of vanilla and the scent of fresh paper—fills the filtered air of the office. Our eyes meet. For the first time all year, neither of us is looking at the clock, the phone, or the company metrics. The tension in the conference room shifts: it’s no longer market pressure; it’s the desperate, physical need to bridge the thirty centimeters separating our chairs.
“If we close this investment round today,” I murmur, losing myself in the intensity of her gaze, “you’re going to have to take me out to dinner. No briefcases, no balance sheets, and no talk of work.”
Marina doesn’t look away. She slides her hand across the desk and rests her fingers on mine—firm, warm—shattering my last vestige of restraint.
“I accept,” she says in a whisper. “But only if I get to choose the dinner, Mr. Director.”
