I hated how much I noticed.
I blamed my last PA, who left without giving me notice.
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The house was dark, but not because I forgot to leave the lights on. I didn’t need them.
Motion sensors flicked on one by one as I stepped inside, casting cool white light across the polished floors and bare walls. Everything gleamed. Nothing was out of place.
Just how I liked it.
I dropped my keys into the crystal bowl on the console table and loosened my tie. My footsteps echoed down the hallway, bouncing off high ceilings and designer minimalism.
I passed the living room without a glance. The Italian leather couch was untouched. The marble coffee table had no magazines, no fingerprints. The open-plan kitchen was spotless—more showroom than space for living.
A cleaning team came in three times a week. Not because I needed them, but because dust offended me. There was no welcome and no noise. I usually prefer it like this, but tonight it felt—eery.
I walked into the master suite and shrugged off my jacket. My reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror looked tired. Not dishevelled. Not soft. Just… weary.
I didn’t want to admit I’d been waiting all day to hear her voice again. The way she stumbled over her words when I caught her off-guard. The nervous bite of her lip. The quiet yes, sir when she thought I wasn’t listening too closely.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning my cuffs. My shirt was crisp. My tie perfectly aligned.
Everything about my life was orderly. Controlled.
Except her.
I leaned back against the cold headboard and stared at the ceiling. For all the power I wielded, I couldn’t make her stop lingering in my thoughts.
I was thirty-nine, wealthy, and running a successful business—a bachelor by choice. The only thing I should have been concerned with was how to spend my money and enjoy the life I’d built.
Yet lately, I’d found myself reflecting on men my age.
Men who had families waiting at home.
Men with legacies.
I almost got married when I was a younger man. It would’ve been doomed from the start. I was always working, always travelling, always building.
I probably saved Gabriella some heartache. She was likely married now, with grown children and a white-picket-fence life.
No.
A family wasn’t meant for someone like me.
But even as I reached that conclusion, my mind betrayed me.
Her curves flashed before me.
The soft swell of her breasts. The way her hips flared, full and unapologetic.
That ass was built for hard-hitting action.
Ms Lucia Hart was built for one thing: procreation.
Which is precisely why she had to go.
I stood and decided I needed a shower before dinner.
