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But the line went dead, and she was left standing frozen in her office, her eyes glued to the man steadily making his way deeper and deeper into the office building. The glass, however transparent, was bulletproof, so there was that.
There were so many weirdos in the world that an abundance of caution never went amiss. She had learned about that at a fairly early age. Her father being one of the wealthiest businessmen in California had put her in the public eye very young. The media had always been fascinated with their family; with her brother, who was incredibly successful in his own right; her mother, who was a great beauty. And then, with her for the same reason.
It had always felt so...unearned to her. This great and intense attention for doing nothing at all. It had never sat well with her.
Her father had told her to simply enjoy it. That she was under no obligation to do anything, considering he’d done all the work already.
He’d always been bemused by her desire to get into business, but he’d helped her get started. He’d been humoring her, that much had been clear. But she’d been determined to prove to him that she was smart. That she could make it on her own.
Even now she had the feeling he regarded her billion-dollar empire as a hobby.
The only one of them who had seemingly escaped without massive amounts of attention was her younger sister, Minerva, who Violet had always thought might have been the smartest of them all. Minerva had made herself into the shape of something unremarkable so that she could live life on her own terms.
Violet had taken a different approach, and there were times when the lack of privacy grated and she regretted living the life that she had.
Sometimes she felt an ache for what might have been. She wondered why she had this life. Why she was blessed with money and a certain amount of success instead of being anonymous or impoverished.
Some of that was eased by the charity she ran with her sister, which made it feel like all of it did mean something. That she had been granted this for a reason. And it made the invasions of privacy bearable.
Though not so much now. She felt vulnerable, and far too visible, trapped in a glass bowl of her own making, only able to watch as a predator approached her, and she was unable to do anything but wait.
She tried to call the police, her fingers fumbling on the old-fashioned landline buttons. It wasn’t working. She had that landline for security. For privacy. And it was failing her on every level.
Of course she had her cell phone, but it was...
Sitting on the table just outside the office door.
And then suddenly he was there. Standing right on the other side of her office door. Tall, broad, clad all in black, wearing a suit that molded to his exquisitely hard-looking body, following every cut line from the breadth of his shoulders to his tapered waist, on down his long muscular legs. He turned around, and how he saw she was thinking of him in those terms she didn’t know. Only that he was a force. Like looking at a sheer rock face with no footholds.
Hard and imposing, looming before her.
His face was...
Like a fallen Angel. Beautiful, and a sharp, strange contrast to the rest of him.
There was one imperfection on that face. A slashed scar that ran from the top of his high cheekbone down to the corner of his mouth. A warning.
This man was dangerous.
Lethal.
“Shall we have a chat?”
The barrier of the glass between them made that deep, rich voice echo across the surface of it, and she could feel it reverberating inside of her.
She hated it.
“How did you get in here?”
“My darling, I have a key.”
She shrank back. “I’m not your darling.”
“True,” he said. “You are not. But you are my quarry. And I have found you.”
“I’m not very hard to find,” she said. She lifted her chin, trying to appear confident. “I’m one of the most famous women in the world.”
“So you are. And that has me questioning my brother’s sanity. But I am not here to do anything but follow orders.”
