Chapter 2 - THE SILVER LOCKET
“Are you seeing someone?”
The question echoed in the sudden quiet of the executive suite. My heart hammered against my ribs, loud enough that I feared Adrian could hear it. For two years, we had maintained a perfect, professional distance. I managed his schedule, guarded his gate, and organized the chaos of his billion-dollar empire. He paid me enough to ensure my life outside these walls remained secure.
We did not cross boundaries. We did not ask personal questions.
“No,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “I’m not.”
Adrian didn’t relax. If anything, the tension in his broad shoulders wound tighter. He closed the distance between us, his expensive leather shoes completely silent on the thick carpet.
“Vincent Calder is not a man who makes idle conversation,” Adrian said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous octave. “He doesn’t care about your dating life, Tessa. He was looking for a vulnerability.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, gripping my notebook. “I’m just a secretary. Why would a man like Vincent care about me?”
“Because he knows you’re not just a secretary to me.”
The air in the room seemed to vanish. I stared at him, trying to read his gray eyes, but they were dark, turbulent, and completely guarded. He wasn’t looking at me with romantic longing. He was looking at me the way a soldier looks at the perimeter of a battlefield.
He stepped past me, moving toward his massive oak desk.
“You think my reaction out there was about jealousy,” Adrian said, not framing it as a question. He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk—a drawer I had never seen him open in two years. “It wasn’t. It was about security.”
“Security from what?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he reached into the dark recess of the drawer. My mind raced. Why was he acting like this? Vincent’s comment was inappropriate, but it was just a sleazy businessman throwing his weight around. Wasn't it?
“Answer me, Adrian,” I pushed, surprising myself with the use of his first name.
Adrian turned around. In the palm of his large hand rested a delicate, tarnished silver locket.
My breath caught in my throat. I dropped my notebook. It hit the floor with a heavy thud, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the object in his hand.
It was my sister’s locket.
The one she wore every day until the night of the car crash that took her life. The one I had frantically searched for in the hospital morgue, begging the nurses to find it because it was the only thing I had left of her.
“How do you have that?” I choked out, my hands trembling.
“You didn’t lose it at the hospital, Tessa,” Adrian said softly, his eyes never leaving mine. “You dropped it in the hallway outside the pediatric ward. When you were carrying Leo out.”
The mention of my five-year-old nephew’s name sent a spike of pure terror through my veins.
“How do you know about Leo?” I backed away, my professional composure shattering into a million pieces. “Who are you?”
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Adrian stepped forward, his face etched with a regret so deep it looked painful.
“I know about Leo,” Adrian said quietly, “because the man who ran your sister off the road that night... was my brother.”
