Blake Harland.
One bed.
The two words echo in the silent, cavernous space of Mariah Benson’s bedroom. The bed itself is an austere monument of grey and white, big enough for a small army, but the principle of the thing is a tactical nightmare.
I let out a breath I did not realize I was holding. “You have got to be kidding me,” I murmur.
She turns from the doorway, her back rigid, and stalks back into the main living area. I follow, the sound of my dress shoes on her polished concrete floors feeling absurdly loud. She stands at the window, a silhouette against the silent, flashing lights of a city holding its breath.
This is a professional disaster. Being trapped with my chief competitor is bad enough. Being trapped in her ridiculously sterile penthouse is worse. Sharing one shower and one king sized bed is an entirely different level of strategic complication I have no contingency plan for.
“I’ll take the sofa,” I say. It is the only logical move. A clear delineation of territory.
She does not turn around. “Fine.”
Her voice is clipped. Brittle. The CEO mask is back in place, but I saw the crack. For a split second, when we both stared at that bed, she was not Mariah Benson, titan of industry. She was just a woman trapped in an impossible situation.
It is that image that sticks with me. I watch her now, her hand pressed against the cold glass. She is trying to project strength, I know the posture. Shoulders back, chin high. The same way she stood at the gala tonight after Marcus Sterling tried to publicly crucify her.
But I see the slight tremor in her fingers. I see the tension in the line of her neck. This is Mariah without her board of directors, without her assistant, without her armor. And it is captivating.
“This place is… clean,” I say, breaking the silence. A weak attempt at normalcy.
“I don’t like messes,” she replies, her gaze still fixed on the city below.
“Funny. You seem to create them often enough in the marketplace.”
She finally turns, and her eyes flash. There she is. The fighter. “Only for people who get in my way, Harland.”
“I seem to recall a time when we were on the same path.” The words are out before I can stop them. They hang in the air between us, heavy with the weight of a decade.
Her expression hardens, a glacier forming over a stormy sea. “We were interns. We were children playing a game we didn’t understand.”
“I understood it perfectly,” I say quietly. “I also understood that we were friends.”
Her laugh is short and devoid of humor. “Friendship is a luxury people in our position can’t afford.”
She turns back to the window, signaling the end of the conversation. But it is too late. The door to the past is already open, and I find myself walking through it.
Ten years ago. We were not children. We were hungry. Two ambitious kids at the bottom of the ladder, determined to climb to the top, fueled by cheap coffee and a shared, unspoken belief that we were smarter than everyone else in the room. We were a team. We spent late nights poring over market analyses, challenging each other, making each other sharper.
I remember the way she would bite her lip when she was concentrating, the way her eyes would light up when she solved a problem no one else could. I remember the scent of her hair, something like green tea and rain, when she leaned over my shoulder to look at my screen. I remember the spark. An undeniable current that ran between us, a pull that had nothing to do with stock options or five year plans.
I was going to ask her out. The night before the junior analyst promotions were announced. I had it all planned. A small Italian place we both liked, a bottle of wine we definitely could not afford. I was going to tell her that I saw a future that included more than just corporate takeovers.
But I never got the chance.
The next morning, her name was on the promotion list. Mine was not. My project, the one I had poured my soul into for weeks, the one I had talked through with her line by line, was cited as the reason for her adBensonment. My ideas. Her success.
Betrayal is a cold, sharp thing. It settles deep in your bones. I built my entire career on the ice that formed in my veins that day. I told myself she was ruthless, that she would do anything to get ahead, even stab a friend in the back. That narrative has served me well. It has made me a billionaire. It has made me her equal.
But looking at her now, a solitary figure against a captive city, a question surfaces for the first time in ten years.
Did I ever actually hear her side of the story?
No. I was too proud. Too hurt. I just accepted my version of the truth and let the anger build a wall between us. A wall that now feels as solid and imprisoning as the ones surrounding us.
“We should do an inventory,” I say, forcing my mind back to the present. To the problem at hand.
She turns, her expression wary. “An inventory of what?”
“Food. Water. Supplies. We have no idea how long this will last.” My voice is all business. It is safer territory.
She nods, a flicker of relief in her eyes. This, she understands. A problem to be managed. A crisis to be controlled.
We move to the kitchen. It is as sterile as the rest of the penthouse. I open the refrigerator again. It holds a bottle of champagne, three identical containers of what looks like a sad salad, a carton of eggs, and a bottle of ridiculously expensive water.
“You live on this?” I ask, holding up one of the salads.
“I eat at the office. Or at restaurants. I don’t have time to cook.”
I check the pantry. It is an equally barren landscape. A bag of quinoa. Some protein bars. A box of herbal tea. And tucked away in the back, a single, solitary bag of coffee beans. Not my brand.
“The good news is we won’t starve for a day or two,” I say. “The bad news is, it’s going to be a very sad day or two.”
For the first time, a genuine emotion crosses her face. The corner of her mouth twitches, a ghost of a smile. “I’ll try to contain my excitement.”
It is a small thing, but it feels like a tectonic shift. We are not rivals in this moment. We are just two people looking into a nearly empty refrigerator.
We move through the rest of the penthouse, a silent, awkward pair cataloging our gilded cage. One bathroom. Plenty of towels. A medicine cabinet stocked with designer skincare products and a bottle of aspirin. We establish a schedule for the shower with the detached efficiency of two lawyers negotiating a treaty.
She agrees to take the bedroom. I drag a duvet and a pillow from it and set up a makeshift camp on the sprawling grey sofa. It is as uncomfortable as it looks.
Finally, with the logistics settled, an uneasy quiet descends again. She retreats to her office. I hear the soft clicks of her keyboard through the open door. Even in a lockdown, Mariah Benson works.
I should be doing the same. I should be on my laptop, trying to find a workaround, a way to contact my team, a way to ensure the OmniCorp deal does not fall apart because I am trapped incommunicado with the one person who wants it as much as I do.
But I cannot focus.
I find myself at the living room window, looking down at the same view she was. The city is beautiful in its paralysis. A concrete and glass sculpture garden, silent and still. For the first time, I understand why she has these windows. From up here, you can see everything. Every moving piece, every connection, every vulnerability.
It is how she sees the world. It is how I see it.
I hear a sound from her office. A sharp, frustrated sigh. I glance over. She is rubbing her temples, her head bowed over a stack of papers. The weight of her company, of that disastrous gala, of Project Phoenix, is written in the slump of her shoulders.
And I feel something I have not felt in a very long time. Something that has no place in our rivalry.
A surprising, unwelcome, and deeply protective instinct.
I have spent a decade wanting to see her fail. I have dedicated my career to anticipating her every move and preparing a counter. I have celebrated her setbacks and cursed her victories.
But watching her now, exhausted and alone, the thought of Marcus Sterling and his smug, condescending face makes my fists clench.
This is dangerous.
This lockdown is not just a professional nightmare. It is a personal one. It is stripping away the walls I so carefully constructed. It is forcing me to see the woman I have spent ten years trying to hate.
The woman who, I am beginning to realize, I might not hate at all.
That old, familiar pull, the one from our intern days, is back. It is a low hum beneath the surface of my skin, a dangerous current in the still air of this penthouse. And I have a terrible feeling that this time, there is nowhere to run from it.
