Mariah Benson.
The sun rises over a dead city. The light that spills through my floor to ceiling windows is pale and clinical, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. The silence is the first thing I notice. It is a heavy, absolute quiet I have never experienced in my fifty story fortress. It is the silence of a tomb.
The second thing I notice is the sound of breathing. It is not my own.
I sit up in my bed. The grey silk duvet pools around my waist. Across the vast expanse of my penthouse, in the living area I can just see from my open bedroom door, Blake Harland is asleep on my ridiculously uncomfortable sofa. He is a dark shape under a white duvet, a disruption in my carefully curated, sterile world.
I swing my legs out of bed, my feet finding the cold concrete floor. I move with a practiced silence, a habit from years of living alone. I need coffee. I need control. I need to forget for one single minute that my greatest rival is sleeping thirty feet away.
I make it to the kitchen when his voice cuts through the quiet.
“Morning.”
I turn. He is sitting up, running a hand through his perfectly imperfect dark hair, making it even more so. He looks tired. He looks out of place in his wrinkled suit from yesterday. He looks human. I hate it.
“There is nothing good about it,” I say, turning my back on him to open a cabinet.
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the multi million dollar custom bed.”
I pull down a bag of my private stash of coffee. The expensive kind. “I slept just fine. Perhaps you are projecting, Harland. How was the sofa?”
“Like sleeping on a slab of modernist ambition. It’s terrible.” He stands and stretches, and the movement pulls the fabric of his shirt taut across his chest. I force my eyes back to the coffee maker.
“A pity.”
“We need to set some rules,” he says, his voice closer now. He is standing at the other side of the marble island.
I scoop the dark, fragrant beans into the grinder. “I already have rules. My first one is not fraternizing with the enemy.”
“This is not fraternizing. This is a ceasefire. A professional necessity.” He leans his hands on the cool marble, his posture mirroring my own. We are two generals staring at each other across a battlefield map.
“Fine,” I say. The grinder whirs to life, its violent noise a welcome intrusion. “State your terms.”
“Space,” he says over the noise. “We need to divide the territory.”
I stop the grinder and pour the grounds into the filter. “Agreed. The office is mine. Off limits. The bedroom is mine. Also off limits.”
“Naturally. The living area can be my workspace. The sofa my… quarters.” He says the word with a hint of distaste.
“The kitchen is a neutral zone. A demilitarized zone,” I clarify. “We use it for sustenance only.”
“And the bathroom?”
“We already have a schedule for the shower. Beyond that, knock before entering. We are not animals.”
“Speak for yourself.” A ghost of his usual smirk appears. “Communication?”
“Minimal. We speak only when necessary. Logistical matters. An impending fire, perhaps.”
“And if I am the one starting the fire?” he asks, his voice a low rumble.
I look up from the coffee pot and meet his gaze. His eyes are the color of a stormy sea, and for a second, I feel a dangerous pull. “Then I would expect you to have the professional courtesy to text me about it first.”
His smirk widens into a real smile. It transforms his face, making him look younger, like the ambitious intern I once knew. It is a weapon, and I refuse to be its target.
“Texting it is,” he agrees. “A fragile truce, then.”
“A truce,” I confirm, breaking eye contact. I pour hot water over the coffee grounds. The aroma fills the air, rich and dark.
His preferred brand is something lighter. I remember that from a decade ago. The thought is unwelcome. An irrelevant piece of data taking up space in my brain. I file it away under ‘opposition research’ and dismiss it.
The day passes in a strange, silent rhythm. I retreat to my office, closing the door firmly behind me. It is my sanctuary, but today it feels different. I can feel his presence on the other side of the door, a low hum of energy that I cannot block out.
I try to work. I pull up the latest projections for Project Phoenix. I read the scathing articles about the gala, about Marcus Sterling’s public attack. Each word is a needle under my skin. I need to formulate a response, a counterattack, but my focus is shattered.
Every sound from the living area is magnified.
The soft click of his laptop keyboard, a different cadence from my own.
The quiet scrape of a chair as he shifts his position.
The clink of a glass against the marble countertop.
Each noise is a reminder. He is here. He is in my space. He is a constant, unavoidable variable in my perfectly controlled equation.
My phone buzzes. A text message.
Harland: Is there a landline I can use for a conference call?
I stare at the message. The absurdity of it. We are thirty feet apart and communicating like teenagers.
Me: No. All lines are dead. I told you that.
Harland: Just confirming. Thank you for your prompt and courteous reply.
I want to throw my phone against the wall. He is mocking me. He knows this is driving me insane.
Later, I hear the shower turn on. The sound of the water running through the pipes in my walls feels like an invasion. I close my eyes and try to focus on the document in front of me, a dense legal brief on the OmniCorp acquisition. But my mind conjures an image of him in my shower, water sluicing over his skin. The image is vivid, detailed, and completely unacceptable.
I stand up and begin to pace the length of my office. I am a caged lioness, and the cage is my own design. I built these walls to keep the world out. I never imagined I would be trapped inside them with the one person who could tear them down.
Hours later, hunger forces me out of my office. He is on the sofa, his laptop balanced on his knees, his brow furrowed in concentration. He does not look up when I enter the kitchen. I open the refrigerator. The sad little salads and carton of eggs mock me. I grab a protein bar from the pantry and tear it open with more force than necessary.
We eat in silence at opposite ends of the kitchen island. The only sound is the crinkle of my wrapper and the soft tapping of his fingers on his phone. The tension is a living thing, a third person in the room with us. It sits in the empty chairs between us, breathing the same recycled air.
“This is ridiculous,” I finally say, the words breaking the silence like shattering glass.
He looks up from his phone, his expression unreadable. “I agree. This protein bar tastes like sweetened cardboard.”
“Not that. This. The silence. The texting. It is inefficient.”
“It was your rule, Benson. Minimal communication.”
“It was a stupid rule,” I admit, the words tasting like defeat. “We are trapped here. We do not know for how long. This silent treatment is a waste of energy.”
He considers this for a moment, then nods slowly. “Alright. A revision to the treaty. We can speak. But we keep it professional.”
“Strictly professional,” I agree.
An hour later, I need the printer in my office. The main network printer, which of course, is also accessible by him. My phone buzzes.
Harland: I need to print the revised OmniCorp offer. May I have access to the office?
Me: The door is open.
I sit at my desk, pretending to be engrossed in a spreadsheet as he walks in. The space, my space, suddenly feels smaller, charged with his presence. He walks to the printer without a word. He smells of my soap. A clean, sharp scent of sandalwood that I chose for its neutrality. On him, it is anything but neutral.
He retrieves his papers from the printer. He turns to leave, then pauses.
“You know,” he says, his voice quiet, “my offer is still on the table. It is the only stable play here. With this lockdown, the markets are going to panic. Your stock will be the first casualty.”
“My stock will recover. Project Phoenix will see to that.”
“You are betting the entire company on a ghost in the machine, Mariah. A project Marcus Sterling just turned into a public joke.”
My hands clench into fists under the desk. “Get out of my office, Blake.”
His eyes soften for a fraction of a second. “I am just trying to be a pragmatist.”
“You are trying to be an opportunist. It is what you do best.”
He does not deny it. He simply looks down at the document in his hand. “You have the original acquisition file?”
“On the credenza,” I say, my voice tight. I gesture with my chin towards the low cabinet against the wall.
He walks over to it. I see the file he means, a thick blue folder sitting on top. He reaches for it. At the same moment, a gust of air from the building’s ventilation system kicks on, rustling the papers. A few loose sheets from the top of the folder slide off, drifting towards the floor.
We both move at the same time. Instinct.
I lunge forward from my chair to catch them. He stoops down. Our hands collide as we both reach for the same piece of paper.
It is not a brush. It is a connection. My fingers graze the back of his hand. A jolt, sharp and electric, shoots up my arm. It is like touching a live wire. My breath hitches in my throat.
We both freeze, our hands suspended in the air an inch apart. I look up. His stormy eyes are wide, locked on mine. In their depths, I see a mirror of my own shock. The professional facades, the carefully constructed walls, the lines we drew in the sand, they all crumble into dust in that single, silent moment.
There is nothing in the room but the low hum of the server, the scent of my soap on his skin, and a decade of unspoken history crackling in the space between us.
He pulls his hand back first, as if burned.
I snatch the paper from the air.
“I have it,” I say, my voice a strained whisper.
He straightens up, clearing his throat. The mask of Blake Harland, ruthless CEO, slides back into place, but it is a fraction too slow. I saw what was beneath it.
“Right,” he says, his own voice rough. “Thank you.”
He turns and walks out of my office without another word, leaving me standing in the middle of the room, my heart hammering against my ribs. The paper in my hand is trembling.
The truce is broken. The boundaries are paper thin. And we both just lit a match.
