Mafia boss invited his nerdy secretary to dinner as a joke-she arrived looking…

“Thomas.”

“Thomas.”

One word.

Thomas released me.

Larkin picked up the report.

“Is this accurate?”

“Yes.”

Thomas scoffed.

“She’s trying to humiliate me because of some stupid dinner invitation.”

I finally smiled.

“No, Thomas. You invited me here to humiliate me.”

I tapped the report.

“This part is just accounting.”

A police siren wailed somewhere below the hotel.

Nobody moved.

Larkin closed the folder.

“Tomorrow morning. My office.”

Thomas stared at me with murder in his eyes.

I had expected that.

What I hadn’t expected was how calm I felt.

He wanted the mousy secretary back.

She wasn’t coming.

And Thomas was only beginning to understand what he had awakened.

PART 3 — On the terrace, my boss finally learned why I hid.

The cold hit me the second I stepped onto the terrace.

November in New York.

Black silk was a terrible insulation strategy.

My hands started trembling.

I hated that.

I gripped the stone railing until my fingers hurt.

The ballroom door opened.

Larkin came outside.

“You’re shaking.”

“It’s freezing.”

“That isn’t why.”

I looked at him.

“No.”

He removed his jacket and put it around my shoulders.

I almost refused.

Then the wind hit again.

Pride lost.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why what?”

“Why hide all of that?”

He gestured vaguely toward me.

I laughed once.

“You think the dress is the difference?”

“No.”

“Good.”

I turned toward the skyline.

“I hide because men like Thomas punish women they notice.”

Larkin said nothing.

“My mother is in memory care in Queens. Six thousand dollars a month before medication. I have loans. Rent. Insurance.”

I pulled his jacket tighter.

“I needed this job more than I needed strangers to know I was smart.”

“You could have been running finance.”

“You wouldn’t have promoted me.”

His expression hardened.

“You don’t know that.”

“I sat twelve feet from your door for three years.”

That landed.

“You knew exactly how good I was.”

Silence.

I faced him.

“You just thought competence looked boring on me.”

His eyes dropped for half a second.

Shame.

Actual shame.

“I brought you here as a joke,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I was an ass.”

“Yes.”

That almost made him smile.

Almost.

Then his expression changed.

“Thomas will retaliate.”

“I know.”

“He’s vindictive.”

“I know.”

“You’re not frightened?”

I looked through the glass at Thomas drinking too fast.

“I’m terrified.”

Larkin seemed surprised.

I shrugged.

“I just don’t see why he deserves to know.”

For several seconds, Larkin stared at me.

Then he said something I never expected.

“Monday morning, don’t sit at your old desk.”

I frowned.

“Am I fired?”

“No.”

His mouth tightened.

“You’re getting the office beside mine.”

And suddenly Thomas wasn’t the only man whose night had changed.

PART 4 — My promotion turned Thomas’s joke into his personal nightmare.

Monday at 8:15, the elevator opened.

I stepped onto forty-two wearing a charcoal suit.

No gray cardigan.

No hair clip.

People stared.

I kept walking.

My old desk still had my chipped coffee mug beside the keyboard.

I passed it.

The corner office beside Larkin’s was open.

My name was on the glass.

PENELOPE WOODS — DIRECTOR OF FINANCIAL OPERATIONS.

Thomas arrived seven minutes later.

He didn’t knock.

“What the hell is this?”

Larkin stood by the window.

I stayed seated.

Thomas slapped both hands onto my desk.

“She wears one expensive dress, embarrasses me at a party, and suddenly she gets a title?”

“No,” I said.

“I get the title because your division lost seventeen percent last quarter while you billed the company for steak dinners and a boat.”

His face went purple.

“You little—”

“Careful.”

Larkin’s voice cut across the office.

Thomas turned.

“You’re choosing her over family?”

“I’m choosing the person who isn’t stealing from me.”

That hurt him.

Family was Thomas’s favorite shield.