Camille didn't like loose ends.
And Kade Wilder had become the most irritating kind. The kind that sat at the back of her mind at two in the morning when she was supposed to be sleeping, pulling at something she couldn't name.
Two weeks. She had spent two weeks digging through his world and coming up with the same thing every time.
Nothing.
Tonight, the file lay opened on her table, but she wasn't reading it anymore. She had the details down. She knew the shell companies and the weird gaps in his travel logs. But Kade himself was a ghost. He lived in a world where no one left fingerprints, and it was driving her crazy.
Then, the opening appeared on a Thursday. A personal secretary job at Wilder Nexus. The timing was almost too good to be true, but Camille didn't care. She survived the background checks and the psychological tests that felt less like HR screening and more like an interrogation conducted by people who smiled too pleasantly.
She passed everything. She always did. Only that this time, sitting in that sterile room with a stranger's name on her tongue, felt different.
She pushed the feeling down and buried it where she buried everything else.
Walking out of the final evaluation, she took a deep breath, drove home, and laid the new identity documents on her kitchen table, and stared at them for a long time.
By the time the sun came up on Monday, Camille Devile was gone.
Camille De Luca was the only one left.
She rolled her shoulders once, picked up her bag, and walked out the door.
---
The Wilder Nexus building hit you the moment it came into view. A tower of glass and steel that rose above the rest of the city like it had decided the skyline was beneath it. She had seen photographs. They hadn't done it justice. There was an arrogance to the architecture that felt intentional, like the building itself was making a statement about the man inside it.
It was a fortress. Cameras everywhere and security guards who looked like they actually knew how to use their guns.
It didn't intimidate her.
It just made her more certain that whatever he was hiding was worth the effort.
She stood at the base of it for exactly ten seconds.
Then she walked in.
She was wearing a black suit that hugged her curves in a way that was professional but definitely not boring. A red scarf was tucked at her neck, her only nod to the fact that she wasn't actually a corporate drone. Her hair was pulled back tight and her makeup looked polished.
At the front desk, she gave the receptionist a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Camille De Luca. I have a nine o'clock with Mr. Wilder."
The woman behind the desk straightened immediately. "Of course. Someone will escort you up."
Camille nodded and clasped her hands in front of her.
Even the secretaries needed a chaperone. Camille noted that and kept her face blank.
The elevator was mirrored on three sides. She caught her reflection and shifted her "De Luca" mask into place as the scanner hummed next to her.
The top floor was quieter than the rest of the building, which shouldn't have been possible but was. The carpet was darker. The light was lower. Everything felt slightly more deliberate up here, like the ordinary rules of the building didn't quite apply.
"Wait here please." the assistant told her outside a set of heavy glass doors.
For a second, she was alone. Her mind slipped back to that balcony before she could stop it. The smell of cedar and the way he'd looked at her like he was solving a puzzle.
She was not thinking about any of that.
The door opened.
"Mr. Wilder will see you now."
---
He was at the window.
Of course he was at the window.
He stood with his back to the room and his hands in his pockets, looking out at the city with the easy authority of a man who had never once questioned his right to occupy a space. The morning light cut across the sharp line of his jaw. He looked exactly like his photographs and nothing like them at the same time.
He turned.
Their eyes met and Camille felt a jolt in her sternum.
She waited for it. A twitch in his jaw or a flicker of surprise. Anything to show he remembered her.
His face gave her nothing.
Not a flicker. Not a fraction of a second where the wall came down. He looked at her the way he might look at anyone walking into his office for the first time.
Either he really didn't remember her, or he was the best liar she'd ever met. A flash of pure irritation burned through her, but she shoved it down. This was a mission. If he was going to pretend they were strangers, she could play that game too.
She walked toward him, her heels clicking on the floor with a steady rhythm. "Mr. Wilder," she said, her voice smooth and cool.
"You're late," he said.
"Your security is thorough." She held his gaze without effort. "I assumed you preferred accuracy over punctuality."
He raised an eyebrow.
Camille swallowed.
The air in the room had become suddenly heavy.
He studied her for a moment in that particular unhurried way of his, and the memory of standing on a balcony under exactly that gaze moved through her like smoke.
"Have we met before, Miss De Luca?"
There it was.
Four words with a trapdoor underneath them.
"No." She lied with a small professional smile settle onto her face. "I think I would remember a boss who opened his first impression with a clock."
Something shifted behind his eyes. Quick and unreadable and over before she could catch it.
He walked to his desk, and gestured for her to sit.
She crossed the room and sat across from him, hands still, spine straight, heart doing crazy flips.
"Let's see if you last the week, Miss De Luca
Camille smiled thinly. "I'll do my best, Sir."
He nodded. "Alright, I will need the schedule updated and today's meetings confirmed. Cross-check the calls. Lunch is at one, no interruptions. If you're confused, ask the staff downstairs."
"Understood."
He slid a folder toward her. Their fingers brushed for half a second, and a jolt of heat went straight up her arm. She didn't flinch. Training was a beautiful thing, and she was deeply grateful for it in this moment.
"Your office is outside mine," he said. "Close enough that I can reach you when I need to."
"I won't be far," she said.
She caught herself before she could think about how that sounded. He had a way of giving orders that made her feel like she was being challenged.
He looked at her.
"Slacking off already, Miss De Luca?"
Camille jolted in surprise, she had been in her damn thoughts again.
"What, no." She straightened her spine. "I'm observing. It's what you're paying me for, isn't it?"
A beat passed.
He didn't look away, and neither did she, then his lips quirked up slightly as he leaned back in his chair.
"Good," he said. "Keep doing it."
His indifference was annoying, but there was a reckless spark growing in her chest.
"You can go."
Camille nodded and walked out, keeping her movements steady. Only when the door shut behind her did she let out a breath. He hadn't blinked once. If he was playing her, he was damn good at it, and that made him either completely innocent or far more dangerous than the file had suggested.
Her office was simple. A mahogany desk, a computer, and a direct line to the man in the other room.
She spent the next hour moving through his files, trying to find basically anything on him. The more she read the more certain she became that whatever Mr. Black's file had given her was barely the outline of something much larger and much older.
She leaned back in her chair and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
He was good. She would give him that.
She was about to close the last folder when something snagged her eye.
Baltic.
She knew that name, but not from his file.
Her chest went very still.
She reached for her phone to call Mr. Black.
The line rang for a long time, but nobody picked.
Camille sat without moving, the phone still warm in her hand, the name on the screen still blinking at her. She tapped a few encrypted words and sent a message, then she set the down.
She closed her eyes and sighed. She could already feel the throb of an ache brewing at the base of her skull.
Her first day and already something was wrong.