His Rules

Sienna pov

I showed up Monday because showing up was the only thing I had left.

I’d spent the weekend deciding not to go — then deciding I was being a coward — then deciding he could go to hell — then deciding that running from Kade Blackwood before I even understood what I was running from was exactly the kind of stupid thing I’d sworn off after my last disaster of a relationship.

So. Monday. Nine o’clock. His floor.

The elevator required a keycard I didn’t have.

I stood there in the lobby of Blackwood Industries and stared at the panel like it might apologize to me. It did not. I tried my phone, tried the button three times, tried glaring at it — nothing. A woman in a grey blazer walked past me without making eye contact.

By nine-oh-seven I had accepted that I was going to be late and that this was somehow going to be my fault.

The elevator opened.

Kade was inside it.

He looked at me. Looked at the time on his watch. Said nothing. Held the door.

I got in.

He pressed the button for thirty-one. The doors closed. We stood in silence for twenty-two floors and I counted every single one of them.

“The keycard,” I said finally.

He pulled one from his jacket pocket and held it out. I took it. Our fingers didn’t touch. I was unreasonably aware of how close we came.

“You could have left it at the front desk,” I said.

“I could have,” he agreed.

The elevator opened and he walked out and I followed him because what else was I going to do.

Floor thirty-one was all glass and clean lines and the low hum of a space where people were actually working — not performing work, actually doing it. Fast, focused, no wasted movement. Kade moved through it like a current and everything adjusted around him without him having to ask.

He stopped at a desk near the center of the room. Right in the sightline of his corner office.

“This is yours,” he said. “You’ll support the floor operations. Scheduling, client correspondence, anything the team escalates. You’ll cc me on everything.”

“So I’m your assistant,” I said.

“You’re the floor coordinator. There’s a difference.”

“The difference being—”

“About thirty thousand a year.”

I shut up.

He walked into his office. I sat down at my desk and tried to look like I knew what I was doing.

✶

I learned the floor fast. That surprised me — and I think it surprised a few of the people around me, though nobody said so out loud. By eleven I’d reorganized the scheduling system because the old one was a disaster. By one I’d caught a billing error in a client file that had been sitting there for two weeks.

Kade came out of his office twice. Didn’t acknowledge me either time.

At three, the account manager on the Richardson pitch — a fast-talking man named Marcus — came running out of a conference room looking like someone had told him his car was on fire. The client had rejected the entire deck. Presentation in forty minutes.

Everyone froze.

I grabbed the file. Read it. Found the problem in four minutes — they’d built the pitch around a cost projection that was eighteen months out of date. The client had new numbers, had sent them over two weeks ago, and nobody had updated the deck.

I rewrote three slides. Sent it to Marcus. Said, “Go. Now.”

He looked at me like I was insane. He went.

Twenty minutes later he came back with a signed contract.

The room exhaled. Someone started clapping. Marcus shook my hand. I sat back down and tried to look like that was nothing.

Kade hadn’t come out of his office during any of it.

✶

At six I was packing up my bag when I noticed the envelope on my desk.

Plain white. My name on it in handwriting I didn’t recognize — controlled, precise, not a wasted stroke.

Inside was a notecard. Four words:

Don’t make it a habit.

Below it — a number. A monthly figure. My new salary, revised upward from whatever Harlan had originally agreed to.

I choked on nothing. Sat back down.

Looked up at his office. The glass was dark — he’d already gone.

I looked back at the notecard. The number. The four words that were somehow both a reprimand and a raise at the same time.

Then my phone buzzed. Unknown number. One message:

“He’s been watching you for longer than you think. Ask him how he knew your coffee order on Day One.” I looked up slowly. The security camera above my desk was aimed directly at where I sat. It had been there all day. I’d just never thought to look.