It was a sinner's suicide for anyone to work at Coopers Incorporation. It was no surprise that people aimed to stray far from the Devil known as Mr Elijah Cooper.
Cold, demanding, and rough, he ruled over everything with an iron grip and a calculati...
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Elijah's P.O.V
She was under my skin. Every damn second, my mind was consumed by her. The way her eyes gleamed when I called her Miss Nora instead of Miss Jones, that subtle flash of pride before she caught herself. It was a rare gift—one I only allowed her when she was hurt, or when, for the briefest moment, I let my guard slip and showed concern. Otherwise, it was always Miss Jones—a reminder of where we stood. A reminder to her… and to myself.
She was mine. Not in the way I wanted. Not in the way that mattered. But mine, nonetheless.
My greatest frustration? I wanted her near me all the goddamn time. When she wasn’t around, the world turned gray, flat, meaningless. She was the color in my life, the chaos in my order. Every time she stood her ground, challenging me like she had a right to—like she had no idea what I was capable of—it filled me with something dark and twisted. Pride. Obsession. Desire.
She was a wildfire, and I kept throwing myself into the flames, just to see how much I could take before I burned.
And yet, I had kissed another woman.
Nora didn’t know. But I did. And that single mistake weighed on me like a loaded gun pressed to my temple. I could still taste the regret, bitter as ash on my tongue. Kissing that girl—Nora had seen it, even if she pretended she hadn’t. Even if she didn’t care. But I saw it in her eyes. The smallest flicker of something—pain, betrayal? I wanted to rip that moment out of existence, to erase it before it could fester into something permanent.
But I couldn’t.
And the worst part?
I had kissed that girl because I was a coward. Because Nora made me feel things I had no right feeling, and I thought—stupidly—that if I tainted myself with someone else, I could smother what was growing inside me. That it would make me want her less.
It only made me want her more.
Her eyes were my undoing. That endless curiosity, that hunger for a world she had barely touched. I wanted to be the one to show her. To be the reason behind every new memory, every moment of wonder. She had no idea what kind of power she held over me. No idea that if she so much as whispered my name in that soft, uncertain way, I’d be on my knees, ready to destroy the world if she asked me to.
But she could never know.
She could never know that she was the closest thing I had to a weakness.
I raked a hand through my hair, exhaling sharply as I turned away from the mirror. I barely recognized the man staring back at me—tired, frustrated, and wound so tight I was seconds away from snapping. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t the kind of man who agonized over a woman. But she wasn’t just any woman.
She was my personal brand of destruction.
And I needed to get my head on straight before I did something even more reckless than that goddamn kiss.
