My Billionaire Boss Made Me Fall in Love for a Lie

At eleven at night, the top floor of Mercer Tower was so quiet I could hear the hum of my own laptop.

"Two more pages," I muttered to the screen. "Lot forty-seven, Venetian glass. Lot forty-eight..."

My name is Avery Cole. For three years I've been a catalog coordinator at Mercer Auctions. That means I'm the one who stays late when the preview list for a big sale is still a mess.

I stood to stretch and walked down the hall to refill my coffee.

That's when I noticed Adrian Mercer's office door.

It was open. Just a crack.

Adrian Mercer owned this building, this company, and roughly half the art market on the East Coast. He also had one rule everyone knew by heart. *Nobody* enters his private office. Not assistants. Not the cleaning crew, who waited every night until his car left the garage.

Light spilled through the gap from his floor-to-ceiling windows.

"He forgot to turn them off," I whispered. "That's all."

I don't know why I pushed the door. Maybe I wanted to do one small helpful thing for a man who never seemed to need anything.

The room smelled like cedar and cold leather. I crossed to the window panel, reached for the switch, and stopped.

The safe behind his desk was half open.

A yellowed corner of paper stuck out from the gap in the steel door.

"Don't," I told myself out loud. "Avery. Don't."

My hand moved anyway.

I slid it free. It was a photograph, soft at the edges, the colors faded to orange and brown.

A car lay on its roof in the rain. The windshield had burst into a spiderweb of glass. A police officer was carrying a little girl away from the wreck. Blood streaked her face and soaked the front of her dress.

She was looking straight at the camera.

Gray-green eyes. A small scar through the left eyebrow.

I touched my own eyebrow. The same scar.

"No," I said. My voice came out thin. "That's not... no."

It was me. Five years old.

My file at St. Mary's Orphanage said my parents died in a house fire. I'd read it a hundred times. *Fire. Both parents deceased. Child recovered from the scene.* Not one photo of them survived.

Fire. Not a car crash.

I flipped the picture over. Someone had written on the back in elegant, slanted ink.

*Elena. June 14, 1989.*

My knees went soft.

"Elena," I read again, as if saying it twice would change it.

My mother's name was Elena. It was the only thing I had of her. A name on a form.

So why did Adrian Mercer have her name in his safe? Why did he have *me*?

The photo rattled in my fingers. My knuckles had gone white around it.

Then I heard footsteps in the hall. Even. Unhurried. Getting closer.

I shoved the picture back exactly where it had been, corner sticking out, and pushed the safe door until it sat at the same angle. I spun toward the desk just as the office door swung wide.

Adrian Mercer stood in the doorway, suit jacket folded over one arm, tie loosened. He was thirty-four, tall, and so composed that people at auctions sometimes mistook his calm for boredom.

He glanced at me. Then at the window. Then back at me.

His face did nothing at all.

"Still here?"

My throat had shrunk to the size of a straw. I forced air through it.

"The preview list is two pages short. I'll be done soon."

"In my office?"

"Your lights were on. I was going to turn them off." I pointed at the panel like a kid caught with a cookie jar. "That's it. I swear."

"You swear," he repeated, as if tasting the word.

He set his jacket on the back of his chair. The safe sat behind him, the yellow corner still showing. He didn't turn around.

He walked toward me instead.

One step. Two. He stopped close enough that I could smell the woodsy cologne on his cuffs. My heart slammed so hard my eardrums ached.

He tilted his head down. His dark eyes moved over my face slowly, like he was reading the fine print on a contract.

"You're pale," he said.

"It's late."

"You're shaking."

"It's cold up here."

"It's seventy-two degrees." He almost sounded amused.

I couldn't think of another lie, so I said nothing.

Then he laughed. Softly. One short breath of sound that didn't belong in this moment at all.

He lifted a hand. I flinched, and I hated that I flinched. But he only caught a loose strand of my hair and tucked it behind my ear. His fingertips grazed the rim of my ear.

They were cold as ice.

"Avery," he said quietly. "What are you afraid of?"

My head jerked up. I met his eyes, and for one terrible second I was certain he knew. Knew about the safe. The photo. The scar. All of it.

"Nothing," I said. "I'm just tired."

"Tired." He nodded once. "Of course."

He waited. I waited. The silence stretched until it nearly snapped.

Then he dropped his hand and stepped back.

"It's too late for you to take the train. I'll drive you home."

"You don't have to..."

"I know." He picked up his keys. "Get your things."

---

I grabbed my bag and laptop without saving the file. He held the elevator for me, and I stepped in beside him.

The doors slid shut.

The walls were mirrored. In the glass I could see us both. Me, clutching my bag strap with sweaty palms. Him, hands in his pockets, perfectly still.

And his reflection was watching me.

Not the doors. Not the floor numbers. Me.

"Did you finish the Venetian glass?" he asked, without turning his head.

"Almost."

"Lot forty-seven has a hairline crack near the base. Make sure it's in the notes."

"How do you know that?"

"I notice things," Adrian said.

The elevator dropped. My stomach dropped with it.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to find the fire. I always could. Smoke in my throat. Heat on my skin. Someone's arms lifting me out of the flames, a heartbeat thudding against my cheek.

I'd held that memory my whole life. It was the only proof I'd ever had a family.

But the girl in the photograph wasn't in a fire. She was in the rain, in broken glass, in a stranger's arms.

And I didn't remember any of it.

Which memory was real?

I opened my eyes. In the mirror, Adrian's gaze hadn't moved.

Which *person* was real?

The numbers slid past. Forty. Thirty-two. Twenty-five. My pulse pounded like a runaway train.

"Avery," he said, very softly, as the elevator sank through the dark.

"Yes?"

"You left my office door open."

I hadn't.

I was sure I hadn't.