My Billionaire Boss Made Me Fall in Love for a Lie

I didn't sleep that night. At three a.m. I was sitting cross-legged on my kitchen floor, laptop balanced on my knees, digging through my old email.

"Okay," I whispered. "Where did this start?"

I typed *offer letter* into the search bar.

There it was. Three years ago. *Welcome to the Mercer Arts Foundation, Ms. Cole.*

I scrolled back further, to the job posting that had brought me in. I remembered being so grateful. Someone had sent me a link, or I'd stumbled on it. I'd never been sure which.

I clicked the source.

A site called ArtsCareerBoard. I'd never heard of it.

"I didn't apply here," I said to the empty room. "I never had an account here."

But the application had my résumé on it. My cover letter. Things I'd only ever sent to two museums and a gallery in Brooklyn.

I checked the posting date. Then I opened a new tab and looked up when Adrian bought the foundation.

The posting went live three days after the sale closed.

I read the requirements out loud, slowly, like they might rearrange themselves.

"Master's in art history. Strong cataloging skills. Orphanage background preferred."

I laughed. It came out sharp and ugly in the quiet kitchen.

"Who writes that? Who puts *that* in a job ad?"

Nobody. Nobody except someone who was fishing for exactly one person.

---

The gallery came next. I didn't want it to. But my brain dragged it up anyway.

Three months ago. A rainy Thursday in the East Village. I'd stood in front of a small gray painting for almost twenty minutes, because it reminded me of something I couldn't name.

Then a voice beside me.

"You've been standing in front of this one a long time. What's so special about it?"

I'd turned. Adrian Mercer. My boss's boss's boss, holding two flutes of champagne like he'd been waiting for someone.

"I don't know," I'd told him. "It feels like a place I've been."

He'd handed me one of the glasses. "Then you should keep looking."

I'd gone home that night and called my friend from grad school, giddy as a teenager.

"He just *happened* to be there," I'd said. "Can you believe it?"

Now I pulled up the gallery's ownership records. It took eleven minutes and a public filing.

Majority shareholder: Mercer Group.

I shut the laptop so hard the screen bounced.

"Happened to be there," I muttered. "Sure he did."

---

I tried to stop there. I really did.

But on Wednesday, riding the train to work, another memory surfaced. Older. Sophomore year of college. Walking home from the library after midnight. Footsteps behind me, matching mine. Speeding up when I sped up.

Then the screech of tires. A black sedan. A man in a dark coat jumping out and slamming my follower into a brick wall.

By the time I'd turned around, the sedan was gone.

The cop who took my report had shrugged at me across his desk.

"Guy ran off. You got lucky, kid."

"Who was in the car?" I'd asked.

"Some Good Samaritan. Be grateful."

That night I searched the archives of my college paper. There was a short item, buried on page six. *Student followed near campus. Witness reports black sedan.* Someone had snapped a blurry photo of the plate.

I zoomed in. Ran it through a public vehicle registry.

Registered owner: Mercer Group.

My fingers went numb on the trackpad.

"Okay," I said, and my voice wobbled. "Okay. Maybe he's... maybe it's a coincidence. Big company. Lots of cars."

I didn't believe a single word.

---

On Friday, Adrian called me at four in the afternoon.

"I'm stuck in a board meeting until seven," he said. "There's a blue folder on my desk at home. Drop it at the office for me?"

"Your home?"

"The doorman knows you're coming." A pause. "You've been quiet this week, Avery."

"Busy," I said.

"Mm." I could hear him smiling. "Blue folder. Don't get lost."

---

His study was all dark wood and silence. I spotted the blue folder right away.

But next to it sat a brown envelope, flap open, papers spilling from the mouth.

The top sheet had a typed header.

*PROJECT AVERY.*

I didn't decide to sit down. My legs just folded, and I was on the rug with the envelope in my lap.

My birth certificate. A record from a children's hospital in California. Every evaluation St. Mary's ever wrote about me. *Withdrawn. Bright. Nightmares, recurring.* The names of every teacher I'd ever had. Every dorm, every apartment, every address. The names of the three guys I'd dated. A chart of what time I left my building each morning.

"Seven-forty," I read aloud. "Seven-forty-five on Fridays."

It was right. All of it was right.

This file knew me better than I did.

At the very back, tucked behind a paper clip, was one more photograph.

A young man with his arm around a young woman. The Golden Gate Bridge behind them. Both of them laughing like the world had just told them a joke. His face was smooth and unmarked. She held a baby against her chest.

The baby was wrapped in a blanket with tiny blue flowers and a thin gold border.

I knew that blanket.

Every nightmare I'd ever had, there was a piece of that cloth. Torn. Wet. Slipping out of my hands.

"Mom," I said. Just that. Just once.

Tears rolled off my chin and hit the photo, one after another, beading on the glossy surface. I didn't make a sound. I didn't think I could have if I'd tried.

The door opened.

I didn't jump. I just lifted my head.

Adrian stood in the doorway, still in his meeting suit. Three hours early. He looked at me. At the papers fanned across his rug. At the photograph shaking in my hands.

No surprise crossed his face. No panic. His shoulders didn't even shift.

He just watched me, quiet, almost gentle, the way you'd watch someone wake up from a long fever.

"You knew," I said. My voice scraped out of me like gravel. "You always knew who I was."

He didn't deny it.

He walked in, stepped carefully around the scattered pages, and crouched down in front of me until our eyes were level. Close enough that I could see a faint tiredness at the corners of his mouth.

"Avery," he said softly. "I've known you since you were five years old."