Chapter 8 - Damien’s POV

I had fired people for less.

That was the first thing I thought when Noah Carter walked out of my office. I had terminated contracts for lateness, for incompetence, for a tone of voice I didn’t like on a Tuesday afternoon. I had ended careers with less cause than a missed Henderson call and I had done it without losing a single night of sleep.

I picked up my phone.

Put it down.

The penthouse was quiet. I could hear him down the hall, the specific sound of his door closing, the particular silence that followed. Not the silence of someone who had gone to bed. The silence of someone sitting very still.

I knew that silence. I knew all his silences by now and that one meant he was doing the math again. Whatever the math was. I had heard enough in three weeks to know there was always math. Always a number he was trying to reach and always falling short of.

I pulled up Henderson’s contact.

Nine years. Quarterly calls. Never missed, never late, until today. Henderson’s assistant had been professional about it, which meant Henderson himself had not been. I would hear about it tomorrow in whatever careful corporate language his team used to say that my office was slipping.

I did not slip.

I put the phone down.

Because I’m the best assistant you’ve had. And you know it.

I had not responded to that because there was no response that served me. Agreeing gave him something. Disagreeing was a lie. So I had said nothing and told him to get out and now I was sitting in my office at four pm trying to decide whether Noah Carter still worked for me.

The previous seven had been easy. Every single one.

Marcus had filed documents in the wrong order three times. Gone in week six. The one before him had been too loud on personal calls. Gone in week three. The one before that had rearranged items on my desk without being asked, apparently trying to be helpful, and had been gone by end of day.

Every reason had been clean. Obvious. Something I could point to without ambiguity.

Noah Carter had missed one call.

One call in three weeks and four days of otherwise flawless work. One call after twenty-five days of six twenty-eight coffee and correct file placement and pushing back when I lied about his lunch and finishing an impossible task at eleven fifty-two and saying high praise and walking out before I could respond.

One call.

I stood up. Walked to the window. Stood with my back to the city I couldn’t see and thought about the sound of his voice when he’d come into my office. Not panicked. Not over-apologetic. Steady, the way he was always steady, but underneath it something tight and held and wrong.

He hadn’t told me what he was doing at three o’clock.

It’s the only answer I have right now.

Not I was sleeping. Not I forgot. Not a single excuse. Just right now. Like whatever it was was still too close to talk about.

I knew what a medical crisis sounded like in someone’s voice. I had heard it in his on day one through a door that wasn’t fully closed. I knew the weight of a number that was too big and a timeline that was too short and the specific exhaustion of carrying both alone.

I was not thinking about that.

What I was thinking about was Henderson and nine years and the fact that my name meant something in this city precisely because things like this did not happen.

I walked back to my desk.

Sat down.

Picked up my phone and called my legal team’s after hours line and told them to draft a termination notice for my current personal assistant. Standard terms. One week severance. Effective immediately upon my confirmation tomorrow morning.

“Yes, Mr. Cole,” she said. “I’ll have it ready by eight.”

“Fine,” I said. “Don’t send it until I confirm.”

I hung up.

Sat back.

The termination notice would be ready. All I had to do was confirm it in the morning and Noah Carter would be out of this penthouse by noon and the Henderson situation would be handled by my legal team and everything would go back to exactly the way it was supposed to be.

Clean. Simple. Obvious.

I reached for the Mercer file. Opened it. Read the first paragraph three times without retaining a single word.

Down the hall something shifted. His bedsprings. Then quiet again.

He wasn’t sleeping.

I closed the Mercer file.

The thing about Noah Carter was that he was inconvenient in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Not because he was bad at his job. Because he wasn’t. Because he had walked into this penthouse with a coffee stain on his cuff and forty-three dollars in his account and two people depending on him and he had absorbed everything I had thrown at him without once asking me for anything.

Not once.

Seven assistants before him and every single one had wanted something from me beyond the salary. Sympathy. Patience. A softer version of this space. Noah Carter had wanted none of it. He had just kept going, quiet and steady and infuriatingly competent, and now he was down the hall not sleeping and I had a termination notice being drafted and tomorrow I was going to confirm it.

I was going to confirm it.

My phone buzzed on the desk. A notification from my legal team. Draft attached. Ready for review.

I did not open it.

I sat in my office until two in the morning with the draft unread on my phone and the Mercer file untouched on my desk and the particular silence of Noah Carter not sleeping filling the penthouse like something with weight.

At two fifteen I heard him finally go still.

I picked up my phone.

Opened the draft.

Read it once.

My thumb hovered over confirm.

Tomorrow, I thought. I’ll decide tomorrow.

I put the phone down and went to bed