Chapter 6: Watched

Nobody warned Sloane that the front desk job would slowly murder her feet.

Six hours in. Heels on. Smile locked. Spine straight. Stella — the bright-eyed receptionist who'd been stationed beside her all morning — had rattled through the unofficial orientation with the cheerful efficiency of someone who had long ago made peace with standing eight hours a day.

Answer before the third ring. Mr. Pierce's calls go straight up, no screening. If someone doesn't have an appointment and looks like trouble, they probably are.

Sloane had nodded through all of it, cataloguing every detail, because this job was temporary and that was fine and everything was absolutely fine and she was not going to think about the fact that somewhere above her, forty-two floors up, the father of her children was probably sitting behind a desk the size of a small country.

She was doing great.

At 11:47, the energy in the lobby changed.

It was subtle at first — a sharpening in the air, like the pressure drop before a thunderstorm. The security guards near the entrance straightened without being told. The two women at the concierge desk stopped mid-sentence. Even the ambient noise of the lobby seemed to hold its breath.

Stella's elbow found Sloane's ribs. "He's here."

The black SUV pulled to the curb outside the glass doors. The driver was out before the engine fully cut. And then the door opened, and those long legs unfolded from the car — dark trousers, polished Oxford shoes, the kind of effortless authority that money alone couldn't buy.

Declan Pierce walked into his building like he owned it.

Because he did.

Sloane dropped her eyes to the desk. Look busy. Look invisible. Look like every other employee in this lobby.

She felt him move through the space without looking up — felt the displaced air, heard the quiet that followed him like a shadow, tracked the exact moment his presence swept past the front desk like a cold front rolling off Lake Michigan.

Don't look up. Don't—

She looked up.

For one fractured second, those dark eyes cut directly to her face.

Her heart seized.

Then he walked on. Past her. Into the executive elevator. Gone.

The doors slid shut.

Sloane exhaled so slowly that her ribs ached.

Kai Torres — Declan's ever-present shadow — had caught her eye briefly as he passed, something unreadable flickering across his face before he disappeared into the elevator behind his boss. He recognized her. She'd seen it.

That's fine. That's fine. Kai Torres seeing her was not the same as Declan Pierce knowing anything.

"Oh my God," Stella breathed beside her, both hands pressed to her sternum like she was trying to keep her heart inside her body. "Every single time. Every time, I think I'm prepared, and then—" She shook her head. "Isn't he something?"

"He's very—" Sloane searched for a word that wasn't dangerous, magnetic, or terrifyingly familiar. "—tall."

Stella burst out laughing. "Tall. Sure." She sighed dreamily, leaning one hip against the desk. "Whoever ends up with Declan Pierce is the luckiest woman alive. I mean — that face. That company. All of it." She glanced sideways at Sloane. "Don't you think?"

Sloane smiled tightly. "Some women have all the luck."

Luckiest woman alive. Right. The luckiest woman alive was currently standing in his lobby in a blazer she'd bought on sale, hiding six of his children in a North Side apartment, and slowly losing circulation below the ankle.

Speaking of which.

By three o'clock, Sloane's feet had graduated from uncomfortable to actively hostile. The heels she'd chosen — sensible by most standards, catastrophic by front-desk standards — had located every pressure point on both feet and were applying targeted, consistent misery to each one.

Victoria Nash had stepped away from the floor.

Stella was focused on a call.

Sloane glanced left. Glanced right.

Ten seconds. Just ten seconds.

She shifted her weight and, with the practiced stealth of a woman who had learned to move quietly around six sleeping toddlers, eased her right foot out of its heel. The cold marble floor against her bare sole was so immediately, overwhelmingly good that she nearly audibly whimpered.

She freed the left foot.

The relief was nothing short of religious.

She stood there in her bare feet behind PIERCE Tower's immaculate front desk, eyes moving professionally across the lobby, looking for all the world like a completely regulation employee.

This is fine. This is absolutely—

Her eyes drifted up. Automatic. The kind of unconscious scan she'd developed raising six escape-artist toddlers.

Top right corner of the lobby.

Security camera.

Small. Black. Pointing directly at the front desk.

Sloane's feet were back in her heels before her brain finished processing the thought. She straightened her blazer. Smoothed her expression into something serene. Stared dead ahead.

Please. Please let that footage go nowhere.

"First day survival tip?"

She startled. A man had materialized at the corner of the front desk — mid-thirties, easy smile, nice enough face. A staff badge clipped to his jacket read R&D, Level 28. He was looking at her with the specific, unmistakable energy of a man who had invented a reason to come to the lobby.

"Gel insoles," he said, nodding downward with a grin. "From the Walgreens on Wacker. Game changer. Trust me, we've all been there."

Sloane blinked. "Did you just—"

"See you lose a shoe battle? Absolutely not." His smile widened. "I'm Drew, by the way. Twenty-eighth floor. And you are—?"

Before she could answer, the executive elevator across the lobby pinged softly.

The doors slid open.

And forty-two floors above the desk where Sloane had just been standing in her bare feet, a screen on Declan Pierce's computer showed a nine-panel security grid. One panel, enlarged and centered, showed the front desk in perfect clarity.

He'd been watching.

He'd seen everything.