All Chapters of Mr CEO,I’ll be your fiancée : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Nichole's POVThe silence in Regaleon Knight’s office wasn’t the respectful kind. It was the kind that precedes an execution.“I have two questions for you, Miss Chen,” he began, his voice flat, devoid of the annoyance he’d shown moments ago. He didn’t sit behind his massive desk; he perched on the corner of it, leaning in just enough to feel intimidating. It was a performance, and I was the reluctant audience.I forced myself to sit upright in the plush chair, trying to channel the last vestiges of my fury, but desperation kept crowding in. I swallowed hard.“I applied because Knight Industries is the only place in the city that funds the kind of bio-engineering projects I specialize in,” I stated, keeping my voice level. “And I broke in because your HR department has rejected me three times, despite my thesis being directly applicable to your new Robotics Division. The first two questions are actually one question, Mr. Knight: I came here because your system is broken, and I am not.

Nickie’s POVWhen Leon told me the board was meeting me tomorrow morning my stomach dropped straight through the floor.The cold fear from signing the contract turned into something worse. Something shaky and loud and very hard to breathe through.The next few hours were the closest thing to torture I had ever experienced. Not physical torture. The kind where someone watches you walk across a room and sighs.“Stop walking like you’re rushing to return library books,” Leon said from across the living room. He wasn’t pacing. He was just standing there, completely still, watching me like I was a problem he was trying to solve. “You are my fiancée. Walk like the floor belongs to you.”I tried again.“I’m wearing shoes that cost more than my rent, Leon. It’s hard to look like I own anything when I’m scared of scuffing the marble.”He made a sound that was not quite a sigh and not quite a groan.“It’s in your head. Control your head and the rest follows. And smile. Like you are actually hap

Nickie’s POVNobody moved.Not the board members. Not the assistant who had followed Victoria in. Not even Victoria herself, which told me everything I needed to know about how rarely her son spoke to her like that.Say that again.Two words. But the way Leon said them made the whole room feel smaller.Victoria Knight recovered fast. I had to give her that. She blinked once, straightened her spine, and looked at her son with the expression of a woman who had never once in her life been told no and did not intend to start accepting it now.“Regaleon,” she said, her voice dropping to something quieter and somehow sharper. “Step aside. I am trying to save you from a very embarrassing mistake.”“You called my fiancée a house rag in front of my board,” Leon said. Still quiet. Still not moving. “Try again.”“I called her what she is,” Victoria said. The venom was back, clean and unhurried. “A girl who crawled in off the street and latched onto the first rich man she could find. I have seen

Leon’s POV Nickie left a mug on my desk. Not on the coaster. Not on the side table designed specifically for beverages. On my actual desk, directly on the wood, leaving a perfect ring shaped stain on a surface that cost fourteen thousand dollars. I stared at it for a full minute. Then I moved it to the coaster and went back to work because I had bigger problems than a mug ring and I needed to remember that. The Hartwell dinner was in two days and Marcus Vance had already called twice this morning. Not about the merger. About my mother. Apparently she had hosted a small lunch yesterday with three board members and their wives and the lunch had nothing to do with food and everything to do with planting doubt about the sudden and undocumented nature of my marriage. I knew this because Miss Thorne had a contact at the restaurant. I also knew that my mother had already contacted two journalists and a society blogger who had been writing about my family for fifteen years. She was mov

Leon’s POVThe access logs came in at two in the morning.I read through them twice. Then I sat back in my chair and looked at the ceiling for a long moment.The alteration had been made by one user ID. A login that belonged to Dr. Phillip Crane. Head of the Meritus research division. A man who had been with Knight Industries for eleven years and who my mother had personally recommended for the position.I picked up my phone. Put it down. Picked it up again.Then I forwarded the logs to my lawyer and sent one text to my head of security. Four words.Find everything on Crane.I closed the laptop and went to bed because I needed to think clearly and I couldn’t do that on no sleep and I had learned a long time ago that decisions made at two in the morning in an empty office were rarely the right ones.I lay in the dark and thought about my mother.Not the woman from the boardroom with her perfect suit and her practiced venom. The earlier version. The one who used to sit across from me at