The forbidden billionaire

EMMA'S POV

The hum of the breakroom refrigerator sounded like a chainsaw inside my skull.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, counting backward from ten. Ten, nine, eight... Usually, the numbers helped; they built a wall between me and the noise. But tonight, the wall was paper-thin. I could hear the security guard in the lobby thirty floors down tapping his pen against his desk. I could hear the janitor on the floor above dragging a mop bucket across the tile. It was too much. It was always too much.

"You okay, Em?"

I jumped so hard my knee slammed into the underside of my desk. I pulled my hands away from my face and looked up. Sarah, one of the senior analysts, was standing at the edge of my cubicle with her coat on and her purse slung over her shoulder. She looked blurry, like a camera lens that wouldn't focus.

"I'm fine," I lied. The words tasted like lemon in my mouth. "Just a migraine. The lights in here are aggressive tonight."

Sarah frowned sympathetically. "You work too much. Seriously, Blackwell Global isn't going to collapse if you go home at a normal hour. It's nearly eight o'clock. Even the sharks in legal have gone home."

She smells like dying flowers, a voice whispered in the back of my mind. And fear. Why is she afraid?

I gritted my teeth. Shut up, Artemis, I thought, directing the command at the part of my brain Dr. Aris called my "dissociative projection."

"I just need to finish this risk assessment for the merger," I told Sarah, ignoring the voice. "Mr. Blackwell wants it on his desk by morning. You know how he is about deadlines."

"I know how he is about everything," Sarah said, lowering her voice and glancing around the empty office floor. "Terrifying. I rode the elevator with him yesterday. I swear the temperature dropped ten degrees. The man doesn't blink. Anyway, get some sleep, Emma. You look... well, you look like you need it."

"Thanks, Sarah. See you tomorrow."

I watched her walk toward the elevators. The sound of her heels clicking on the linoleum echoed like gunshots. Click. Click. Click.

Hungry, Artemis hissed again. That sandwich you ate was grass. We need real food. Rare. Bloody.

"It was a turkey club," I muttered out loud, opening my desk drawer. I rattled the orange prescription bottle and shook two white pills into my palm. Antipsychotics. Low dose. They were supposed to quiet the auditory hallucinations and dull the sensory overload. Dr. Aris said I had a unique presentation of schizophrenia, high-functioning, specifically focused on animalistic delusions.

I dry-swallowed the pills and waited for the fog to roll in. I hated the pills. They made me feel like I was moving through underwater currents, slow and heavy. But they were better than the alternative. The alternative was letting Artemis take the wheel, and the last time that happened, I woke up in a park three miles away with dirt under my fingernails and a dead pigeon at my feet.

I turned back to my computer screens. The numbers on the spreadsheet were swimming. I needed to focus. Daniel Blackwell, the CEO, was not a man who accepted "mental health episodes" as an excuse for sloppy work. He was a phantom in this building, rarely seen, but always felt. He had taken over the company five years ago after his father died, and he had turned Blackwell Global into a terrifyingly efficient machine.

I had only seen him once, from a distance at the company Christmas party. He had been standing on the mezzanine, watching the crowd with a glass of whiskey in his hand. I remembered looking up at him and feeling a sudden, violent wave of nausea. Artemis had started screaming then, too. I had spent the rest of the night hiding in the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face.

My desk phone rang.

The shrill trill went right through my ear drums and down my spine. I gasped, grabbing the receiver before it could ring again.

"Blackwell Security, Emma Carter speaking."

"Ms. Carter."

The voice on the other end was deep, smooth, and utterly devoid of warmth. I recognized it immediately. Marcus Hale. The Chief of Operations and Daniel Blackwell's right-hand man. He was another one I tried to avoid. He always looked at me like I was a math problem he couldn't quite solve.

"Mr. Hale," I said, sitting up straighter even though he couldn't see me. "How can I help you?"

"The CEO is reviewing the acquisition files for the Merriweather account," Marcus said. "He noticed a discrepancy in the risk projection models you submitted last week. He wants to discuss them."

My stomach dropped. "I can fix it. I can re-run the numbers right now and email it-"

"No," Marcus interrupted. "He wants to discuss it in person. Now."

I glanced at the digital clock on my monitor. 8:15 PM.

"He's... he's here?" I asked stupidly.

"He lives here, Ms. Carter. Penthouse office. Come up immediately. And bring the raw data files."

The line clicked dead.

I sat there for a full ten seconds, the receiver still pressed to my ear. He wants to see us, Artemis purred, her tone shifting from aggressive to curious. The High One. The Dark One.

"Stop calling him that," I whispered, slamming the phone down. "He's a CEO, not a deity."

I stood up, my legs feeling shaky. I grabbed the thick binder of data I had printed earlier and smoothed down my skirt. I caught my reflection in the dark window. My caramel skin looked greyish under the fluorescent lights. My hair, usually a neat twist, was starting to frizz around my temples. I looked exhausted. I looked like a girl who was barely holding it together and well, that was the truth.

"Just a meeting," I told myself. "You go up. You explain the variance. You come down. You go home. You make pasta."