For the next few days, the heavy, suffocating walls of my cage seemed to expand into something that felt dangerously close to freedom. It was a brief, breathless anomaly, a handful of blissful days where I finally got to be Mason Brooks’s executive assistant in full reality, not just in name. The cold, mechanical barrier he had erected between us for two years had completely vanished, replaced by an intense, seamless professional partnership that left the entire corporate headquarters whispering in the corridors.
He didn't leave me behind a single time. Every morning, the head secretary would deliver his unredacted, master itinerary directly to my new oak desk, and when Mason strode out of his private office, his heavy wool coat sweeping behind him, he would pause by my chair and wait for
