Hadley’s POV
Cora was leaning against her car with the patient energy of someone who’d been waiting long enough to compose an entire mental interrogation.
The moment I pushed through the lobby doors, her face lit up.
“There’s my working girl!” She opened her arms.
“How was your first day?”
I collapsed against her and groaned into her shoulder.
“I’m fairly certain I’m getting fired tomorrow.”
She pulled back, perfectly shaped eyebrows climbing toward her hairline.
“Already?
It’s been one day.
What did you do?”
“I argued with my boss.
On the phone.
Twice.”
Her eyes went enormous—then she burst into laughter so sudden and violent she had to grip the car door to stay upright.
“You did what?
Oh my God, Hadley!”
“It’s not funny!” But a treacherous smile was already tugging at my mouth.
“He was being a complete—”
“Mommy!” The shout came from the backseat, cutting through the adult conversation with the unerring precision of a three-year-old who’d been patient long enough.
I ducked my head through the open door and found Leon strapped into his car seat, violet-blue eyes incandescent, his favorite toy dinosaur clutched against his chest like a talisman.
“Hi, baby.” I leaned in and pressed kisses across his round cheeks—one, two, three, four—until he was giggling and squirming.
My heart did what it always did when I saw him after a separation: opened so wide it hurt.
“Were you good for Aunt Cora?”
Leon nodded with the earnest conviction of someone whose definition of good was flexible at best.
“We got ice cream!”
I shot Cora a look over the roof of the car.
“Before dinner?”
“Don’t start.” She slid behind the wheel and pulled her seatbelt on.
“Now.
Tell me everything.
I want all the details about this boss.”
As she navigated through evening traffic, I recounted both phone calls—the first test, the second confrontation, every word I could remember.
By the time I finished, Cora was wiping tears of laughter from beneath her lashes with one hand, steering with the other.
“So this guy—this CEO, this billionaire—tried to intimidate you, and you shut him down?” She slapped the steering wheel.
“Twice?
That’s my girl.”
“Evangeline says it was some kind of test.
But he’s coming in tomorrow, and his text tonight was—” I searched for the word.
“—terse.”
“Show me.”
I held up the work phone: Arriving tomorrow.
We’ll discuss your duties, and prepare the chamomile tea.
“Ooh.” Cora whistled low.
“He sounds intense.
Is he at least attractive?
Please tell me he’s not some sixty-year-old with a combover.”
“I don’t know!
I haven’t met him in person.
Evangeline said he’s young for his position—took over after his parents died.”
“A young, grieving, powerful CEO who can’t stop calling his new assistant.” Cora’s grin was dangerous.
“This has potential.”
“Stop it,” I warned.
“I’m a single mom who desperately needs this paycheck.
The absolute last thing I need is workplace drama.”
“Speaking of which—” Her smile widened into something radiant.
“Guess who just got hired at Apex World?”
“You did?” I grabbed her arm.
“Coco!
That’s incredible!”
“I know!
Interview went perfectly, I start next week.
Both of us.”
We high-fived across the center console while Leon giggled in the backseat, mimicking the gesture with his dinosaur and the air.
“Where to?” Cora asked.
“Home?”
I checked the time.
“Actually—can we stop at the mall?
I need a few things for Leon’s daycare.”
Twenty minutes later we were moving through the bright, climate-controlled corridors of the shopping center, Leon between us, gripping both our hands, leaping every fourth step to make us swing him.
My arms ached.
I didn’t care.
“Careful, baby,” I cautioned as he nearly clipped a woman with a shopping bag.
“Supplies first, then maybe a toy if you’re good.”
“Dinosaur!” Leon’s eyes went wide with strategic hope.
“You have fifteen dinosaurs.”
“But not a purple one.” The logic was airtight.
I had no rebuttal.
After gathering the daycare supplies, we drifted past a toy store where Leon’s entire body magnetized toward the window display—a wooden building block set with bridges and arches and tiny painted trees.
“Mommy, look!” He pressed his face against the glass, his breath fogging a perfect circle.
The price tag pinched, but my final paycheck from Dresden Enterprises had cleared that morning.
For once—for the first time in months—I could afford something that wasn’t strictly necessary.
“Okay, birthday boy,” I said, though his birthday was still weeks away.
His shriek of delight made the entire store turn and smile.
We were heading back through the main corridor when a dress in a boutique window stopped me mid-stride.
Deep emerald green—the exact shade of my eyes—with a cut that was architectural without being severe: structured shoulders, a waist that dipped, a hemline that hit just above the knee.
The kind of dress that didn’t ask for permission to be noticed.
Cora caught my stare.
“That would look devastating on you.”
“It’s beautiful,” I admitted, already turning away.
“And completely impractical.”
“Why?” She stepped into my path, blocking retreat.
“You have a high-profile job now.
Looking the part isn’t vanity, it’s strategy.”
“It’s expensive.”
She peered at the tag through the glass.
“It’s on sale.
And with your new salary, you can absolutely afford it.”
“I should be saving for Leon’s—”
“Hadley.” She put both hands on my shoulders, her expression shifting from playful to serious.
“Listen to me.
This isn’t frivolous spending.
This is armor.
You told me yourself—this man is intimidating.
Walking in there tomorrow looking like you own the building will do more for your confidence than any pep talk I can give you.”
I bit my lip.
The dress seemed to catch the light and hold it.
“First impressions matter,” Cora pressed.
“Especially with men who are used to everyone around them shrinking.
If you look like you’re not afraid, eventually you stop being afraid.”
Twenty minutes later I was standing in a dressing room, staring at a woman I barely recognized.
The emerald fabric skimmed my body with an intelligence that felt intentional—following curves, suggesting strength, making me look like someone who solved problems rather than caused them.
For the first time in three years of exhaustion and survival, I didn’t see a tired single mother in the mirror.
I saw a professional.
A woman who could stand across a desk from Rowan Sinclair and hold her ground.
I stepped out.
Her jaw dropped.
“Holy—” She caught herself, glancing at Leon, who was happily dismantling his new block set on the dressing room floor.
“Hadley.
You look incredible.”
I turned in the three-way mirror.
The dress moved with me, not against me.
It felt like confidence made fabric.
“I’ll take it.”
“Now shoes.” Cora was already steering me toward the adjacent display.
“You need shoes that make you six inches taller and capable of kicking down doors.”
By the time we left the mall, I had the dress, a pair of black heels that did improbable things to my posture, and—courtesy of Cora’s insistence and a ten-minute detour through a lingerie store—a set of underwear so beautiful it seemed criminal to hide it under office attire.
“Nobody’s going to see my underwear at work,” I’d protested.
“It’s not about who sees it.
It’s about how it makes you feel.
Armor on the outside, silk underneath.
Trust me.”
Leon was half-asleep in my arms by the time we reached the car, his head heavy on my shoulder, his breath warm and rhythmic against my neck.
I buckled him in, brushing his dark hair from his forehead, and felt the day’s anxiety loosen its grip—not completely, but enough.
“Consider it all an investment,” Cora said quietly as she started the engine.
“That man tried to break you over the phone.
Tomorrow you walk in there and show him exactly who he underestimated.”
“I just hope I don’t get fired.” My voice was smaller than I wanted.
“Leon’s daycare isn’t cheap.”
“You won’t get fired.” She met my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“If Evangeline’s right—if he respects people who stand their ground—then you’ve already passed the hardest test.
Everything else is just dress rehearsal.”
After Cora dropped us off and left with a hug and a promise to text in the morning, I carried Leon inside, changed him into his pajamas, and read him two stories until his eyes fluttered shut.
I stood over his crib for a long moment, watching his chest rise and fall, his small fist curled around the corner of his blanket.
“I’m doing this for you,” I whispered.
“All of it.”
I hung the emerald dress on the back of my bedroom door, set the heels beneath it, and laid out everything I’d need for the morning.
The work phone sat on my nightstand, silent, the screen dark.
Then it buzzed.
My heart seized before my eyes registered the sender.
Rowan Sinclair: Arriving tomorrow.
We’ll discuss your duties, and prepare the chamomile tea.
I read it three times.
Not coffee—chamomile.
A drink meant to calm.
Was he trying to calm himself, or was this his idea of a peace offering?
Or was it simply the preference of a man who didn’t owe me an explanation?
I set the phone face-down and crawled into bed, the emerald dress visible in the moonlight streaming through my window—a dark shape with a purpose, waiting for morning.
Sleep came slowly, fractured by dreams of violet-blue eyes watching me from across a desk.
Eyes that judged.
Eyes that challenged.
Eyes that, in some buried, irrational corner of my exhausted mind, looked exactly like my son’s.
Little did I know how right that instinct was.