Damian’s POV

She was supposed to crumble.

That was the point.

Hiring a personal assistant wasn’t difficult but hiring one who could last longer than five days without crying, filing a complaint, or attempting to crawl into my bed for leverage, that was the challenge.

So I tested them. Pushed them. Measured their spine before trusting them with my schedule, my life, and the empire I’d built from the ground up.

Kayna Scott had a spine. And a mouth she wasn’t afraid to use.

Interesting combination.

She was under experienced. Her resume barely registered but something in her tone during the interview had made me pause. It wasn’t just the nerve to meet my stare. It was the fire beneath her calm, the way she didn’t flinch when I told her she was underqualified.

She didn’t beg. She didn’t flatter. She simply challenged me with quiet conviction.

I hadn’t seen that in a long time.

Now, watching the door click shut behind her, I leaned back in my chair, fingers steepled beneath my chin.

Kayna Scott.

There was something familiar about the name.

I opened her background file again, scrolling past academic history and job references. Her father’s name… Elijah Scott.

Prison record. Fraud charges. Government contracts?

I narrowed my eyes and opened a secondary file—one not available to HR.

Sure enough. Elijah Scott had once been involved in a whistleblower case linked to Preston Holdings. That case had been buried, sealed, and erased from media outlets at the request of their shareholders.

Why hadn’t I caught that earlier?

And more importantly—what the hell was his daughter doing in my building?

Coincidence? Possibly. But I didn’t believe in coincidences. Not anymore. Life has taught me the consequences of leaving things to chance.

I closed the file and tapped the intercom. “Julian.”

A few seconds later, my head of security and one of my trusted allies entered the office, dressed in his usual black shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled just enough to reveal a faint scar on his wrist—a souvenir from our younger, bloodier days.

“You saw the new hire?” I asked without looking up.

“I did.” He took the chair across from me without waiting for an invitation. “You like her.”

I looked up sharply. “No.”

“You’re watching her.”

“I’m watching all of them.”

He smirked. “Not like this.”

I didn’t respond. Instead, I slid the file toward him. “Elijah Scott’s daughter.”

Julian’s eyes darkened as he scanned the document. “Did she know what her father was into?”

“Doubtful. She would’ve led with it or tried to hide it better.”

“So what now?”

“Dig deeper into it.” I said quietly. “Every phone call, every email. If she sneezes twice in a row, I want a full report.”

Julian frowned. “You think she’s a plant?”

“I think too many people have tried to get close to me lately. I don’t care if it’s her, or someone behind her but I want to know before it becomes a problem.”

Julian gave a short nod, then hesitated.

“What?”

“She’s sharp,” he said. “Held her own in that audit meeting. Didn’t panic under pressure.”

“That’s why I hired her.”

“No,” he corrected, “you hired her because she’s impressive and most importantly quite sexy.” He said with a giggle.

I met his gaze. “Careful.”

Julian leaned back, unfazed. “Just saying, she’s got fire. You’ve always had a weakness for that.”

I waved him off, and he stood to leave, pausing at the door to deliver one last smirk before he left.

⸻

I kept my head down for the next half hour, plowing through contract reviews, but every so often I caught glimpses of her moving around her desk. Once to grab a pen. Once to stack a few files. Once, her phone lit up on the corner of her desk, and she leaned back, scanning the screen.

She frowned.

Then answered.

Her lips moved, her brow tightening as she listened.

It was over in less than a minute, her phone lowering slowly back to the desk. She sat still for a beat—too still—before pushing it aside and resuming her work like nothing had happened.

I didn’t think much of it then.

If I’d known better, maybe I would have asked.

By the time I stepped out of my office, she was fully absorbed in my schedule, two monitors lit up in front of her. She didn’t notice me approach until my shadow fell across her desk.

“Ms. Scott,” I said.

Her head snapped up. For just half a second, her eyes held something—worry? before she smoothed it away.

“You’ve already started inputting the overseas meeting rotation,” I noted, scanning the screen. The redundancies from quarter 2 were already flagged and highlighted.

“I figured it would save time if I cleaned up the overlaps from last quarter too,” she said, her voice steady.

Initiative and not the lazy kind where people pretend to be busy for approval. No, she’d already figured out a system. Efficient. Intentional.

I nodded. “Good. Don’t burn out on day one.”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly, then allowed a hint of humor into her voice. “Though I may need a caffeine IV soon.”

The corner of my mouth almost—almost—pulled upward. I’d worked with assistants who wouldn’t dare attempt levity with me. Most either worshipped the ground I walked on or avoided conversation entirely.

Kayna, apparently, didn’t scare easily.

“Have the prep file for tomorrow’s Cosmo meeting ready by five.” I said, holding out my tablet. “Everything you need is in here.”

She took it, her fingers brushing mine briefly—cool, steady, professional.

But the contact lingered in my mind as I walked away.

Back in my office, I sat down and opened her HR file again. No red flags. No strange employment gaps. Clean references.

Yet my instincts kept circling back to that look she’d had when I first met her—like she’d built walls long before walking through my doors.

I’ve learnt to trust my instincts in business. People were rarely just what they presented themselves to be. And the ones who appeared flawless on the surface… usually had the deepest fractures beneath.

Later in the afternoon , as I reviewed the Cosmo details, my gaze flicked to her again. She didn’t look up, didn’t seem to notice me. But I had the strange sense that beneath her calm, she was aware of everything.I couldn’t decide if that made her more useful or more dangerous.

The thought didn’t leave me even when I left for the evening.

⸻

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I sat in my penthouse office with a glass of  scotch, the city lights sprawling endlessly beneath me. My mind kept looping back to her—Kayna Scott.

The measured way she moved.

The way she’d handled my schedule without being asked.

And though I couldn’t explain why the way her expression had flickered for just a moment after that phone call earlier in the day.

I didn’t know what it had been about.

But something told me… I’d find out soon enough.