Two years earlier.
The first time Anita met Marcus Delaney, she was late.
That alone made him memorable. She was never late. Not to meetings, not to lunches, not to life. But the investor mixer at the Langham had been a last-minute favor to a board member, and she'd barely had time to change out of her work heels.
When she entered the room, the air buzzed with curated laughter and champagne bravado. Men in bespoke suits glanced up from their private conversations, assessing her with thinly veiled curiosity. She ignored them all—except the one in the corner, who didn't look up at all.
He was flipping through a dossier, dark brows furrowed in concentration. His tie was undone, shirt collar open—too casual for the room. That, more than anything, made her stop.
She approached. "You're either very confident or very lost."
He looked up. His eyes were striking—steel-gray and unreadable. "Neither. Just bored."
"Of this event?"
"Of pretense," he said. "But you already knew that, didn't you?"
She smiled despite herself. He didn't fawn, didn't flirt—he observed. And that intrigued her.
"I'm Anita George."
"I know who you are," he said. "You don't build a company like GNV Tech without leaving a trail of thunder behind you."
And just like that, he had her attention.
They talked for ten minutes, then twenty. Then an hour passed, and Anita forgot she had planned to leave early. Marcus challenged her—not with arrogance, but with curiosity. He asked questions most people didn't dare. He listened, and then he countered. He didn't care about her title. That made him dangerous. And maybe a little irresistible.
Later that night, as her car pulled away from the hotel, her assistant texted her a background file on him without her asking. Harvard. Former hedge fund wunderkind. Clean record. Sharp reputation. A name that had just started circling in the corridors of power.
She stared at the screen, then deleted the file.
Back then, she wanted to believe in something unscripted. Uncontrolled.
Maybe that was her first mistake.
Because Marcus didn't orbit her world by accident. He stepped into it like a man who had studied every blueprint of her success—and mapped out the perfect point of entry.
And she, for all her brilliance, mistook the crash of lightning for chemistry, not warning.