Chapter 7
I didn't go back for anything. Anders kept calling my phone for a week-begging, demanding, raging. I blocked his number. I changed my passwords. I took my diploma, which I had earned a week before the champagne incident, and walked away from every single promise we had made.
I moved into the smallest, cheapest room I could find near campus, a place barely bigger than a closet. I didn't care. I needed to be alone and independent. Anders had called me a "constant weight," but now, the only weight I felt was the heavy, cold resolve to succeed.
I started applying for jobs non-stop. I didn't want a "starter" job; I wanted a job that put me in the room with power. I was brilliant, I was ruthless, and now I had nothing to lose. I needed money and influence, and I needed them fast.
The first few weeks were a brutal test. I survived on cheap coffee and less sleep. I focused on finishing my last part-time work commitments, saving every penny. I studied the business world with the same intensity I had once studied for exams. I was focused on one thing: the strategy for my comeback.
One rainy Friday, I was rushing. I had a rare, promising interview for an entry-level analyst position at a major financial firm-the kind Anders and his friends only dreamed of working for. I was wearing my best, slightly too-large suit and clutching my portfolio.
The rain was coming down hard. I was late, cutting across a busy crosswalk near the financial district, my mind racing through my interview talking points. I barely noticed the sleek, black luxury sedan speeding down the wet street.
I heard the frantic screech of tires an instant before the impact.
I wasn't hit hard, but the car clipped my side, sending me sprawling across the wet asphalt. My head slammed against the curb, and my portfolio flew open, scattering my perfectly organized papers into the street and the gutter. Pain exploded in my temple, and my vision swam.
The expensive car stopped immediately. The driver's side door flew open.
A man emerged from the car. Even through the blinding pain and the pouring rain, I registered two things: he was impeccably dressed and undeniably handsome. Not the flashy, boyish good looks of Anders, but something older, sharper, and colder. He looked like power wrapped in silk and expensive wool.
He rushed toward me, his face a mask of shock and annoyance. He knelt beside me in the dirty street.
"Are you insane? Why didn't you look?" he demanded, his voice a deep, commanding baritone. But then he saw the blood running down my face from a cut near my hairline, and his tone instantly shifted from anger to urgency.
"Are you hurt? Can you move?" He tried to gently touch my head.
I slapped his hand away. "Don't touch me! Look what you've done!"
My words were slurred. It wasn't the pain that made me furious; it was the wreckage of my hard work-my papers, my chance at the interview, ruined by his carelessness.
He looked at my scattered documents, then at my cheap suit, and then back at my bloody face. Something shifted in his cold, dark eyes. Not pity, but calculation.
"My name is Julian Voss," he stated, pulling out a perfectly clean white handkerchief and pressing it gently to my wound. "I am sorry for the accident. But we are going to fix this. Immediately."
He didn't offer an apology; he offered a solution, a command. Before I could protest, he scooped me up in his arms with surprising strength.
"I need a doctor, now," he barked to his driver, who had run over. "Then a change of clothes for both of us."
I was dizzy and shocked, held tight against his expensive jacket. His scent was clean, masculine, and smelled like money. As he carried me to his car, I saw my ruined interview papers floating in the gutter.
"My papers," I mumbled. "My interview."
Julian Voss didn't even look down. "Forget the interview," he said, his voice firm and close to my ear. "Tell me where you were going. That firm? I know the people who run it. And believe me, they will wait."
His words hit me harder than the car. This was no ordinary wealthy man. This was someone with the kind of immediate, casual authority that commanded respect in this city. Lying dizzy in his arms, covered in dirt and my own blood, I felt the cold realization: this accident was not a disaster. It was a door.
I looked up at the sharp, commanding features of Julian Voss. He was an opportunity-the perfect, dangerous weapon I needed to rise from the ashes and execute my plan against Anders.
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