dismissed a board member who snapped at her during a meeting, then asked Mara privately whether she wanted him removed from the project entirely.

Dominic did not flirt.

He did not soften in public.

But with Mara, his voice sometimes changed just enough to make her chest ache.

That was why she had written the resignation letter folded inside the blue envelope in her bag.

That, and the photograph someone had slid beneath her apartment door two nights earlier.

Dominic stepped out of the elevator.

Lila’s eyes were wide.

She mouthed, I’m sorry, as if silence after disaster could undo it.

Mara forced herself to move first.

Her knees felt unreliable, but pride carried what panic could not.

“Good morning, Mr.

Voss,” she said.

Dominic’s gaze dropped to the blue envelope visible at the top of her bag.

Then back to her face.

“Miss Ellison.” His voice was calm.

Too calm.

“My office.

Now.”

The few employees near reception suddenly became fascinated by their phones, their files, the shining buttons on their sleeves.

No one looked directly at them.

No one at Voss Maritime survived long without learning when not to look.

Mara walked past Dominic, her pulse hammering against her throat.

She could hear him behind her, each footstep measured.

He did not hurry.

He never did.

Hurry suggested a man was not in control.

His office sat behind two smoked-glass doors at the end of a private corridor guarded by a silent assistant named Soren who had the square shoulders of someone who had not always worked in administration.

Soren rose when he saw Dominic’s face, then sat again at a small motion of Dominic’s hand.

The doors closed behind Mara with a soft magnetic click.

Morning light spread across the black desk, steel model ships, framed nautical maps, and the long glass wall overlooking the river.

On any other day, Mara would have noticed the scent of cedar in Dominic’s coat or the exact way he removed his gloves before touching a document.

Today, she noticed only that there were two exits and he stood between her and both.

“Sit,” Dominic said.

“I’d rather stand.”

One dark eyebrow shifted.

It was a small thing, almost nothing, and yet Mara had learned his expressions the way other people learned weather.

Amusement.

Warning.

Concern.

Calculation.

This one was unfamiliar.

Dominic removed his gloves slowly and laid them on the desk.

“You were planning to resign.”

“Yes.”

“Because of me.”

Mara swallowed.

“Because I can no longer do my job properly.”

“You do your job better than anyone in this building.”

“That is not the point.”

“Then tell me the point.”

She hated that her face warmed.

She hated that he had heard the one sentence she had never intended to give him.

She hated even more that some hidden, treacherous part of her felt relieved.

At least the secret was no longer only hers.

“The point,” she said carefully, “is that I heard your name in a federal office last week.”

Dominic went still.

Not startled.

Not confused.

Still.

The difference mattered.

Mara reached into her bag and removed a cream-colored envelope, thinner than the resignation letter and wrinkled from being opened too many times.

She held it between them.

“I wasn’t at a dentist appointment on Thursday,” she