Alexander Drake had learned to measure his days by the distance to nightfall.
The daylight hours—calls, reports, negotiations—were mechanical, predictable. But as the sun sank behind the glass towers of Noctaris, his pulse shifted, attuning itself to a quieter rhythm: the whisper of rubber soles on marble, the hum of a cart wheeling through deserted corridors.
He no longer saw the Drake Building as a workplace. It had become a stage—vast, empty, echoing—a theater for a performance that only two people knew existed.
Tonight, he was prepared.
He'd shifted his desk closer to the door, just enough to glimpse the hallway through the crack of light beneath the frame. The adjustment was subtle, defensible. His laptop glowed with spreadsheets and forecasts, a perfect façade.
On the corner of his desk sat his phone, screen dark but ready. If Greg called—or if anyone questioned him—he would murmur something about late reports, about strategy, about empire. The kind of lie that had become his second language.
But he wasn't waiting for an email.
He was waiting for her.
The silence stretched around him, thick and heavy, interrupted only by the distant purr of servers. Time slowed until every second sounded like a heartbeat. Then, right on cue—ten o'clock—the sound came.
The low rumble of a cleaning cart.
He straightened, pulse quickening. The absurdity wasn't lost on him: Alexander Drake, the man whose decisions shifted markets, waiting like a boy for a girl to appear in a doorway.
The cart drew closer, its wheels whispering across the polished floor. Then she appeared—pale, quiet, unhurried—framed by the doorway's sterile light.
Elena.
In the harsh white glow, her gray jumpsuit made her almost colorless, but the illusion fell apart at her face. Her skin caught the light like porcelain, her features sharpened by shadow. And her eyes—deep, mossy green beneath dark lashes—held the calm detachment of someone who had seen everything and judged none of it worth reacting to.
She didn't look at him. Not once. She pushed her cart inside and began to clean—doorframe, switch, sill—each motion deliberate and spare.
The silence between them was alive. It breathed.
Alexander pretended to read the numbers on his screen, but his eyes flicked up every few seconds. Each time, she was closer—polishing the glass, dusting the edges of his world as though erasing his existence molecule by molecule.
He wanted to say something—anything. The questions pressed at the back of his throat: What's your name? What do you think about when you work? What does the city look like through your eyes?
But he said nothing.
The hum of the air conditioning became a metronome to his thoughts. He couldn't bear the silence any longer.
"You're new here, aren't you?" he asked, his voice cracking the stillness.
Elena's hand paused mid-motion, her gloved fingers resting on the ledge. She didn't look at him immediately. "No," she said softly. "I've been here two years."
Her voice was low, measured—like velvet laid over steel.
Two years.
He blinked. He'd walked through this building nearly every day of those two years, and somehow, he'd never seen her. Never once. She'd existed in the blind spot of his empire.
"I see," he murmured, clearing his throat. "I must not keep the same hours."
She resumed wiping the ledge. "No," she said. "You leave before the world gets quiet."
He froze. It wasn't what she said—it was how she said it. As if she pitied him.
He shifted in his seat, grasping for control. "I suppose that's true," he said lightly. "I didn't realize the building still had this level of… care."
"It does," she said simply. "You just don't look."
Her words landed like a blade slipped beneath his armor.
He exhaled, a small, involuntary laugh escaping him. "You're quite direct."
"I don't have the luxury of pretending," she said. Her tone was even, but her eyes lifted for the briefest moment, meeting his.
And in that heartbeat, everything stilled.
There was no fear in her gaze. No awe. Only quiet recognition.
He tried to smile, but it felt foreign on his face. "I'm Alexander Drake," he said, like an apology or a defense.
Her gaze didn't waver. "I know."
Two words.
They hung in the air like smoke—dense, curling, inescapable.
Something in him faltered. All the power, the prestige, the practiced control—none of it mattered here. She'd dismantled it with two syllables.
She turned away and began cleaning the bookshelf, her movements returning to their rhythm.
He watched her for a long time. The way her wrist moved in precise arcs, the way she tilted her head when aligning books, the faint hum she made under her breath. Each motion was a language, and he didn't yet know how to read it.
Elena felt his gaze follow her. She didn't need to see him to know where he sat; she could feel the focus like heat on her skin.
She wondered if he knew that he wasn't the first man to watch her work—but he was the only one who did it without arrogance. His curiosity wasn't predatory. It was… lost.
He doesn't know what he's looking for, she thought. That's what makes it dangerous.
She caught her reflection in the window—a faint silhouette beside his mirrored image on the glass. For a second, they looked like two ghosts haunting the same space, each watching the other, neither willing to admit it.
"Do you ever sleep, Mr. Drake?" she asked suddenly, still facing the glass.
He blinked. "Not much. You?"
"Enough."
"Enough for what?"
"To keep seeing what others miss."
She turned to him then, her expression unreadable. He couldn't tell if she was mocking him or offering truth.
The conversation drifted into silence again, but it was different now. The air between them vibrated with something unsaid—something neither was ready to touch.
He found himself studying her hands, the way they moved with purpose but without hesitation. He wondered what those hands did outside this place—what they held, what they hid.
When she finished dusting the last shelf, she turned back toward her cart.
"Good night, Mr. Drake."
He stood impulsively. "Wait."
She stopped.
He searched for words, any words, but all that came out was: "You never told me your name."
She hesitated, then said, "You never asked."
And she was gone, the soft rumble of her cart fading down the corridor like the closing of a curtain.
For a long while, Alexander stayed where he was, his office dim except for the pool of light on his desk. His reflection in the window stared back at him, hollow-eyed and uncertain.
He realized he'd spent years mastering the art of being seen—on magazine covers, investor lists, screens. But in a single evening, a woman in a gray jumpsuit had seen him more clearly than anyone ever had.
He didn't know what unsettled him more: that she'd looked at him and found him wanting, or that she might look again.
The city outside pulsed with distant light, indifferent and endless. Somewhere below, she was still cleaning, still erasing traces of a world that would never thank her.
And Alexander Drake—billionaire, visionary, master of the game—sat in his office, haunted not by what she was, but by the terrifying thought that she might already understand what he was becoming.