Bound by Power: 1. The Glass-Walled Cage

The office was too quiet at night. Too sterile.

Ava shifted in her chair, crossing her legs at the knees, her skirt riding higher than she intended. The city stretched endlessly beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, its lights glittering like stars spilled across black velvet. Out there, the world kept moving—cars honking, lives colliding, stories unfolding. But in here, inside this glass-walled cage, time stood still.

She pushed a strand of dark hair from her face and bent over the report on her laptop. Her fingers tapped at the keys, but her mind wasn’t on the numbers. It was on the sound of her own breathing. The hum of the fluorescent lights. The occasional creak of the air-conditioning.

And—though she hated admitting it—the possibility of him.

Dominic Blackwell.

The CEO. Her boss. The man who didn’t need to command attention because it wrapped itself around him like a cloak. Even when he wasn’t in the room, his presence was.

She had only been his exe