C10 Under his gaze

Daphne

I could still feel his eyes on me long after I’d left his office.

The door had shut, but the weight of his gaze lingered like a bruise beneath my skin.

Antonio Nikolaou.

My fiancé.

My heartbreak.

My boss.

I kept walking, each step echoing too loudly on the polished floors of Nikolaou Holdings. My pulse hadn’t calmed since the moment I’d seen him — his face sharper, his aura heavier, his voice like a blade I’d once kissed.

I told myself to breathe. To get to my desk. To act normal.

But when I turned the corner into the open workspace, every whisper stopped.

Dozens of heads snapped back to their screens, pretending to work. I could feel their curiosity pressing down on me — the coffee tray still trembling in my hands, the heat still burning at the back of my neck.

I set the tray down and sank into my chair. The hum of the office swallowed me, but it didn’t help.

“Okay,” a voice whispered beside me. “Tell me everything.”

Irene.

My one friend in this place, nosy enough to qualify as an investigative journalist if she ever got bored of accounting.

She slid into the seat next to mine, her brown eyes glinting like she’d just stumbled onto a corporate scandal. Which, technically, she had.

“What was he like?” she asked in a stage whisper. “Is he as gorgeous as everyone says? I mean, I only saw him from the elevator reflection, but wow—”

“Irene,” I hissed, glancing around. “Not here.”

“Oh, come on.” She leaned closer. “Half the floor’s talking about him already. You got to serve the Antonio Nikolaou coffee. That’s, like, a religious experience.”

I let out a shaky breath and tried to focus on my computer screen. “It was… fine. He’s just a man.”

“Right.” She arched an eyebrow. “A man who looks like he stepped out of a billionaire romance novel and into our building.”

I nearly choked. “Can you not?”

Her grin widened. “You’re blushing.”

I wasn’t. I was just overheating from the sheer absurdity of fate.

Antonio was here. Antonio owned this company. Antonio — the man I’d broken — now signed my paycheck.

I couldn’t have scripted a crueler joke if I’d tried.

“Anyway,” Irene said, lowering her voice as she pretended to type, “people are saying he’s ruthless. That he built this empire from nothing in, like, three years. No one even knew he existed before that. Some think he’s connected, you know?” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Like, mafia connected.”

My fingers froze above the keyboard.

Connected.

The word sank like ice into my spine.

I forced a laugh, weak and too quick. “That’s ridiculous. Mafia? This isn’t a movie.”

But she didn’t look convinced. “Still. The guy gives off serious don vibes. The way everyone went silent when he walked in — I swear, even the air-conditioning held its breath.”

I wanted to tell her she wasn’t wrong.

That Antonio had always had that presence — a quiet power that bent rooms around him.

But I couldn’t.

Because the truth was, I didn’t know this Antonio anymore.

The man I’d kissed goodbye three years ago wasn’t the one who’d stared at me today.

This one was colder. Harder. More dangerous in ways that didn’t fit into neat explanations.

I tried to drown the noise by working — typing random numbers into spreadsheets, rereading the same line of an email four times. But my brain wouldn’t focus.

Every time I blinked, I saw him.

The sharp line of his jaw. The faint scar I didn’t remember under his lip. The look in his eyes — not just anger, but something worse. Something calculating.

He hadn’t yelled. He hadn’t questioned me.

He’d just looked at me like I was already part of some plan I didn’t understand.

“Hey,” Irene said softly after a while. “You okay?”

I blinked out of the fog. “Yeah. Just… tired.”

“You sure? You look like you saw a ghost.”

I gave her a weak smile. “Maybe I did.”

She shrugged, accepting that as enough, and turned back to her computer. But her words lingered in my head.

A ghost.

Yes — that’s what Antonio felt like. A ghost that had clawed his way out of my past to stand before me again.

I made it through the rest of the day on autopilot. Meetings blurred together. The office buzzed about the CEO’s return — about how he was personally reviewing departments, about how some people might get promotions. Irene whispered theories between phone calls.

But all I could think about was the way Antonio had said my name.

The way it had hurt to hear it again.

By the time five o’clock came, my nerves were shot. I packed my bag and escaped before anyone could stop me.

The elevator doors slid shut, and for the first time all day, I exhaled. My reflection in the mirrored wall looked pale and drained.

I whispered to it, “You did the right thing. You saved him.”

But the reflection didn’t believe me any more than I did.

When the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, I nearly ran for the exit. The cool evening air outside felt like freedom — until I caught sight of the dark car parked across the street.

A black Mercedes.

Windows tinted. Engine running.

Something in me knew.

My heart stuttered.

The back window lowered an inch — just enough for me to see him inside.

Antonio.

Sitting there in the half-light, eyes fixed directly on me.

I froze on the sidewalk. The noise of Velmor City blurred around us — horns, footsteps, the hum of streetlights — but all I could hear was my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

He didn’t move. Didn’t smile. Just watched me, calm and unreadable.

Then, without a word, the window rolled back up. The car pulled away, merging into traffic as if nothing had happened.

I stood there long after it was gone, clutching my bag against my chest, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t shaking.

But deep down, I knew the truth.

Antonio Nikolaou hadn’t just returned.

He was watching me.

And whatever game he was playing — I was already in it.

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