When they saw me, they instinctively stiffened, shuffling backward to make room for the CEO.
I smiled, stepping in beside them.
“Don’t move,” I said warmly. “There’s plenty of room for all of us.”
As the doors slid shut, I caught my reflection in the mirrored metal. I was no longer the naive wife in a beige dress, trying to navigate a world that wanted her small. I was the CEO. The controlling shareholder. The woman who had stopped asking for permission to stand exactly where she belonged.
Trust, I had learned, is not blindness. Love is not permission to be used. And loyalty that demands you shrink yourself to fit someone else’s ego is not loyalty at all—it’s captivity.
Julian thought the elevator was the place where I would finally learn my rank and stay at the bottom.
Instead, it was the exact place where I decided to take over the building.
