Chapter 1: Rain

It was a gloomy morning, and as soon as Liezel Anne Blanco stepped out of the cab, the rain poured down like it was mocking her, testing what little patience she had left after spilling coffee on her way to work.

When she got to the office, she settled down at her desk. Today was like any other day at work, except for her. She was wet, cold, and completely uncomfortable.

“Hey, Liezel Anne, what do you think of this? House of Terror slash The Little Mermaid―whoa! What happened to you?” Glen adjusted his big round glasses and ran his hand through his big, curly red hair. “You’re wet.”

Liezel frowned and tried to look for her facial tissue pack in the thick of papers strewn over her desk. It was already a miracle that Sinclair Godfrey hadn’t called her name yet. She was already ten minutes late, and she was supposed to bring her boss his cup of black coffee five minutes ago. She had to fix herself quick. She couldn’t possibly face him looking like a bedraggled chicken.

“Can I help you with anything, Liezel Anne?” Glen pushed, his eyes fixed on the cleavage pouring out of her black lace push-up bra.

She looked up and fixed one button of her shirt, but it was no use since her shirt was almost see-through. Fortunately, she had decided to wear her black pencil skirt and not the white one, or that day would have been a feast for perverts like Glen.

“Help me by wiping that foul look off your face, Glen, or I will write Maddy a strong-worded complaint against you.”

Glen made a face like he just heard her say a not-so-funny joke. “But I didn’t say anything.”

“Go back to your side of the floor with the rest of your geek friends. I don’t have any patience right now to excuse your immaturity and lewd behavior.” Liezel finally found her box of Kleenex and started dabbing at her legs with a tissue.

“I didn’t―”

“Hey, buddy.”

Liezel’s face suddenly lit up, recognizing that friendly, warm voice in an instant. She looked up and smiled.

“Hey, Will.”

“Good morning, Liz,” Will greeted. “Crazy weather outside, huh.”

“You look perfectly dry.”

“I brought an umbrella with me and my coat,” he said, eyeing the items in his hands.

“How’s the house hunting?”

“Still looking.”

“Okay,” Glen butted in. “Now isn’t this just unfair of you, Liezel Anne? You treat me like I’m some guy with pending sexual harassment complaints while you treat Will like a decent human being whose only crime is looking like the twenty-seven-year-old Brad Pitt with fucking gorgeous hair and fucking blue eyes.”

Will smiled and gave his friend a pat on the back. “If it’s any consolation, you look like Jonah Hill, Glen. Adorable and…funny. Sometimes.”

Liezel made a face and continued what she was doing before Will joined her little exchange with Glen.

“Which Jonah Hill? In what movie? Superbad Jonah Hill or Wolf of Wall Street?” Glen asked like the answer actually mattered to him.

It wasn’t anything new to Will or Liezel. Aside from his jokes that had, most of the time, offended a few people, Glen was also known to pick on the smallest things and make such a big deal out of it. He had quite a few talks with Maddy from HR about his choice of words and approach to women in the office. He had been given warnings more than a couple of times, and it wasn’t because he was Sinclair’s second-best developer next to Will that there weren’t official complaints against him, but people had just gotten too busy to pay him attention after closing a massive deal with two giant distributors in the gaming industry. When people became too happy and too busy after finally having some projects to work on, they started treating him like he wasn’t even there, except for when he was working.

“Superbad,” Will told him thoughtfully.

“Superbad?” Glen made a face. “Really? How dare you even say that to my face?”

“Well, you asked, buddy.”

As the two of them bickered, the ringing of Liezel’s phone on her desk interrupted them. Her heartbeat picked up because she knew who was calling her. She pulled the phone from the receiver and cleared her throat.

“Mr. Godfrey.”

The receiver rested against her shoulder as she dabbed a tissue on her face and ran her fingers through her damp dark brown hair that was curled in a bun.

“Ms. Blanco, I’m glad you’re finally here.”

She could tell by her boss’s tight voice that trouble was waiting for her inside his office as soon as he asked for her. She covered the phone and told Will, “This man hates me.”

Will just smiled. “We’ll see you around, Liz.”

She quickly gave him a nod and went back to fixing whatever she could.

“You’re late. And bring that file I need for my meeting with Dole Corp today,” Sinclair ordered.

“Right away, Mr. Godfrey.” A light smirk graced Liezel’s lips when she turned and walked away with the files to the CEO’s office.

Liezel had just started working as Sinclair’s assistant three months ago. Originally an assistant to the company’s former COO, Belinda Maxwell, for six months in New York, she was offered to work for Sinclair when Belinda took the same position in another MaxFrey Corp subsidiary in Paris. Belinda’s family and children had moved there, so it was a reasonable decision for her to do the same.

Sinclair may not be fond of her, which may explain the distance he kept between them, but she had gotten used to it. And for the past months, she had seen Sinclair in action and was beyond impressed. Her new boss was a natural negotiator, planner, thinker, and born leader. It was clear that no one can do the job better than he can.

Sinclair’s father, Arthur Godfrey, definitely knew what he was doing when he persuaded the board to offer his son the position and make him CEO of MaxTech, a struggling tech-focused subsidiary of MaxFrey Corp, at the age of twenty-eight.

“Fuck me,” Liezel whispered anxiously to herself. Before reaching for the doorknob, she regained her