Beneath the Deception: Forever Possessed

Lyla Monroe

“What the heck!?”

His voice sliced through the room like a whip.

I blinked, heat rising to my cheeks as every eye in the conference room swung to me. My hands trembled slightly around the coffee tray, but I held onto it like my life depended on it.

Luca Steele stood at the head of the long glass table, tall, lethal, and entirely too composed for a man who’d just been drenched in a splash of boiling cappuccino. Steam still rose from his tailored black suit, but his steel-gray eyes were colder than ice.

“You’ve worked for me for two years,” he said, each word slow, deliberate, laced with venom. “And you still manage to be a walking disaster. Fix it. Or quit.”

No one dared to breathe.

The coffee stain spread across the crisp white papers in front of him, slowly bleeding into confidential numbers and contract drafts worth millions. I scrambled forward, grabbing tissues from the tray, muttering apologies that sounded too small, too broken, too pathetic.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Steele—”

“Sorry doesn’t clean Armani.” He stepped back, brushing off his sleeve with visible disgust. “And what the hell are you wearing?”

I froze.

His eyes dragged over me. Every inch.

My oversized brown cardigan hung off my shoulders like a borrowed curtain. The faded blouse underneath clung to me awkwardly, a button missing near the collar. The olive-green skirt was too long, too wrinkled, and paired horribly with the scuffed, worn-out flats I’d owned since college.

My foundation was two shades too pale. My lipstick was crooked. The jet-black wig I wore hung limply around my face, uncombed and clearly fake. And the massive round sunglasses I wore indoors? That was the final punchline.

I was a caricature. And everyone knew it.

Chuckles rippled softly across the room.

“I’m not running a charity,” Luca said, cutting through the silence. “If you can’t show up looking like a professional, then don’t show up at all.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He turned his back and walked toward the screen, launching into a presentation like I hadn’t just been stripped of every ounce of dignity in front of ten high-ranking executives.

I stood there, cheeks burning, throat tight.

And then I turned and walked out.

The moment the bathroom door clicked shut behind me, I collapsed into the farthest stall. My hands gripped the toilet seat as sobs wracked my chest. Quiet, sharp, hopeless sobs.

I didn’t even care about the coffee anymore. Or the cardigan. Or the snickers in the room.

I was just so… tired.

Tired of hiding. Tired of pretending. Tired of working ten times harder just to be invisible.

I reached into my purse for tissues and caught my reflection in the mirror through the gap in the stall door.

God. I did look awful.

The glasses had fogged up from my breath. My mascara was smudged beneath the frames. And the wig—it sat like a lifeless animal on my head, tangled, greasy, and suffocating. I buried my face into my hands, trying to breathe.

Then—my phone buzzed.

LUCA STEELE.

I swallowed hard.

I wiped my face with toilet paper, fixed my lipstick with shaking fingers, tucked a strand of wig behind my ear, and inhaled once. Twice.

By the time I stepped out of the stall, the tears were gone.

The mask was back.

I walked through the hallway, the same hallway I walked every day, except now it felt like a spotlight was burning holes in me. Two interns passed by, whispering a little too loudly.

“She looks like a blind clown.”

“I heard she lives in her car.”

“She probably has blackmail on him. No way Steele keeps that thing around otherwise.”

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t break stride. I never did.

Luca’s office loomed ahead, the frosted glass doors tall and foreboding. I stepped in without knocking.

He didn’t look up.