Adrian Mwangi did not believe in coincidence.
Systems aligned. Decisions converged. People moved through patterns shaped by ambition and opportunity.
Chance, in the romantic sense, was indulgence.
Yet this morning, standing at the glass wall of his office, he found himself watching a woman one floor below as if inevitability had taken human form.
Ms Hailey.
The same woman who had stepped into Nerua's pre-dawn quiet with self-contained certainty and refused a stranger's help before accepting it on her own terms.
He had not expected to see her again.
He had certainly not expected her to enter Kairo Holdings escorted by Executive Operations.
New Marketing Director.
His Marketing Director.
The distinction settled instantly into structure — authority above, reporting lines below, organisational clarity intact.
And with it came a rule he had never once violated.
Adrian did not become involved with employees.
Not discreetly.
Not temporarily.
Not ever.
The boundary was neither convenience nor image. It was principle.
Power altered consent. Influence distorted perception. Even mutual attraction became compromised when hierarchy entered the equation.
He had watched corporations fracture under quieter scandals to understand erosion began long before exposure.
So he maintained distance.
Absolute.
Which made the awareness moving through him now inconveniently precise.
He was interested in her.
Not socially.
Not casually.
Specifically.
He replayed the corridor moment with exact recall — her recognition, the small genuine smile she had given him, the absence of calculation in it.
She remembered him only as the airport stranger.
She did not yet know who he was.
That asymmetry created a brief, impossible space in which he existed to her without power.
He had not occupied that space with anyone in years.
Adrian rested one hand against the glass.
Below, Level Fourteen moved in quiet productivity. Somewhere within it, Ms Hailey had already begun structuring his company's external voice.
Competent. Controlled. Contained.
He had read her file — impressive, disciplined, internationally tempered — but paper did not explain the steadiness he had recognised at dawn or the composure she carried now through unfamiliar corridors.
She moved like someone who did not seek approval.
It had been… refreshing.
Interest acknowledged.
Irrelevant.
Because she worked for him.
The line existed before attraction. It remained after.
He straightened and crossed to his desk, closing the slim folder Eliza had left.
Hailey Njeri.
Director of Marketing.
Reporting ultimately to CEO.
To him.
Which meant the matter resolved itself.
No pursuit.
No personal proximity beyond professional necessity.
No ambiguity.
He did not compromise his own structure.
Ever.
Yet memory persisted with inconvenient clarity:
Her at the kerb in thin dawn light.
The warmth in her eyes when she had recognised him in the corridor — unguarded because she believed him merely familiar.
That would change soon.
Once she understood he was CEO, every prior moment would reorder itself in her perception.
Power would enter memory.
Distance would follow naturally.
It always did.
Adrian placed both hands lightly on the desk edge, grounding the conclusion already reached.
Interest was not action.
Attraction was not exception.
And employees were not territory he crossed.
Still, his gaze drifted once more to the glass.
Level Fourteen.
Ms Hailey now existed permanently inside his professional sphere — the one domain he kept free of personal entanglement.
Which made her, by definition, unavailable.
The boundary held.
He would ensure it remained so.
Even if interest remained.