A Locked Office and a Missing Guard

By the time the car reached Rossi Luxury Group headquarters, Manhattan was fully awake.

Traffic clogged the streets below in shining lines of steel and impatience. Screens lit up storefronts. Delivery vans blocked lanes. People in expensive coats and cheap sneakers rushed toward meetings they were probably already late for.

Inside the black Aston Martin, however, the air was cold enough to preserve a body.

Aria sat in the back seat with one leg crossed over the other, sunglasses on despite the fact that the morning sky was overcast. She looked perfectly composed, perfectly polished, and perfectly unbothered.

Only Adrian, seated beside her, noticed the tiny things.

The stillness in her shoulders.

The way her thumb tapped once against the leather of her handbag.

The unnatural quiet.

Aria Rossi was not calm.

She was focused.

Mia sat across from them, tablet in hand, flipping through security reports with the speed of someone trying very hard not to panic in front of her boss.

“The executive floor access log has already been pulled,” Mia said. “Night security is locking down the forty-seventh floor. Building management is pretending they’ve never had a security failure in their lives.”

“Of course they are,” Aria said.

Mia looked up. “Also… the missing guard’s name is Daniel Reeves. Thirty-four. Worked night rotation for eight months. No criminal record. No obvious financial problems.”

“No obvious ones,” Adrian corrected.

Mia nodded tightly. “Right.”

Adrian was reading the preliminary incident file on his phone. “What time was he last seen?”

“2:13 a.m.,” Mia said. “One of the other guards passed him near the service corridor behind the executive wing.”

“And the break-in was discovered?”

“6:20 this morning. Cleaning staff found Aria’s office door ajar and called building security.”

Adrian’s expression remained unreadable, but Aria had already learned enough about him in less than twenty-four hours to know when he was irritated.

This was one of those times.

“Say it,” she said.

Adrian glanced at her. “Your building security is sloppy.”

Mia looked offended on behalf of the entire corporation.

Aria, however, only leaned back in her seat. “That’s not exactly groundbreaking insight, Mr. Robot.”

Mia choked on a laugh.

Adrian ignored the nickname with the stoicism of a man who was either very disciplined or planning several murders internally.

“The guard disappears in the middle of the night,” he said. “Your office is breached. And somehow no one notices until the cleaning crew arrives in the morning. Yes, I’d call that sloppy.”

Aria turned toward the window, watching the city slide past. “If Daniel was taken, he may not have had a choice.”

“If he was taken,” Adrian said.

She looked at him sharply. “You think he was involved.”

“I think we don’t know enough yet to be charitable.”

That shut the car up for a second.

Because the truth was, Aria had already considered it.

Daniel Reeves wasn’t one of her inner circle. He was just a guard in a long list of employees spread across buildings, shifts, and departments. But Rossi Luxury Group paid well, screened heavily, and rarely had internal security issues.

Rarely.

Not never.

Aria knew better than to believe in never.

The Aston Martin turned beneath the private entrance of Rossi headquarters and rolled to a smooth stop in the underground executive garage. Before the engine had fully died, Adrian was already out of the car.

Aria opened her own door at the same moment.

Adrian appeared beside it instantly.

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

Then his gaze dropped to the heel of her shoe.

Aria narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“You’re wearing stilettos.”

“Yes. Because I’m not dead yet.”

“In a potentially compromised building.”

She stared at him. “Are you criticizing my shoes during a security incident?”

“I’m criticizing your survival instincts.”

“I can kill a man in these shoes.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Adrian shut the car door behind her. “If I have to move you quickly, those heels are a liability.”

Aria blinked.

Then smiled.

Slowly.

Dangerously.

“That sounds almost protective.”

“It’s literally my job.”

“Still counts.”

Mia made a small strangled noise behind them that suspiciously sounded like suppressed laughter.

Adrian’s jaw tightened.

Aria was beginning to enjoy this far too much.

The private elevator was already waiting. Two armed De Luca security men stood outside it, both in dark suits with earpieces and the kind of expressions that suggested they had been born without the ability to smile.

Aria’s gaze moved over them briefly.

Interesting.

She hadn’t seen them before, but she knew Adrian’s type now—quiet, disciplined, lethal.

The elevator doors opened.

Adrian stepped in first, eyes scanning automatically.

Aria followed with Mia at her side.

The ride to the executive floor was silent except for the low hum of the elevator and the faint tapping of Mia’s fingers against her tablet.

When the doors opened again, chaos greeted them.

The forty-seventh floor—normally a shrine to luxury minimalism and ruthless professionalism—had turned into a controlled emergency scene.

Security officers stood at every corridor intersection.

Building management hovered near the reception area looking pale and expensive.

Aria’s executive assistant desk sat abandoned, phones still ringing unanswered from the spillover of the morning schedule.

And at the far end of the corridor, outside Aria’s office, stood at least six people who all looked guilty of something, even if it was only incompetence.

The moment Aria stepped out of the elevator, the floor straightened.

“Ms. Rossi.”

“Miss Rossi.”

“Good morning, Ms. Rossi.”

Aria didn’t slow down.

“Save the greetings,” she said coolly. “If someone broke into my office, I assume all of you have better things to do than perform manners.”

No one answered.

Good.

Adrian walked beside her, close enough to intervene if needed, far enough not to crowd her. His attention moved everywhere at once—faces, exits, body language, hands, camera placements, the angle of the half-open office door ahead.

Mia hurried after them. “The police haven’t been called yet. I told building management to wait.”

One of the senior security supervisors, a heavyset man in his fifties named Carl, stepped forward immediately. “Ms. Rossi, we wanted to preserve the scene until you arrived—”

“Why is my office door open?” Adrian cut in.

Carl blinked. “We—we found it like that.”

“And you left it unsecured?”

“We posted guards—”

“You left the breach exposed,” Adrian said, voice flat enough to make Carl visibly sweat. “Who entered after it was discovered?”

Carl opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Looked at Aria for rescue.

Aria folded her arms. “I’d answer him.”

Carl swallowed. “Two cleaning staff. Me. One building manager. No one touched anything.”

Adrian’s eyes stayed on him for one beat too long. “If that turns out to be untrue, you’ll be the first person I revisit.”

Carl paled.

Aria shouldn’t have enjoyed that.

She absolutely did.

“Move,” Adrian said.

And everyone did.

He pushed open the office door with a gloved hand and stepped inside first.

Aria followed.

Then stopped.

Her office looked almost normal at first glance.

That was the unsettling part.

The floor-to-ceiling windows still framed Manhattan in silver light. Her desk was immaculate except for one displaced file tray. The cream sofa near the bookshelf remained perfectly arranged. Her awards, framed covers, and decorative sculptures were all exactly where they should be.

Only the far wall gave it away.

Behind her desk, built seamlessly into the marble and dark oak paneling, was a private storage system hidden behind touch-activated wood panels. Three of those panels now hung open.

And one of the interior safes had been forced.

Aria went still.

Adrian noticed immediately.

“What was kept in there?”

“Confidential contracts. old financial archives. backup drives,” she said.

“Anything more important than that?”

Aria didn’t answer right away.

Because yes.

There had been something more important.

Not enough to expose her real identity.

Not enough to ruin everything.

But enough to matter.

Inside that safe had been an encrypted drive containing copies of old Rossi family records—documents her father had hidden years ago, pieces of financial trails and coded transactions that might or might not connect to Project Genesis.

Nothing complete.

Nothing anyone could use on its own.

But in the wrong hands?

Potentially dangerous.

Adrian was watching her now.

Not impatient.

Not pushy.

Just watching with that cold, unnerving focus of his.

Aria exhaled once. “There may have been a drive in there.”

“May have?”

“I haven’t checked yet.”

“Then check.”

Her eyes snapped to his. “I know how investigations work.”

“Do you?”

That was it.

Aria turned fully toward him, chin lifting. “I was trying to be cooperative this morning, but I can stop.”

Adrian’s expression didn’t change. “That would be consistent.”

Mia, standing in the doorway, muttered, “Oh no.”

Aria ignored her. “Do you make a habit of talking to clients like this?”

“Only the difficult ones.”

“Then you must be very busy.”

“I am now.”

The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut skin.

Mia looked like she wanted popcorn.

Adrian looked like a man who had somehow found himself babysitting a hurricane in designer heels.

And Aria—

Aria was dangerously close to smiling.

Not because she was happy.

Because she was furious enough to enjoy herself.

She stepped toward the open safe and crouched in front of it. The metal door had been pried open with force from the lock side—cleaner than a panicked smash job, rougher than a professional vault specialist. Whoever had done this had skill.

But not enough to do it invisibly.

Aria checked the upper shelf.

Contracts.

A jewelry appraisal file.

An emergency passport she’d forgotten existed.

Then the lower compartment.

Empty.

Her stomach tightened.

The encrypted drive was gone.

Adrian was beside her a second later. “Missing?”

“Yes.”

“What was on it?”

“Old family records.”

“What kind of records?”

“Financial.”

He was quiet for one second.

Then, “That’s not the full answer.”

Aria rose smoothly to her feet and shut the safe door harder than necessary. “It’s enough for now.”

“For you, maybe.”

“For you definitely.”

Their eyes locked.

This time there was no humor in it.

No teasing.

No sparks disguised as irritation.

Only pressure.

Adrian knew she was withholding something.

Aria knew he knew.

And neither of them looked even remotely willing to back down.

Mia cleared her throat before the air in the room could get any more violent. “I can have IT check whether anyone tried to access the office system overnight.”

“Do it,” Adrian said.

Mia blinked.

Then slowly looked at Aria.

Aria looked at Adrian.

Adrian looked at no one because apparently ordering people around in her office had become a hobby.

“Do it,” Aria repeated at last.

Mia vanished instantly.

Adrian crouched near the forced paneling, inspecting the splintered wood around the safe housing. “No fingerprints yet?”

Carl, still hovering nervously outside, answered from the doorway. “Our team dusted the outer desk area, but we left the safe and panels untouched.”

“Good,” Adrian said. “For once.”

Carl looked like he might pass out.

Aria stepped away from the safe and moved toward her desk, scanning the room more carefully.

A broken office always told a story.

You just had to know where to look.

The file tray on her desk had been nudged out of place.

A drawer on the left side had been opened and shut again slightly crooked.

One pen lay on the floor near the chair.

Small things.

Careless things.

But not random.

Whoever had come here hadn’t just rushed to the safe and left. They’d searched. Briefly, maybe. But they had looked around.

Aria crouched and picked up the pen.

Then her gaze shifted.

Under the desk, near the inside leg of the chair, was a tiny dark stain on the marble floor.

Not ink.

Blood.

Very little.

Just enough to matter.

Aria straightened.

“Adrian.”

He was beside her almost immediately. “What?”

She pointed.

He crouched, eyes narrowing. “Fresh enough to be last night.”

“Not mine,” Aria said dryly.

“Comforting.”

“Do you do that on purpose?”

“What?”

“Say things like that in the middle of a crime scene.”

“Yes.”

She stared at him.

He looked back, completely serious.

Aria had no idea whether to laugh or threaten him.

Maybe both.

Adrian touched the stain lightly with a gloved fingertip, then looked toward the corner of the desk. “There was a struggle.”

Aria followed his line of sight.

A faint scuff marked the base of the desk leg. Another on the floor near the bookshelf.

Someone had stumbled.

Or been shoved.

Carl stepped into the office doorway, wringing his hands. “Ms. Rossi, if I may—”

“No,” Aria said without looking at him.

Carl wilted.

Adrian stood. “Where are the security cameras for this floor?”

Carl seized on the question like a drowning man grabbing driftwood. “There are four hallway cameras, one at reception, one in the west corridor, and one overlooking the executive entrance. But Ms. Rossi’s office doesn’t have interior cameras.”

“Obviously,” Aria said.

Adrian ignored her. “Any outages?”

Carl hesitated.

That was answer enough.

Adrian’s voice turned colder. “How long?”

“From 1:47 a.m. to 3:12 a.m. on the executive hallway feed,” Carl admitted.

Aria went still.

Mia, who had just returned with her tablet and a panicked-looking IT manager, stopped dead in the doorway.

“Repeat that,” Aria said.

Carl swallowed. “The west executive hallway camera went dark for about an hour and twenty-five minutes.”

“And no one thought to mention that before now?” Adrian asked.

Carl looked like he wanted the earth to open and swallow him. “We were still compiling the report—”

Aria turned.

She didn’t raise her voice.

That was the terrifying part.

“Carl,” she said softly, “if you ever again decide that an hour and twenty-five minutes of missing surveillance near my office is something to mention later, I will personally make sure your next job involves supervising parking meters in a city with no cars. Do you understand me?”

Carl’s face lost what little color it had left. “Yes, Ms. Rossi.”

“Good. Get out of my sight.”

He got out of her sight.

Immediately.

Mia winced in sympathy. “Well. He’s never sleeping again.”

“He shouldn’t,” Aria said.

Adrian took the tablet from Mia and skimmed the preliminary camera report. “The outage starts thirty minutes before the guard was last seen.”

“So Daniel either missed it,” Aria said, “or he was part of it.”

“Or he was taken because he noticed it.”

Mia hugged the tablet to her chest. “That’s not comforting.”

“No one asked it to be,” Aria said.

The IT manager, who had wisely remained silent until now, finally cleared his throat. “Ms. Rossi… there’s something else.”

Every head in the room turned toward him.

The poor man visibly regretted existing.

“What?”

He adjusted his glasses with trembling fingers. “There was an attempted login to your private office system at 2:04 a.m. Whoever was here tried to access your encrypted archive partition.”

Aria’s expression sharpened. “Did they get in?”

“No.”

Relief didn’t come.

Not even a little.

“Why not?” Adrian asked.

The IT manager looked at Aria, uncertain.

She answered for him. “Because I built a secondary encryption lock into that partition after my father died.”

Adrian’s eyes moved to her.

That was new information.

And she knew he’d caught it.

The IT manager hurried on. “The intruder failed the first security layer, then disconnected manually. It looks like they gave up and went for the physical safe instead.”

“Not gave up,” Adrian said. “Adapted.”

Aria folded her arms tighter.

That was worse.

Much worse.

Because it meant the person in her office last night had not been blindly searching for money, jewelry, or generic corporate leverage.

They had known enough to try the encrypted partition first.

Which meant they had known there was something worth taking.

Someone had talked.

Or someone had been watching her far longer than she liked.

Mia must have seen something change in Aria’s face, because her voice softened. “Aria…”

“I’m fine.”

That was a lie.

Not because she was afraid.

Aria Rossi had long ago learned how to live with fear by locking it in a box and setting the box on fire.

No, what she felt now was colder.

Anger.

Careful, elegant anger.

Someone had entered her office.

Touched her father’s records.

Taken something that belonged to her family.

And worst of all—

they had done it while she slept.

Adrian handed the tablet back to Mia. “I want copies of every access log, every camera angle, and the full employee roster for anyone on this floor after midnight.”

“You’re not in charge here,” Aria said automatically.

He looked at her. “Then tell them yourself.”

She held his gaze for a beat.

Then turned to Mia. “Do exactly that.”

Mia nodded.

Adrian did not smile.

Which was good.

If he had smiled, Aria might have done something regrettable with the nearest paperweight.

Instead, he walked toward the office windows and looked down at the city below, hands in his pockets, shoulders rigid.

Thinking.

Aria hated how much she wanted to know what was going on inside his head.

She moved to stand beside him.

Not close enough to touch.

Close enough to be irritating.

“Say it,” she said.

He didn’t look at her. “This wasn’t random.”

“I know.”

“They knew where to look.”

“I know.”

“They came for something specific.”

Aria’s voice cooled. “I know.”

This time Adrian did look at her.

And there it was again—that unnerving, steady focus.

“Then stop pretending this is just a corporate security problem.”

The words hit their target.

Aria’s jaw tightened.

“Be careful, Mr. De Luca.”

“With what?”

“With the line you’re about to cross.”

He was silent for one breath.

Then—

“I crossed it the moment I accepted this assignment.”

Aria stared at him.

The city glittered beyond the glass.

Phones rang faintly in the outer office.

Mia argued with someone in hushed, furious Mandarin near reception.

But inside Aria’s office, the world narrowed to Adrian De Luca and the impossible calm in his face.

“You don’t know what you’re stepping into,” she said quietly.

“Then tell me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Because if she told him the truth—any part of it—nothing would stay simple.

Because Adrian De Luca was already too observant.

Too steady.

Too dangerous to place near secrets she’d spent ten years protecting with blood and silence.

Because one stolen drive was bad enough.

Handing over the shape of Project Genesis to the world’s most infuriating bodyguard would be worse.

Aria turned away first.

“Because I said no.”

Adrian’s mouth flattened.

Before he could answer, one of his men appeared in the doorway.

“Sir.”

Aria hated the way Adrian’s entire posture sharpened at that single word.

“What is it?”

The guard glanced at Aria, then at Mia, clearly weighing how much to say.

Adrian noticed.

“Speak.”

“We found the missing night guard’s car.”

Mia went still.

Aria slowly turned back.

“Where?”

“Two blocks from the east river service road,” the man said. “Abandoned.”

Adrian’s expression didn’t move. “And Daniel Reeves?”

The guard hesitated.

That was enough.

Aria’s stomach dropped—not from fear, but from the certainty that the day had just gotten worse.

“There’s blood in the driver’s seat,” the man said. “A lot of it.”

Silence.

Mia lowered the tablet.

The IT manager looked like he might faint.

Adrian didn’t take his eyes off his man. “Any sign of the body?”

“No, sir.”

Aria set her handbag on the desk with deliberate care.

Then she looked at Adrian.

He looked back.

No teasing.

No bickering.

No Mr. Robot nonsense.

Only understanding.

This wasn’t just a break-in anymore.

This was a message.

And someone had just written it in blood.

Aria’s voice, when it came, was perfectly calm.

Too calm.

“I’m going with you.”

Adrian’s answer came instantly.

“No.”

Aria’s smile returned.

Beautiful.

Cold.

Absolutely merciless.

“That wasn’t a request.”

---

Author Note

Okayyyyy now the story is officially moving 😭✨

Poor Daniel is either in very serious trouble… or already became part of the warning.

And whoever broke into Aria’s office clearly wasn’t just there to snoop around.

Also yes, Aria and Adrian are already fighting like a divorced couple who were forced into the same crime scene 😌

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