Dad and I hardly spoke for the rest of the weekend.

I hadn’t come home until late Friday night after getting dinner and drinks with Chad, and by then he’d already been asleep. On Saturday, I’d taken him to the cemetery where my mother was buried, but I’d hung back by an old oak tree a few graves over as he arranged flowers on her headstone. That evening at dinner, we had sat across from each other in pure silence, neither one daring to broach the topic that hung between us. I wasn’t even sure what I would have said if I had; it wasn’t like I was going to change his mind, and he wasn’t about to change mine either.

Even though we were mad at each other, he still thanked me for going with him to the cemetery and we exchanged I love yous before bed, knowing better than to go to sleep without making sure the other knew it.

I spent most of Sunday out of the house running errands and we reunited for yet another quiet dinner.

And then Monday morning arrived.

I’d been told to report to the manor instead of the downtown office for reasons I had yet to figure out. My whole body was tense when I pulled up to the property, leaning out the window to press the button on the intercom, this time telling the person on the other end that I was here for my first day of work. I didn’t get a reply, but the gates swinging open was more than enough of an answer.

After parking in the same place I had on Friday, I quickly looked myself over in the sun visor mirror. My makeup was as good as it was going to get and my hair was slicked back into a tight bun that was bound to give me a headache by the end of the day. Still, I had figured it was the most professional option for taming the curls genetics had blessed me with—although whenever I was trying to drag a comb through them, it felt more like a curse. Most days I left it loose and wild, leaving it up to a hope, a prayer, and some super-strength cream that it wouldn’t frizz too much. Today, however, I wasn’t willing to risk it.

With the slight comfort that I looked okay, I sucked in a breath and forced myself out of the car.

There were fewer people around today, but the woman with the clipboard I’d encountered on Friday was one of them. I was barely a couple steps into the foyer when she suddenly appeared in front of me.

“Hi,” she greeted, sounding pleasantly upbeat but still firmly no-nonsense. I made a mental note to never waste her time. “Golshan, right?”

“I go by Rose, actually,” I corrected, watching her brow lift as she scribbled something down on her clipboard.

“Right, sorry about that.” When she was done writing, she tucked the clipboard under her arm and gave me her full attention. “I’m Luz Rivera. I run things around here.”

“Is that your official job title?”

The lame attempt at a joke had her snickering, taking off the edge of intimidation she carried.

“It might as well be,” she said. “Officially, I’m in charge of the ‘transition of power’ from Rostami to Bakhtiar, and generally making sure everything goes smoothly.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a challenge. How is it going so far?”

At that, Luz looked me straight in the eye, a mix of humor and resigned panic in her own. “It’s an absolute shit show.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing, in part from the humor of her answer and because that was the least encouraging thing to hear on my first day. Still, I got the feeling that I was going to have an ally in Luz. “Good to know.”

She didn’t bother to hold back a snort. “I’m sure this isn’t the greatest welcome, but it’s the best I can offer.”

I was willing to take what I could get.

“Anyway,” she continued. “I’m here to help you with whatever you need. As the CEO’s assistant, you’re going to be in charge of both his personal and business schedules, and making sure his every want and need is taken care of.” She paused momentarily, lips scrunching to the side as she considered something. “Okay, that sounded kind of gross, but I mostly meant it in the PG way.”

Mostly? Oh, God, I didn’t want to think about what that could mean. As an assistant, I knew it would be my job to get my boss whatever he needed, of course, but I sincerely hoped things wouldn’t get too personal.

“Got it,” I said, even though I wasn’t quite sure if I did. “So, um, when do I get to meet Mr. Bakhtiar?”

I watched as Luz shifted her weight from one designer heel to the other, not quite meeting my gaze for a moment. “That’s… a little complicated at the moment.”

My brow knit together in confusion. “Is he not here? Is he at the office downtown?” Ugh, I knew something must have been wrong when they’d told me to come back here.

“No, no, he’s here,” she interrupted before I could pose more questions. “And this place is going to be the new PersOil headquarters for the foreseeable future.”

Okay, now I was really lost. “I’m sorry if this is none of my business, but is there a reason why you’re here instead of at the offices?”

“Oh, it’s definitely your business,” she muttered quietly enough that I almost didn’t hear her, but the sigh she heaved was unmissable, clearly not happy with the role she’d been saddled with by having to tell me. “I’m guessing you already know about Mr. Bakhtiar’s past?”

About how he was in prison for killing a previous CEO? Oh yeah, I know.

“I’m familiar with the situation, yes. I know that he has—” I cut short, not sure how to put it. How were you supposed to talk about your new boss having been just released from prison? “—recently returned to the US.”

Luz snickered at my phrasing. “It’s okay, you can say it. Our boss was convicted of murder and everybody knows, it’s not a big secret. That said, you’re one of the very few people who know he’s out. We’ve been trying to keep that under wraps for a bit so he can have a little time to readjust to being home before the press gets wind of it.”

I froze, not having realized it was supposed to be a secret. I’d told Chad and my father who I was going to be working for, and while I could trust Dad not to talk about it, Chad was lousy at keeping things private. I could only imagine who he’d told and how far it had already reached, so I was well on my way to getting sued if this had been part of the confidentiality contracts I’d signed.

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t in the NDA,” Luz reassured, clearly having seen my expression of panic. “You’re actually going to be working with the PR department to put out a statement about his release, but we can deal with that later.”

While that was a relief, there were about a thousand questions I still wanted to ask, and even if Luz said it was okay to talk about it, going into detail about my new boss’s legal situation didn’t seem all that polite. But if it was my job to help run his life, I was going to have to get over my reluctance and desire not to offend—these were things I needed to know.

“I thought he had a few more years left on his sentence,” I said, tentatively testing the bounds of what I could ask. The last thing I needed was to be too bold and get fired on my first day.

Luz nodded. “He does. But with a little finagling, his lawyers got the Malikbahri courts to agree to release him early with one condition: he has to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest.”

With those last two words, everything began to make sense. “So that’s why PersOil is based out of this place now. He’s not allowed to leave it.”

“‘This place’ being Bakhtiar Manor,” she clarified, and my heart skipped a funny beat at the idea of having been in his home without even realizing it. “But yeah, he’s going to be stuck here for a while. And so are we.”

That certainly felt like an understatement. A couple years was a long time to be confined to one place, especially since it seemed the terms of this new incarceration were so strict that he wasn’t even allowed to go two miles down the road to his own company’s office. Having to move the base of operations here wasn’t an easy job, and I knew there would be plenty of obstacles he’d have to face as a CEO of a multinational corporation who couldn’t travel.

Better than being stuck in a jail cell, though.

Now that I was thinking about it, that meant a lot of work for me to take on as well. Assisting someone who could move freely and do what they wanted on their own was one thing, but this… I was probably going to end up having to do nearly everything for him.

“Well, I guess there are worse places to be,” I pointed out with a slightly forced laugh, glancing around the impressive foyer as I tried to distract myself from the panic welling in my stomach. I looked back to Luz, another question coming to mind. “But if he’s here, why can’t I meet him?”

Her lips thinned into a tight line. “Most of our staff don’t know he’s here yet, which is for the best since he’s, ah, having a tough time adjusting. I haven’t even gotten to meet him yet, actually. We’ve only spoken on the phone.”

“Seriously?”

“Mr. Rostami is the only person he’ll let into the west wing of the house, which is where he’s sequestered himself,” she explained, voice dropping conspiratorially. “One of the PersOil board members tried to go in to see him and got the reaming of a lifetime. The man was so red in the face when he left that I thought his head might explode.”

A grimace was working its way onto my face with each new detail I learned about what was going on here. Maybe Dad was right after all. Maybe this wasn’t the job for me.

You cannot quit on your first day! the little voice in the back of my head nagged, and I knew it was right. I had to at least make it to meeting the guy before I bailed.

“That’s…” I trailed off, searching for the right words. “I’m sure he has his reasons for wanting to keep people at bay for a while. But who’s taking care of everything for him at the moment? Mr. Rostami can’t possibly be running the company and making sure he’s okay.”

Luz was grimacing along with me now. “That role is currently being filled by Gerald, one of Rostami’s assistants.”

“Is there a reason Gerald isn’t staying on to work with Mr. Bakhtiar instead? If he already knows the ropes, maybe he should take the job permanently.”

I was mostly hinting at it for my own benefit. That way, it would leave a position with Mr. Rostami open, one that I could hopefully fill seeing as I’d already been hired for the role as a personal assistant. Maybe this way I could work for the man I’d originally thought the job was for, and Dad wouldn’t be as unhappy with the situation.

But sadly, Luz shook her head. “Rostami wants him back full-time. Plus, well, Gerald’s kind of on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Apparently, he’s found working for Bakhtiar a little too stressful.”

Oh, great, yet another thing to worry about. “How long as Gerald been working for him?”

“Three days.”

This time I was almost certain I was going to lose my breakfast, but I swallowed hard and nodded.

“So that’s where things are at the moment,” she finished, either ignoring the way I’d gone stiff or simply not noticing. “Gerald will be handling things for a little while longer, but then he’ll be handing the reins over to you. So, are you ready to get started?”

The rational part of my brain was screaming for me to turn and run, to forget the contracts I’d signed and keep searching for another job. But there was another part, an urging whisper, that was telling me to stick with this, to see where this could lead, to not give up quite yet.

So as Luz turned and motioned for me to step into the hall, I silenced the yelling and listened to the whisper.

“Welcome to Bakhtiar Manor,” she said. “Be sure to stay out of the west wing.”