Esther Gates turns twenty-eight alone in a downpour, nursing a birthday nobody remembered and a whiskey she never wanted. Then a stranger in a bespoke suit sits down beside her, reads her in four sentences flat, and offers her one night to stop being the good girl who follows every rule.

She takes it.

By sunrise, she's back to being Senior Analyst Esther Gates — until the elevator doors open Monday morning and the face on every screen in the building belongs to the woman from Room 412. Jane Sally hasn't just acquired the company. She owns it: floor to server room, board seat to break room. As of eight a.m., she owns Esther's paycheck too.

Jane calls what's between them a conflict of interest. Inefficient. A variable to eliminate. She also can't stop showing up at Esther's desk after hours, in the elevator, behind a locked office door — daring Esther to break the one rule that actually matters this time.

Then Esther uncovers the leak that's been bleeding the company dry, and Jane's own father — sitting on the board she's fighting to hold — starts looking for a reason to end her. An affair with a subordinate would hand him exactly that. The one thing Jane swore was contained might be the thing that costs her the company, her name, and the woman she's already lost control of.

Some games are zero-sum. Somebody wins. Somebody loses everything.

Neither of them is planning to lose.

This story includes:

Sapphic romance with a commanding, possessive love interest
Forbidden boss/employee dynamic
One-night-stand-turned-secret-affair
Corporate intrigue: embezzlement, board politics, family pressure
Explicit, high-heat scenes
A hard-won happily ever after