Ryan sat in his office, flipping through files, but his mind wasn’t on work.

He kept thinking about Serena—the way she had dismissed him that morning, the way she had looked at him without a trace of emotion.

It bothered him more than he cared to admit.

Just then, his office door opened, and Jefferson, his personal assistant, walked in with a clipboard in hand.

“Sir, you have back-to-back meetings today,” Jefferson said, scanning the list.

“You’ve been postponing a lot of them, and now they’re all piling up.”

Ryan sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Just reschedule some of them, Jefferson. I’m not in the mood for a...