"I need to go to my office."
Lucas looked up from his tablet. We were in the penthouse kitchen, early morning, Mrs. Nguyen moving quietly in the background like a ghost who made really good scrambled eggs. I had been awake for exactly thirty minutes and had already decided today was the day I started hunting for answers.
"Your office," Lucas repeated.
"At Chen Tower. The one I apparently locked and never let anyone into."
"That is... not standard protocol for your recovery."
"I don't care about protocol. Someone pushed me down the stairs, Lucas. Someone called me and whispered threats. And the only version of me who knew what was going on hid her secrets in a fake plant because she didn't trust anyone else to find them." I set my coffee down. "I need to know what she knew. And the office is the next logical place to look."
Lucas's ears went through three shades in rapid succession. Pink. Red. Burgundy. Kevin would have needed a spreadsheet to track them.
"Vivian—"
"Don't 'Vivian' me like I'm being unreasonable."
"I wasn't going to say you're being unreasonable."
"What were you going to say?"
He paused. His ears settled on a resigned, reluctant shade of rose. "I was going to say that I already anticipated this and prepared the car."
I blinked. "You did?"
"Twenty minutes ago. It's waiting downstairs."
"You knew I was going to ask?"
"I calculated a seventy-eight percent probability based on your behavioral patterns over the past three days." He paused. "Also Sophie texted me at 5 AM saying—and I quote—'She's definitely going to want to go to the office today, don't fight her, just drive the car.'"
"Sophie texted you at 5 AM?"
"Sophie texts me at all hours. It is one of the great trials of my existence."
I almost laughed. "And you listened to her?"
"I calculated that she had a seventy-eight percent chance of being correct. The math aligned."
"Your entire life is math."
"My entire life is you." He said it so matter-of-factly, so completely without self-consciousness, that it took both of us a full three seconds to realize what he'd said.
His ears went purple.
"Your JOB," he corrected stiffly. "My job is you. Managing you. Assisting. That's the word. Assisting."
"Lucas."
"The car is waiting."
"Lucas."
"We should go. Traffic is unpredictable at this hour."
"Your ears are Shade #9 again."
"I don't know what that means."
"You helped Kevin make the glossary."
"I provided technical feedback. I did not endorse the hex codes."
I grinned at him over my coffee mug. He stared at a point exactly two inches above my left shoulder, ears glowing, dignity in shambles.
"Let's go to the office," I said.
"Thank you for returning to the original topic."
"You're welcome. For now."
---
Chen Tower in the daytime was different from the quiet, sleeping building I'd seen from the penthouse windows. The lobby was alive—employees in sharp suits, the hum of conversation, the clicking of heels on marble floors. The receptionist from my first day was at the front desk, and she lit up when she saw me.
"Ms. Chen! You're back!"
"I'm... visiting," I said, because I have amnesia and I'm investigating my own attempted murder felt like a lot for 9 AM.
Lucas guided me toward the private elevator with the practiced ease of a man who had been navigating corporate chaos for years. He pressed his keycard. The doors slid open. We stepped inside.
"Forty-fifth floor," he said. "Executive suite. Your office is at the end of the hall."
"I know," I said. Then paused. "I don't know. But I... felt it. Like I could picture the hallway before we got there."
"That's good. Memories don't always return as images. Sometimes they return as feelings. Familiarity. Recognition."
"You've been reading about amnesia."
"I've been reading about everything related to your condition. Medical journals. Case studies. Personal accounts." He didn't look at me. "I wanted to be prepared."
"For what?"
"For whatever you needed."
The elevator doors opened before I could respond.
The forty-fifth floor was quiet. This was the executive level—fewer people, larger offices, the kind of silence that came from power and money and the quiet hum of deals being made behind closed doors. The hallway was exactly what I'd pictured: floor-to-ceiling windows, abstract art on the walls, carpet so plush it felt like walking on a cloud.
And at the end of the hall, a single door.
My office.
I walked toward it like I was walking toward a version of myself I hadn't met yet. Lucas followed a step behind, as he always did.
The door was locked.
"Password," I said. "There's a keypad."
"A biometric one. It requires your fingerprint and a six-digit code."
"I don't remember the code."
"I am aware."
I looked at the keypad. Six digits. I had chosen six digits years ago to protect the most private space in my empire, and now I couldn't remember what they were.
"What would I have chosen?" I asked. "Something obvious? Something no one would guess?"
Lucas was quiet for a moment. "You never told me the code. You never told anyone. Sophie tried to guess it once. After twelve failed attempts, the system locked her out and security was called."
"That sounds like Sophie."
"She made a PowerPoint titled 'Why My Best Friend's Office Security Is Personally Victimizing Me.'"
"Did she present it?"
"To the security team. They gave her a standing ovation. Then they escorted her out."
I laughed. The sound echoed down the quiet hallway and came back to me smaller than it had left. I pressed my thumb to the fingerprint scanner. It beeped green. Identity confirmed.
Now I just needed the code.
"Think," Lucas said quietly. "Not like the old Vivian. Like the new one. The old Vivian would have chosen something logical. A date. An important number. Something no one else could trace."
"But the new Vivian?"
"The new Vivian would choose something the old Vivian would never admit to caring about."
I closed my eyes. Thought about the notebook. The red leather and the coffee stains and the sketch of Lucas's ears. Thought about Gerald the ficus, plastic and fake and secretly the keeper of all my secrets. Thought about Sophie's unicorn pajamas and Marlene's hot chocolate and the way Mrs. Nguyen said I keep track of everything, it is why you pay me.
I opened my eyes.
I typed six digits.
The door unlocked.
"What did you put?" Lucas asked.
"The date Sophie gave me the pajamas. December 14th. 1214."
Lucas's ears went pink. "The old Vivian would never have chosen that."
"The old Vivian would have burned those pajamas before admitting she loved them." I pushed the door open. "But I'm not her anymore."
---
The office was... not what I expected.
I had braced for sterile minimalism. White walls. Metal and glass. The kind of cold, efficient space that matched the woman who fired people for brown shoes.
Instead, the office was warm.
Bookshelves lined the walls, crammed with novels and business journals and what looked like a complete collection of Agatha Christie paperbacks. The desk was massive but cluttered—photos in frames, a mug shaped like a cat, a small potted plant that was, miraculously, real. The windows looked out over the city skyline, and someone had put cushions on the window seat. Actual cushions. In colors that weren't black or gray.
"This doesn't look like the office of a monster," I said quietly.
"It was the one place she allowed herself not to be one," Lucas said. "No one was allowed in here. Not even me. Not even Mrs. Nguyen to clean. She maintained this room herself."
I walked further in. The photos on the desk caught my eye. One of Sophie and me, younger, arms around each other, laughing at something off-camera. One of me with an older couple—my parents, I realized with a jolt, faces I should have recognized but didn't. And one, half-hidden behind the cat mug, of Lucas.
He was younger. Slightly fewer lines around his eyes. But the posture was the same. The sharp jaw was the same. And his ears, even in the photo, were faintly pink.
"You kept a photo of me," Lucas said from behind me. His voice was strange. Almost uncertain.
"Apparently so."
"I didn't know."
"She hid a lot of things." I opened a drawer. Files. Papers. A stash of chocolate bars. Another drawer. More files. And then—the safe.
It was tucked into the wall behind the desk, half-hidden by a painting of the Seattle skyline. Small. Metal. Another keypad.
"Another password," I said.
"Can you guess?"
I thought about the notebook. The last entry. Tell Lucas I'm sorry I never said it out loud.
I typed six more digits.
The safe opened.
Lucas stared at the keypad. "What did you put?"
I pulled the safe door open. Inside was a single item—a manila folder with a name written on the tab in neat, familiar handwriting.
ALEXANDER.
"Lucas," I said quietly. "Who is Alexander?"
And for the first time since I'd met him, Lucas Grey had nothing to say.
His ears went still. Completely, utterly still. No pink. No red. No color at all.
"That," he said finally, "is a very long story."
"Tell me."
"Not here."
"Why not?"
"Because Alexander," he said, "is the reason you fell down the stairs. And if he knows you're looking into him, he might try again."