Chapter 2

The one-button jacket fit me beautifully, emphasizing my feminine curves and my still-narrow waist. The wide trousers, meanwhile, hid the lack of heels, because I did put on sneakers after all. Over all of it went a straight cream coat. I added the lightest touch of blush to my face, but chose scarlet lip gloss. And of course I didn’t forget perfume—the very best niche scent.

The only things matching my black winged liner were my purse, gloves, and the classic sunglasses I preferred to wear when arriving at my home agency.

Zhenka dressed in her own extravagant teen-hipster style. She put on a puffer jacket and chunky boots, pulled a red hat over her loose hair, and placed round blue teashades on her face, like Basilio the Cat.

My sister had her own vision of beauty and her own aesthetic sense, and I had stopped arguing with that sense long ago. I liked her search for herself and her courage. And I had no intention of stopping her from expressing herself the way I once hadn’t been able to allow myself to.

***

Thank God the fracture theory was not confirmed, and I left the trauma clinic with my leg in a stabilizing bandage, a diagnosis of “second-degree ligament sprain,” and a medicinal nerve-block injection I had insisted on, considering the business meeting and contract signing ahead of me.

One problem had disappeared for the time being, and now I could drive my Porsche without grimacing in pain, focusing instead on work and traffic, as any confident driver should.

After dropping my sister off at the university, I turned around and drove to the office of the advertising agency Regina Style, located in a fashionable district of the city, on the twentieth floor of the Galaktika Business Center, a large modern building thirty stories high.

On that floor, our agency occupied an entire wing of six offices, combining them into a company that bore the name of its owner, Regina Merzlyaeva.

In the near future, the agency’s space was expected to expand even further, and today I could be proud of having had a hand in its prosperity. So I went to work as if I were going home.

Once, when I had first gotten a job here after university, Regina had barely been making ends meet, and there had been only two office rooms. A lot had changed since then. People knew about us, new employees had appeared, serious projects had come in, but I still gave the lion’s share of my time and strength to work.

Leaving the car in the wide parking area, I tucked my purse under my arm and, without buttoning my coat, headed toward the building’s main entrance. As I climbed the shallow marble steps, I felt every little nick beneath my bad foot, but I tried to walk straight. There were always plenty of curious eyes here, and this morning was no exception.

A tall, athletic brown-haired man with a leather case in his hand was coming toward me, climbing to the entrance from the other side of the steps, also with his coat hanging open. Reaching the doors first, he paused at the entrance for a couple of seconds to put his cell phone in his pocket, and as it happened, he opened the door for me.

Max Orlov. For a year now, this young man had held the post of executive director at Imperial-CUBE, a major marketing agency specializing in every type of advertising in our country. Before that, he had been its art director. Before that, its chief manager. And before that, the son of a rich parent who had decided to entrust the family business to his offspring.

We had known each other by sight for many years and had studied at the same university, but we had never spoken. If that ever happened, Regina would have a stroke. Merzlyaeva was extremely possessive about her employees, especially the ones who dealt directly with clients. Any communication with a competing firm could cost any one of us our job, and both sides understood that. So I was surprised when I unexpectedly heard a level:

“Good morning, Lina.”

Seriously? If I hadn’t been watching my foot, I absolutely would have stumbled.

“Ahem. Morning.”

And that was the whole conversation. But we had to walk to the elevator almost together, and it seemed to me that Orlov was slowing his pace, trying not to overtake me. I couldn’t exactly boast about my speed today, and under the male gaze drilling into the back of my head, I felt uncomfortable.

Before, I had always worn high heels, partly so that when I ran into Orlov in the business center’s corridors, I could feel we were on equal footing. We had clashed indirectly more than once while fighting for the same projects, but we had started from different positions, and I respected myself for my position. I had never noticed him behaving so… strangely before.

 
We set our bags down at the same time and entered the elevator. We stood on opposite sides of the mirrored cabin, facing the doors. Orlov was due to get out a full seven floors before me. His agency occupied the entire thirteenth floor with a central lobby, which was the envy of the whole Regina Style team, who dreamed of that kind of scale too. And toward that dream I ran my “successful art director” marathon with all my strength, hoping one day to reach the finish line a winner.

And maybe even open my own agency.

The elevator doors slid open, and Orlov stepped out, blocking my view of his company’s lobby with his broad shoulders. There was nowhere else to look, and I couldn’t help noticing that beneath his coat today, the man was wearing a business suit and expensive shoes polished to a shine.

Well, well. My eyebrow rose. Had he decided to change his image, or had he finally grown up? Orlov was the sort who could easily show up at the business center in cargo pants or joggers, cropped carrot-fit trousers, or just jeans and sneakers, combining all of it with crisp dress shirts, a tie, and an expensive watch. And with his unchanging topknot—a man bun he gathered high at the back of his head, with shaved temples.

Orlov hadn’t changed that haircut since graduating from university, back when the younger girls who’d studied in my year had melted over the self-assured handsome guy with hazel eyes, the best tennis player at the university, who somehow managed to date everyone and no one at once, be a favorite of the professors, and get mixed up in questionable stories he always escaped without consequences.

I remembered that back then his hair hadn’t been especially long (unlike his tongue, which he never hesitated to use for sharp little jokes at the expense of insecure girls), but it had been thick, so the bun looked stylish and neat.

Like today. I was sure that if Allochka, Regina’s daughter, had been riding with Orlov in my place, she would have urgently invented a reason to end up in the Cube office with its director. For Regina, communication between those two was an exception. Not for me.

So I turned away from the doors and rode upward.