His Secret Wife: A Dangerous Game

The air conditioning in the midtown Manhattan law firm was set low enough to freeze sweat to the skin.

Delinda Howell pushed open the heavy walnut doors of the conference room.

Her fingertips were ice-cold. She pressed her nails into her palms, using the sharp sting to keep her breathing steady.

She forced her eyes to look across the massive mahogany table.

The man sitting in the shadows of the extreme backlighting was a silhouette of sharp angles. His custom-tailored suit stretched across broad, intimidating shoulders. He didn't move. He didn't speak. The sheer physical weight of his presence made the oxygen in the room feel thin.

The trust lawyer slid a fifty-page prenuptial agreement across the polished wood. It stopped right in front of Delinda.

She didn't look at the asset division clauses. She didn't read the numbers. She flipped the thick stack of paper directly to the last page.

A low, harsh scoff came from the shadows.

It was a sound of pure mockery, as if her rush to sign was exactly the greedy desperation he had expected.

Delinda's jaw tightened. She gripped the heavy fountain pen. The metal was cold against her skin. The nib scratched against the thick paper, loud in the dead silence of the room, as she signed her name.

The lawyer pulled the document away and handed it to the man, his features lost in shadow.

Ace Suarez didn't shift his posture. He took the pen and slashed his signature across the page with violent efficiency.

Then, he stood up.

The shadow cast by his height instantly swallowed Delinda. Her stomach dropped.

He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He pulled out a Centurion Black Card with no spending limit and tossed it onto the table.

The heavy metal card slid across the smooth wood. It stopped inches from Delinda's hand.

Ace didn't say a single word. He turned his back on her and walked toward the private elevator. The rhythmic, hard strike of his leather shoes against the marble floor was the only sound left in the room.

The elevator doors slid shut.

The rigid tension in Delinda's shoulders finally collapsed. Her lungs burned as she let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

She looked at the Black Card. She didn't touch it.

Instead, she pushed it across the table toward the trustee.

Delinda walked out of the building. The harsh New York sunlight hit her face, stinging her eyes. She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed the hospital.

"Yes, the funds for my grandmother's intensive care unit have been cleared," she said, her voice finally steady.

She hung up. She opened her wallet, her fingers finding the small, worn photograph tucked into the deepest slot behind her ID. It was a blurry newspaper clipping of Ace Suarez's profile-the only image her grandmother's lawyer had provided before the signing, with a stern note reminding her to at least recognize her husband if they ever crossed paths. She'd kept it more as a tangible reminder of the debt she owed than out of any curiosity. She slid the wallet closed.

One year later.

The lobby of the Suarez Group's New York headquarters smelled of expensive floor wax.

Delinda stepped through the revolving doors. She wore a crisp beige trench coat and three-inch heels that clicked sharply against the granite floor.

Security checked her ID and handed her a gold-embossed, high-level access card.

Above the reception desk, massive Bloomberg terminal screens flashed red and green, scrolling the news of the Suarez Group's latest hostile takeover.

Delinda swiped her card at the executive elevator. The machine shot upward at a speed that made her ears pop and her stomach hollow out.

The doors opened to the top floor. The air up here was different. It was thick with high-pressure panic and the smell of stale coffee.

Victoria, the former executive assistant, walked toward her carrying a cardboard box. Victoria's eyes raked up and down Delinda's outfit with cold assessment.

"The rule on this floor is that there are no rules," Victoria warned, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "The CEO is a tyrant. He will chew you up."

Delinda offered a perfectly blank, professional smile. She didn't take a step back.

She walked to her new desk, sat down, and booted up her computer. She logged into the company intranet, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

A sudden, frantic rush of footsteps echoed from the end of the hallway.

Every single executive on the floor instantly stood up, their spines snapping straight.

Delinda stopped typing. She lifted her head and looked toward the heavy double doors of the CEO's office, waiting for them to be pushed open.

The double doors violently swung open.

Ace Suarez strode into the conference room, a pack of executives trailing behind him like terrified shadows.

Delinda stood in the corner of the room. Her eyes caught the sharp, unforgiving line of Ace's jaw.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. She frowned, a sudden pressure building behind her eyes. The blurry clipping in her wallet flashed in her mind. The bone structure was identical.

Ace walked to the head of the table. He didn't sit. He slammed a thick financial report down on the wood.

The loud crack made the executives flinch. Delinda lowered her eyelashes, forcing the shock out of her expression.

Warren Petty stood up. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He pointed a trembling laser pointer at a heavily designed slide, trying to talk his way around the massive profit drop in the European division.

"Stop," Ace said.

His voice was a low, lethal blade. He rattled off three specific data discrepancies without looking at the paper.

Warren's face drained of color. He stuttered, his hands shaking as he tried to shift the blame to the data compilation department.

Ace slowly turned his head. His dark, predatory gaze swept toward the corner of the room. He stared directly at the new data assistant.

Delinda didn't look away. She met his aggressive stare head-on.

She took a step forward. Her voice was completely flat. "The data source was altered before the European division submitted it."

She tapped her tablet, not pulling up a hidden camera feed, but accessing the company's internal audit log interface. The main screen behind Warren switched from the presentation to a clean, system-generated timeline. Lines of red text highlighted the exact timestamps of the data upload, followed by a secondary, unauthorized edit timestamp-with the associated user ID clearly marked as belonging to Warren Petty's administrative credentials.

Someone in the room gasped. Warren looked like he was going to vomit.

Ace narrowed his eyes. He really looked at the woman in the beige trench coat for the first time.

"Why didn't you report this before the meeting?" Ace demanded, his tone dripping with danger.

"I was granted top-level access ten minutes ago," Delinda answered, her chin lifting a fraction of an inch. "This was the fastest way to stop the bleeding."

Ace's index finger tapped slowly against the mahogany table. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The silence in the room was suffocating.

Suddenly, Ace let out a short, cold laugh. "Fire the head of the European division. Put Warren on administrative leave pending an investigation."

The meeting was over. The executives scrambled out of the room like they were escaping a burning building.

Ace stood up. He walked toward the door, passing right by Delinda.

He stopped.

The scent of cedar and citrus hit his senses, clean and sharp.

Ace tilted his head slightly toward her. "Good job," he murmured, his voice a low rumble meant only for her.

Delinda's breath hitched. That deep, gravelly voice sent a violent shiver down her spine. The familiarity of it made her stomach twist into a knot.

Ace walked out, the frosted glass doors of his office closing behind him.

Delinda's hands were shaking. She gripped the edge of the table until her knuckles turned white.

She walked back to her desk and pulled up the internal HR system. She typed in the CEO's name.

Ace Suarez. Unmarried. Long-term resident of Europe.

Delinda let out a harsh breath and shook her head. She was losing her mind. Her absentee husband couldn't be this Wall Street oligarch.

Inside the CEO's office, Ace loosened his silk tie. He stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows, listening to his chief of staff, Julian.

Julian handed him a file. "Sir, your grandmother called again. She wants to know when you are going to Brooklyn to pick up your wife, Mrs. Suarez."

At exactly seven in the morning, Delinda placed a cup of black coffee on Ace's desk. The temperature was precisely sixty-five degrees Celsius.

Ace didn't look up from his monitors. "I need a full M&A risk assessment on Soren Tech. You have two hours."

This was the final test. Whoever delivered it would officially take the Chief Assistant position.

Delinda walked out of the office. She sat at her desk and began pulling massive datasets from the server. Her eyes scanned the numbers, her brain categorizing the risks.

Warren Petty walked up to her desk. He leaned over, his cologne smelling sour mixed with his nervous sweat. He tried to look at her screen.

Delinda snapped her laptop shut. The loud click made him jump.

"Go back to your desk, Warren," she said, her voice devoid of emotion.

Warren's eyes flashed with pure venom. He turned and walked toward the breakroom.

With fifteen minutes left on the clock, Delinda stood up to grab the physical copies from the secure printer down the hall.

The machine beeped. Paper jam.

Delinda crouched down, pulling the tray open to clear the crumpled paper. Her eyes were off her desk for exactly forty seconds.

Warren walked past her cubicle. His fingers darted across her keyboard, hitting a few keys with practiced speed.

Delinda walked back to her desk with the printed report. She sat down to do a final check against her screen.

Her pupils dilated. Her stomach violently contracted.

The core valuation parameters in her model had been altered. The numbers were completely inverted.

If she handed this to Ace, the multi-billion dollar merger would fail, and she would be escorted out of the building by security.

She had three minutes before she had to walk into the CEO's office. There was no time to run the calculations again.

Delinda closed her eyes. She dug her nails into her palms. She forced her breathing to slow down, pulling the raw data from her photographic memory, rearranging the numbers in her head.

Her desk phone rang. Julian told her to come in.

Delinda grabbed the sabotaged report and pushed open the heavy oak doors.

Ace sat in his leather chair, watching them like a predator waiting for a mistake.

Warren spoke first. He threw out buzzwords, his voice overly loud to cover his lack of technical depth.

Ace's jaw ticked. He held up a hand, cutting Warren off instantly.

He looked at Delinda.

Delinda didn't open the folder in her hands. She looked straight into Ace's dark eyes.

She recited the complex financial ratios and risk hedging strategies entirely from memory. Her voice was steady, the numbers flawless.

Warren scoffed loudly. "She's not even reading from her own report. She's making it up."

Delinda turned to Warren. She threw her printed report onto the desk right in front of him.

"The parameters in that report were manipulated," she said coldly.

She pulled her tablet from her bag, syncing it to the office screen. But instead of a covert camera feed, she displayed the raw server access logs for her own workstation. The system-generated data showed her user ID logging out at the exact moment she went to the printer, followed immediately by a new login from a different terminal-Warren's assigned station-and a series of commands altering the core file. The timestamp glowed red on the screen. "The IT department confirmed the login credentials," she stated, her voice flat. "The physical terminal is logged to your desk, Warren.

Warren's knees buckled. He collapsed into the chair behind him, gasping for air.

Ace's eyes were dead as he looked at Warren. He pressed the security button under his desk.

Two guards dragged Warren out of the room by his armpits.

Ace leaned back in his chair. He looked at Delinda, the corner of his mouth lifting in a barely-there smirk. "Congratulations on the promotion, Chief Assistant."