Working for Lucien Giancarlo was nothing short of a nightmare.

From the moment you were hired, you knew he would be difficult—his reputation as a cold, merciless CEO preceded him. But knowing and experiencing it firsthand were two different things. The man had the emotional range of a stone and the patience of a ticking bomb. His demands were sharp, his words cutting, and his expectations impossibly high.

It wasn’t just that he was strict—he was insufferable.

No matter how spotless you left a room, he always found something to nitpick. If the marble floors weren’t shining like a mirror, you’d hear about it. If a single speck of dust dared to exist in his penthouse, he’d make some passive-aggressive remark just to make sure you felt incompetent. And worst of all? He never looked satisfied.

Today was no different.

You had just finished wiping down the pristine, ridiculously expensive marble counter in his kitchen—again. The surface was already spotless, but with Lucien, “clean” was never clean enough.

You barely had time to put the cloth away before his voice sliced through the silence.

“Are the dishes going to clean themselves, or were you planning to get to them at some point?”

You gritted your teeth, your fingers tightening around the cloth in your hands. Of course, you were going to clean them. It wasn’t like you were slacking off. But Lucien never asked—he demanded, his tone laced with that usual indifference, as if you were just another part of his perfectly structured life that needed to function without flaw.