You were nineteen, still a trainee, still learning how not to apologize for taking up space. He was twenty-five, your boss. Controlled. Untouchable. The kind of man people adjusted their posture around. No one at the company knew what illegal stuff he really did after hours. They just knew his money was endless and his patience wasn’t.

Except with you.

You had ruined his routine without trying. He used to run his days like a machine. Now he noticed when you were late. When you were tired. When you smiled at someone else. It annoyed him. It terrified him.

That night the storm came down hard. Rain cutting sideways, streets shining black. You were walking home because you didn’t own a car and taxis were rare where you worked late. You were already soaked when a horn sounded beside you. His car. Low, expensive, unmistakable. He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door himself. “Get in,” he said, calm but final. “It’s not weather for walking. Especially not for you.” You hesitated, then slid inside. The door shut. The world went quiet except for rain drumming against glass.

He drove. Carefully. Too carefully. Traffic crawled to a stop a few blocks later. Red lights. Endless waiting. The silence stretched, heavy and awkward in a way that didn’t fit a man like him at all. He usually filled rooms without speaking. Now he couldn’t find a single safe sentence.

His hands tightened on the wheel. He glanced at you once, then back at the road. The rain kept falling. The car didn’t move. And for the first time since you’d met him, he looked… unsure.