Some doors you should never open.
Not because of what is behind them.
Because of what comes after you open them.
Ava Maren was late.
Not fashionably late. Not professionally late. The specific catastrophic late of someone whose alarm didn't go off, whose coffee maker broke, whose bus pulled away thirty seconds before she reached the stop, and whose only pair of interview-appropriate heels had developed a squeak somewhere between the subway exit and the glass tower that housed Voss Enterprises — the kind of squeak that announced her presence to everyone within a twenty foot radius and made her sound like a distressed animal.
She pushed through the revolving door at 9:07.
The lobby stopped her.
Not literally. But almost.
She had been in office buildings before — the temp agency sent her to plenty of them, the grey carpeted kind with flickering fluorescent lights and receptionists who looked through you rather than at you. This was not that kind of building. This was marble and glass and the specific hush of a space that understood its own importance. The ceiling rose four stories above her head. Natural light fell through geometric glass panels across a floor that probably cost more per square foot than her entire apartment.
She stood in the middle of it for three seconds.
Then she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and walked to the reception desk like she belonged there.
The woman behind it was the human equivalent of the lobby — polished, precise, the kind of beautiful that came with a warning label. She looked at Ava the way people looked at things that didn't quite fit the room they were standing in.
"Ava Maren," Ava said. "I have an interview at nine for the executive assistant position."
The receptionist checked her screen. Something moved across her face — too fast to read, gone before it fully arrived.
"Ninth floor," she said. "Mr. Voss's office is at the end of the corridor. His current assistant will meet you."
"Thank you," Ava said.
She walked to the elevator with her spine straight and her squeaking heel announcing every single step.
The ninth floor was quieter than the lobby.
The kind of quiet that had weight — the specific silence of a space where people worked with complete focus and speaking above a murmur was a social violation nobody needed to be told about. Six desks in the open plan area. Six people at them. Not one of them looked up when she stepped off the elevator.
A woman appeared at her elbow almost immediately — mid forties, dark hair pulled back, the expression of someone who had been managing impossible situations for long enough that impossible had stopped being a useful category.
"Miss Maren." Not a question. "I'm Clara. Mr. Voss's current assistant." A pause so brief it was almost not there. "I'm leaving at the end of the month. Come with me."
She turned and walked without checking if Ava was following.
Ava followed.
"The position is demanding," Clara said, moving through the open plan with the ease of someone who had navigated it ten thousand times. "Mr. Voss keeps unusual hours. He expects responses within ten minutes regardless of the time of day or night. He does not repeat himself. He does not explain himself." She paused, selecting her next words carefully. "And he does not make things easy."
"Okay," Ava said.
Clara glanced at her sideways. "Most candidates say something like that's fine or I completely understand."
"I heard you," Ava said. "I didn't say it would be fine. I said okay."
Something moved at the corner of Clara's mouth. Not quite a smile. The ghost of one — there and gone.
"The previous three assistants lasted an average of six weeks," she said. "The one before them lasted four days."
"What happened to them?"
"They found the position incompatible with their expectations." She paused. "One of them cried. In the office. During a meeting."
Ava said nothing. She filed this information and kept walking.
They reached the end of the corridor. A set of double doors — dark wood, no nameplate. The kind of doors that didn't need one because everyone who needed to know already knew what was behind them.
"He's on a call," Clara said. "It will end in approximately three minutes." She looked at Ava directly for the first time — a full assessment, quick and complete, the look of someone who had interviewed hundreds of candidates and could read them in seconds. "One thing before you go in."
"What?"
"Don't try to make him like you," she said quietly. "He won't. And watching people try is the thing that irritates him most." She paused. "Just be competent. That is genuinely all he has ever asked of anyone."
Ava nodded once.
Three minutes passed.
Clara knocked twice and opened the door.
The office was enormous and almost completely empty.
Not its size — she'd expected that. Its deliberate emptiness. No decoration. No personal photographs. No accumulated evidence of a human being spending significant time in a space. A desk that probably cost more than a car. A chair behind it. Two chairs in front of it. Floor to ceiling windows covering the entire far wall, the city spread below in every direction like a map of something worth owning.
The man behind the desk was on the phone.
He didn't look up when they entered.
Ava had a few seconds to look at him before he registered her existence and she used every one of them the way she used every available moment — to assess, to catalogue, to understand exactly what she was dealing with before it had a chance to surprise her.
Tall, even seated. Dark hair that looked deliberately unstyled and wasn't. The bone structure of someone a painter would follow around a city begging for one sitting. A suit that fit the way suits fit in films rather than in real life — like it had been made for this specific body and no other. Thirty-two, maybe thirty-three. Younger than she had expected for someone whose name was on the building.
He was speaking into the phone in a voice too low to hear clearly across the room. Whatever he was saying it was final — the tone of someone ending a discussion the other person hadn't realized was already over.
He set the phone down.
Looked up.
And Ava felt something she had no framework for and no interest in examining.
Grey eyes. The specific grey of a winter sky that had decided against snow and wasn't apologizing for it. They moved to her face and stayed there and the quality of that gaze was — different from other people's. Most people looked at you. He looked at you and you understood immediately that he was seeing considerably more than you'd intended to show.
Three seconds. Then he looked at Clara.
"She was seven minutes late," he said.
"Traffic—" Ava started.
"I know why you were late." His eyes moved back to her without heat, without irritation, with the specific calm of someone who had already processed the information and filed it. "I'm not asking for the reason. I'm noting the fact." A pause. "Sit down."
She sat.
He looked at the folder on his desk — her resume, open in front of him though he clearly didn't need to reference it.
"Fourteen jobs in four years," he said.
"Yes."
"None longer than eight months."
"Correct."
"Why."
Not a question. A door he was opening and waiting to see what came through it.
Ava looked at him directly. "Because I'm good at what I do and most employers don't know what to do with that. They hire me to fix things and when I fix them they don't know what to do with me anymore."
Silence.
He looked at her with those winter-grey eyes and said nothing for long enough that a lesser person would have filled the quiet with backtracking.
Ava did not backtrack.
"That's either true," he said finally, "or it's the most confident way anyone has ever explained a lack of commitment."
"It's true," she said.
"How would I know the difference?"
"You wouldn't," she said. "Not yet. That's what the three month probationary period is for."
Something happened in his eyes. Not warmth — nothing as simple as that. The specific quality of someone who had just encountered something unexpected and was deciding what to do with it.
He closed the folder.
"The salary is in the brief Clara gave you," he said. "The hours are not negotiable. My schedule takes priority over yours at all times. If that is a problem this conversation ends here."
"It's not a problem," she said.
"You start Monday."
Ava blinked. "That's — the interview is—"
"Over," he said. He had already picked up his phone. "Clara will give you the onboarding documents. Close the door on your way out."
She stood.
She walked to the door.
She had her hand on it when his voice came again — quiet, not directed at her exactly, more like a thought that had found its way out.
"Miss Maren."
She turned.
He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at his phone, already on to the next thing, the way he was probably always already on to the next thing.
"The heel," he said. "Third floor has a cobbler. Tell them to put it on my account."
Ava stood in the doorway of Kade Voss's office and felt the specific sensation of someone pulling the floor slightly sideways beneath her feet.
She closed the door.
In the corridor Clara was waiting with a stack of documents and the expression of someone who had just witnessed something that didn't happen very often.
"Well," Clara said.
"Well," Ava agreed.
She took the documents.
She did not examine the feeling in her chest.
She was very good at not examining things she had no framework for.
She walked back down the corridor with her squeaking heel and her stack of onboarding documents and the absolute certainty that she had just made either the best or the worst decision of her life.
She was not yet sure which.
— End of Chapter One —
He noticed the heel. She noticed that he noticed. Neither of them will admit what that means yet. 🖤
Next Chapter: "First Day" — Ava arrives Monday and discovers that working for Kade Voss is nothing like she prepared for. And he discovers that having her in his space is nothing like having anyone else there. The curse stirs — and for the first time in fifteen years, nothing happens.
Add to library — Drop a comment — what do you think of Kade and Ava so far?! 🔥🖤🌙
© Cursed By His Own Vow | The Voss Legacy — Book One
Written by Daoistaglcx 🖤