DANIEL'S POV
The smoke alarm was screaming.
Daniel pushed through the penthouse door and immediately saw the problem. Sophie stood in the kitchen with flour covering everything about her. Her hair. Her face. Her dress. The stovetop was erupting with smoke. On the counter sat a pile of pasta that looked like it had been through a war.
She didn't even notice him at first. She was too focused on frantically waving a dish towel at the smoke detector like that would somehow make it stop. Her face was scrunched up in concentration. Her determination was almost endearing.
Almost.
"The smoke alarm," Daniel said loudly over the noise.
Sophie jumped. She spun around so fast she knocked a bowl of flour off the counter. It exploded across the floor like a bomb had gone off in their kitchen.
She stared at the mess like it had personally betrayed her. Then she looked at Daniel.
"I was trying to cook," she said defensively. "You said I should eat, so I thought I'd try to cook. I used to be better at this. I'm just tired."
Daniel looked at the burned pasta. Then at the flour. Then at her face which had a smudge of something dark across her cheek. He almost laughed. Actually almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it.
But she looked so worried about what he would think that he forced the laugh back down.
"Come here," he said. He walked to the stove and turned off the burner. The smoke started to clear slowly. He could see now that whatever she'd been trying to make had completely destroyed itself. The pasta wasn't just burned. It was black. It was a disaster.
He should be annoyed. The contract didn't require him to come home at all. It didn't require him to care what she was doing in his kitchen. It definitely didn't require him to help her clean up whatever this was.
But he found himself rolling up his sleeves anyway.
"Show me what you were trying to make," he said.
Sophie looked at the disaster around them. "Dumplings. I was trying to make my mother's dumplings. She used to make them every Sunday when things were normal. Before the business started falling apart. Before everything became about survival."
She said it simply, like she was just stating facts. But Daniel could hear the weight underneath those words. Could hear all the Sunday dinners she'd lost. All the normal moments her family had sacrificed.
"Show me," he said again. Not a question this time. A request.
Sophie pulled out ingredients. She was shaky at first. Uncertain. But as she started to work, her hands began to steady. She moved through the motions like her body remembered even if her mind was exhausted.
For the next hour, they cooked together.
Daniel wasn't a cook. His staff handled meals. He barely knew how to boil water. But he found himself listening to Sophie talk while they worked. She told him about her mother's hands. How they moved with such precision when she folded dumplings. How she could make the wrappers from scratch even though store-bought ones were easier.
"She said homemade meant you cared," Sophie said. She was folding dumplings now. Her fingers moved carefully along the edges. "She said shortcuts tasted like giving up."
Daniel listened. He didn't try to solve her problems or offer advice or make it about anything other than what she was saying. He just listened the way he'd listened to her on the phone with her father.
"What happened to those Sunday dinners?" he asked.
Sophie folded another dumpling. Her fingers were getting faster now. More confident.
"The business started struggling. My parents stopped cooking together. They stopped doing a lot of things. They just worked and worked trying to save something that was already dying." She set down her hands. "I think that's why my father's heart gave out. Because he forgot how to live. He just survived."
Daniel realized he understood that feeling better than she probably thought. He'd spent the last twelve years surviving. Building an empire. Making money. Acquiring power. All the while forgetting what it felt like to just exist without calculating the return on investment.
They finished the dumplings. Daniel boiled water while Sophie made a simple sauce from garlic and soy sauce. When they sat down at the table, the food was simple and good and tasted like home.
Sophie took a bite. Then another. And suddenly she laughed.
Actually laughed.
It was a real laugh. Not polite. Not careful. The kind of laugh that came from the deepest part of her where she was still alive even after everything that had happened.
Daniel watched her laugh and felt something shift inside his chest.
This was bad. This was exactly what he'd told himself wouldn't happen. He'd brought her here because she was supposed to be empty of expectations. Supposed to be a transaction. Supposed to be someone he could keep at a distance.
But watching her laugh with her guard completely down, he realized the truth.
He'd made a terrible mistake.
Not in hiring her. Not in signing her to a contract. But in thinking he could keep her at arm's length while living in the same space. In thinking he could listen to her talk about her family and stay untouched. In thinking he could sit across from her at dinner and not feel anything.
She was becoming real to him. Every laugh. Every moment of vulnerability. Every story about her mother's hands making dumplings.
She was becoming someone he could actually hurt.
And someone who could actually hurt him back.
"Thank you," Sophie said. She was still smiling. Still lost in the moment where she'd forgotten she was trapped in a contract with a stranger. "For helping. For listening. For not making fun of me for almost burning down your kitchen."
Daniel looked at her across the table and understood why he'd been so careful to stay cold. Why he'd built walls so high they seemed unbreakable. Because feeling something for another person meant risk. It meant vulnerability. It meant being capable of loss.
"It's okay," he said quietly.
But it wasn't okay. Nothing was okay anymore. Because now he knew what Sophie looked like when she forgot to be scared. Now he knew what her laugh sounded like. Now he knew her.
And that knowledge was going to make the next three years impossible.
"Daniel?" Sophie's voice pulled him back.
"Yeah?"
"Do you ever get lonely? Up here in this penthouse with all your money and your power? Do you ever just want someone to cook dinner with?"
The question hit somewhere deep inside him that he'd boarded up a long time ago.
"All the time," he heard himself say. "Every single day."
Sophie's smile faded. Something else moved into her eyes. Something that looked like understanding. Like she saw him the same way he was starting to see her.
Like they were both drowning and neither of them could save the other.
"We should probably go to bed," Sophie said softly. But she didn't move. She just sat there looking at him like she was trying to memorize his face.
"Yeah," Daniel said. "We should."
But neither of them stood up. They just sat across from each other in the quiet kitchen while the city glowed outside the windows, two people bound by a contract that was supposed to keep them safe from feeling anything at all.
And Daniel realized the contract had been a lie from the beginning.
You couldn't live with someone. You couldn't listen to them talk about their broken family. You couldn't cook dinner with them and watch them laugh. You couldn't do any of those things and not fall.
The three years stretching ahead of him suddenly felt both impossibly long and terrifyingly short.