The Devil’s Proposal
Elara hailed a taxi, dropped into the back seat, the taxi smelled like stale coffee.
Elara rummaged through her tote bag for the third time, fingers brushing past lip gloss and crumpled receipts, searching for the USB drive that held Marcus’s edited Q4 reports. If she’d left it on her kitchen counter, she was dead. Not metaphorically dead. Actually dead. Marcus Thorne would fire her on the spot, and worse, he’d do it with that blank expression that made you feel like an insect he’d stepped on without noticing.
Her fingers closed around the small drive. She exhaled.
“Rough morning?” the driver asked, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
“You have no idea.”
Rough didn’t cover it. The past week had been hell wrapped in a nightmare and served cold. She’d worked through Christmas, editing financial projections while her mother slept in a hospital bed and five pregnancy tests sat hidden in her bathroom drawer like evidence of a crime she couldn’t undo.
And Marcus. God, Marcus had made sure she earned every cent of her salary. Emails at 2 AM. Revision requests on Christmas Day. A forty-page report that needed complete reformatting because he decided he didn’t like the font. The man was the devil in Dior. No, worse. He was heartless in Hugo Boss. Satan in Suitsupply.
Why not just quit? The question had been circling her brain for three years like a vulture.
Because she couldn’t.
Before this job, she’d been a janitor at a corporate office in Manhattan, mopping floors at 5 AM and dodging the eyes of executives who looked through her like she was furniture.
Jobs were scarce when you didn’t have connections or a degree from the right school. And this job, for all its hell, paid well. Well enough that her mother had a hospital bed instead of dying on a clinic floor. Well enough that Leo, her junior brother, could stay in community college. Well enough that she could keep Victor, the debt collector from taking the last thing they owned.
The taxi pulled up to Thorne Dynamics Tower, all glass and steel stretching into the grey January sky like a middle finger to everyone who couldn’t afford to work there.
Elara paid the driver and stepped onto the sidewalk. The building loomed above her. She made the sign of the cross, muttering under her breath, “Dear God, about to work with the devil again today. Keep me safe.”
It was sarcastic. Mostly.
The lobby was already buzzing with employees, everyone moving with that particular Monday morning energy that felt more like a death march than a workday. Elara checked her phone. 8:47 AM. She was late.
“Elara!”
She turned to find Emeka striding toward her, coffee in one hand, his designer scarf draped over his shoulder like he was walking a runway instead of heading to accounting. He looked her up and down, eyebrows rising dramatically.
“Girl, you’re glowing. What happened during the holiday? You met someone?”
“Emeks, I’m late. Can we not?”
“Oh, we’re absolutely doing this.” He fell into step beside her as they headed toward the elevators. “You’ve got that glow. That ‘I had good sex’ glow. Spill.”
“There’s nothing to spill.”
“Lies. I can smell lies, babe, and you reek of them.”
Elara’s phone buzzed in her hand. She glanced down at the screen.
*Mr. Thorne: My office. Now.*
Her stomach dropped to her feet.
Emeka leaned over her shoulder, reading the message. “Is that the devil?”
She nodded, her mouth suddenly dry.
“Well, don’t keep him waiting.” Emeka’s grin turned wicked. “Go on before he drops hell on earth. And babe? Whatever you did during Christmas, do it again. That glow is everything.”
Elara didn’t respond. She was already moving toward the private elevator that led directly to Marcus’s top-floor office, her heels clicking against the marble like a countdown.
The ride up felt like drowning in slow motion. She stared at her reflection in the polished steel doors. Dark circles under her eyes that concealer couldn’t quite hide. Hair pulled back in a tight bun that made her look professional and miserable. She looked like someone who’d spent the week having a mental breakdown in installments.
The doors opened with a soft chime.
Marcus’s office was exactly as she remembered. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. Minimalist furniture that probably cost more than her annual salary. Everything is cold, clean, controlled. Just like him.
He stood behind his desk, hands in his pockets, staring out at the skyline. He didn’t turn when she entered.
“Good morning, Mr. Thorne.”
Silence.
She stayed by the door, clutching her bag like a shield. The air in the room felt heavy, charged with something she couldn’t name. Her mind raced. Did he know? Had he somehow found out about the pregnancy? Was this the part where he fired her for unprofessional conduct and she lost everything?
“Sit.”
It wasn’t a request.
Elara moved to the chair across from his desk, lowering herself slowly. Her hands were shaking. She clasped them together in her lap, willing them to stop.
Marcus turned finally, his dark eyes locking onto hers. His expression gave away nothing. No anger. No warmth. Nothing. He looked at her the way someone might look at a contract they were considering signing.
The silence stretched. Ten seconds. Twenty. She was about to break, about to say something, anything to fill the terrible quiet, when he spoke.
“Marry me.”
Elara blinked.
The words didn’t make sense. They were English, she understood English, but strung together like that they became nonsense. Her brain scrambled to process. Did he hit his head over Christmas? Did he think the sex in the stairwell meant something? Did he somehow know about the pregnancy and this was his twisted solution?
“I…..”
“Should I repeat myself?”
His voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that came before hurricanes.
Elara’s mouth opened. Closed. It opened again. No sound came out. Her heart was doing something violent in her chest, slamming against her ribs like it was trying to escape.
Marcus Thorne, her boss, the devil who’d made her life hell for three years, the man who’d fucked her in a fire exit and then dismissed her with cold finality, had just asked her to marry him.
And judging by the look on his face, he wasn’t joking.
My devil on earth had just made it official.
