Daniel Cruz knew how to move through Marquez Couture without being noticed. He had mastered it in the years since he first walked into the atelier as nothing more than a delivery boy with ink-stained fingers and a knack for observation. Back then, he had carried bolts of fabric twice his weight, learning quickly that in Elena Marquez’s world, mistakes were not forgiven easily.
Now, at twenty-eight, he was more than the boy running errands. He was her right hand. Clients, suppliers, and seamstresses alike often spoke to him first before daring to approach Elena. He was the translator of her silence, the buffer against her sharp edges, the one who anticipated her needs before she spoke them. A spool of ivory thread on her desk before she asked, her coffee brewed exactly how she liked it, a design draft revised minutes before she requested a change.
Daniel didn’t mind the shadows. He thrived there. It was in the quiet roles, in the unseen details, that he found purpose. And besides—standing beside Elena, even unseen, felt like enough.
Or at least, it should have.
He paused beside a workstation, watching a seamstress carefully sew beading onto a bodice. “Tighter stitch,” he murmured gently, leaning down to guide her fingers without condescension. The young woman nodded, relieved by his patience. Daniel smiled, then moved on.
When he looked up, he caught sight of her.
Elena, framed by the glass of her office, her figure tall and composed, her presence radiating command. Yet there was something in the way she stood, her hands pressed against the desk, her eyes lingering on the atelier floor. She wasn’t watching the workers. She was watching him.
The realization struck him like a jolt. For a moment, their eyes locked—hers sharp, guarded, but soft in a way that unsettled him. A heat rose in his chest, and he quickly dropped his gaze, pretending to scribble something on his clipboard.
It wasn’t the first time.
He had caught those glances before, fleeting and unspoken. Sometimes during fittings, when he handed her a swatch of fabric and their fingers brushed longer than necessary. Sometimes in late-night meetings, when exhaustion drew laughter from her lips—a sound so rare it felt like a secret gift.
Daniel never allowed himself to dwell on it. To do so would be dangerous. Elena was his employer, a woman carved out of steel and silk, a queen in a world where reputation was currency. He was just her assistant, a man from nowhere with nothing to his name but loyalty and quiet ambition.
And yet—when she looked at him like that—he wondered. Could she feel it too?
The thought was madness. He forced himself to push it aside, to bury it under the weight of duty. He had climbed too far to risk everything on a dream. Still, as he moved through the atelier, Daniel felt her gaze lingering, like a thread tugging at him from across the room.
A thread that, no matter how hard he tried, he could not cut.
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