Page 88 of Boardroom Mask

He does this with everyone. Deborah from copy gets a compliment on her coffee mug, which has a picture of a grumpy cat and the wordsI SURVIVED ANOTHER MEETING THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN AN EMAIL.“I need one of those,” Kir chuckles. “I’ll buy a hundred and distribute them to my entire team.” Deborah nearly falls out of her chair.

The interns practically combust. Priyanka, who’s twenty-two and fresh out of Columbia J-school, fumbles her pen so badly it clatters across the floor and rolls under Kir’s shoe. He bends down, picks it up, and hands it back to her with a grin that could sell toothpaste. “Careful,” he warns. “The pen is mightier than the sword. You don’t want to lose your best weapon.” Priyanka takes it from him and then just nods a bunch of times, like a broken bobblehead.

Weston pops up over the cubicle wall again and quirks a thumb at the show taking place behind us. “Who the hell isthat?”

“Kir Lazarev,” I say without looking up from the zoning filing I’m definitely not reading. “CEO of Lazarev Global.”

“That’s the Lazarev guy? The one you’ve been—” He gestures vaguely at my disaster of a desk.

“Yep.”

“He’s handsome.”

“Is he? I hadn’t noticed.”

Weston gives me a look that says he doesn’t believe me even a little. “He’s shaking hands and kissing babies out there. Like a politician running for office.”

That’s actually a pretty decent description. Kir moves through the newsroom like he belongs there, like the space was waiting for him to fill it. He touches elbows, holds eye contact easily, and laughs at weak, nervous jokes as if they’re the funniest thing he’s ever heard. The women respond to it most visibly. Every single hair-do gets touched up repeatedly, and I swear a few blouse buttons get popped, too.

But the men fall for it just as hard. I watch Doug emerge from his office with his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, shake Kir’s hand, and break into a smile I’ve seen maybe three times ever.

Meanwhile, I sink lower in my chair.

Doug catches my eye as he’s heading back toward his office. His smile withers into a frown. Then he changes course and stomps over to my cubicle, reading glasses still perched on his forehead.

“You look green,” he says bluntly. “You eat something bad?”

I shake my head. “I’m fine.”

He frowns. He opens his mouth to say something else, but then Thornton’s booming baritone cuts across the floor. “Doug! Bring your best and brightest over here. Kir wants to meet the investigative team.”

Doug shoots me a look. I shoot one right back.

“Don’t,” I whisper. “Please don’t.”

“Pierce, get up.”

“Doug, I really don’t think?—”

“Get. Up.”

I stand on shaky legs. I tug the hem of my blouse down, run my tongue over my teeth, and follow Doug to my doom, across the floor toward where Kir and Thornton are standing near the glass-walled conference room.

Kir sees me coming from fifteen feet away. His face doesn’t change. Not a flicker, not a twitch. He’s good. He’s really, really, really freaking good.

Thornton beams. “Kir, this is Jillian Pierce, one of our sharpest investigative reporters.”

Kir extends his hand. “Ms. Pierce. A pleasure.”

I take his hand. His grip is firm and warm and his fingers curl around mine for exactly the right amount of time. Not too long. Not too short. A perfectly calibrated handshake from a man who has shaken ten thousand hands and made every single person on the other end feel like they were the only one in the room.

Except for me.

He makes me feel like nobody at all.

“Ms. Pierce,” he says. “I believe you cover my family’s company.”

“I do,” I manage.