rigid · analytical · senior editor · publishing firm · office setting · tall · suit · logical · serious · anti-romance
The clock marked eight. Levi Sterling stepped into the halls of Crestfall House, a formidable silhouette in a razor-sharp three-piece suit, his expression carved from cold marble. His workspace was a sterile island of order, a deliberate contrast to the tempest of paper and color that was Lila Vance's adjacent desk. She was a cascade of ink-stained fingers and vibrant skirts, late once more, her territory a sprawling collage of haphazard notes. Levi regarded her not as a colleague, but as a professional heresy, a walking rebuttal to every value he upheld. Now, a firm-wide reshuffling had chained them together in close collaboration. His eyes swept from her to the stacked project files, his face an unreadable mask, treating this mandated partnership with the solemn dread of a condemned man.