Under His Influence
(2026)(The second book in the Empire of Influence series)
A novel by Cora J Riley
He watched from the desk. She made him leave it.
Marcus Cole is the most overqualified receptionist in Manhattan. Georgetown Law. Top seven percent. Six years at a crisis management firm where he sits at a desk, draws hearts on sticky notes, and studies the three-second window between the face people show and the face people hide.
He doesn’t speak. He observes. He sees everything.
Then Elena Vasquez walks in and asks him where the bathroom is.
She’s a CEO. $4.2 billion tech company. Steel composure, killer earnings calls, and a board of directors circling her like wolves. Her ex-husband recorded her therapy sessions. A board member weaponised the recordings. The conspiracy to remove her is worth $85,000, a surveillance fund, and the calculated destruction of a woman who had the audacity to cry in private.
Marcus was supposed to observe. Instead, he built a strategy: fake boyfriend. Public rehabilitation. Three sentences at a coat check that changed the narrative. He saw her micro-expressions from twelve feet away. He saw the smiles she hid. He saw the warrior underneath the composure.
She saw him too.
She saw the man who watched from the desk and who loved from the desk and who could not say I love you without turning it into a paragraph.
The fake relationship was supposed to save her career. It saved them both.
Under His Influence is Book Two of the Fixers Series — a slow-burn fake-to-real romance with a hero who communicates in spatial commentary, a heroine who catalogues his breathing patterns, and a hallway where everything happens. HEA guaranteed.
Genre: Romance
Marcus Cole is the most overqualified receptionist in Manhattan. Georgetown Law. Top seven percent. Six years at a crisis management firm where he sits at a desk, draws hearts on sticky notes, and studies the three-second window between the face people show and the face people hide.
He doesn’t speak. He observes. He sees everything.
Then Elena Vasquez walks in and asks him where the bathroom is.
She’s a CEO. $4.2 billion tech company. Steel composure, killer earnings calls, and a board of directors circling her like wolves. Her ex-husband recorded her therapy sessions. A board member weaponised the recordings. The conspiracy to remove her is worth $85,000, a surveillance fund, and the calculated destruction of a woman who had the audacity to cry in private.
Marcus was supposed to observe. Instead, he built a strategy: fake boyfriend. Public rehabilitation. Three sentences at a coat check that changed the narrative. He saw her micro-expressions from twelve feet away. He saw the smiles she hid. He saw the warrior underneath the composure.
She saw him too.
She saw the man who watched from the desk and who loved from the desk and who could not say I love you without turning it into a paragraph.
The fake relationship was supposed to save her career. It saved them both.
Under His Influence is Book Two of the Fixers Series — a slow-burn fake-to-real romance with a hero who communicates in spatial commentary, a heroine who catalogues his breathing patterns, and a hallway where everything happens. HEA guaranteed.
Genre: Romance
Used availability for Cora J Riley's Under His Influence