Chapter Three. The First Day.

Elsie didn’t breathe for the first three hours of her shift.

She sat at the polished glass desk just outside Loe Callahan’s office, typing with shaking fingers, organizing calendar entries like they were nuclear codes, and praying no one would notice she had no idea what she was doing.

The digital clock on her screen blinked mercilessly. 11:03 AM.

Only three hours? She felt like she’d aged ten years already.

“Miss Ray?” His voice came through the intercom.

She jumped. “Yes, Mr. Callahan?”

“Come in.”

Her heart stuttered.She stood quickly, brushed invisible lint off her skirt, and stepped inside. Loe was still behind his desk, reading through a financial report, pen tapping lightly on the edge of the page.

“Do you know how to prepare a quarterly expense brief for a shareholders’ review?”

“…Yes,” she lied.

His eyes flicked up. “Then why does this draft read like a high school project?”

She swallowed hard.

“I... I used the format from your 2023 file as reference, but I may have misunderstood some of the coding in”

“You misunderstood everything,” he said calmly. “Redraft it. You have forty-five minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

She turned to leave.

“And Miss Ray?”

She paused.

“You don’t need to impress me. Just do better.”

She nodded once, cheeks burning.

Back at her desk, she tried to focus, but her phone buzzed. Again.

ARIA:

Any progress?

ARIA:

He fall into your lap yet? Or do I need to hire someone else who knows what seduction means?

Elsie’s stomach clenched. She turned the phone face down.

What had she gotten herself into?She pushed the thoughts aside and dove back into spreadsheets, determined to prove something to Loe, to herself, maybe even to Aria.

By the time lunch rolled around, the office floor emptied. Most employees went out, but Elsie stayed, hunched at her desk, biting into a granola bar and squinting at bar charts. She didn’t notice the door opening behind her.

“Why aren’t you eating real food?”

She turned sharply.

Loe stood just inside his office doorway, arms crossed, tie loosened. The faintest crease lined his brow.

“I, um… I didn’t bring anything,” Elsie said quickly. “And I didn’t want to leave the report unfinished.”

His gaze flicked to the glowing screen, where graphs and bullet points blinked back at them.

“Your draft still has mistakes.”

“I’ll fix them.”

He nodded once, but didn’t move. Just stood there, watching her like someone trying to read a foreign language.

“You worked while studying?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Printing shop. Then I handled files for a real estate group. Temporary contracts, mostly.”

His eyes narrowed not unkindly. “No permanent roles?”

“No one offered,” she said honestly.

He was quiet for a moment.

“You don’t belong in corporate.”

The words cut sharper than she expected. She looked down at her keyboard, embarrassed. “I’m trying to learn.”

“I didn’t say you can’t belong,” he added. “Just that the corporate world wasn’t built to fit people like you.”

Elsie looked up slowly.

“What kind of people am I?”

His answer came softer than she expected. “Ones that still believe they can be good and win.”

She blinked.

And for a second, they just looked at each other.

Not boss and secretary. Not target and trap.

Just two people tired, flawed, halfway broken.

He looked away first.

“Take a break, Miss Ray,” he said. “And eat something with protein.”

Then he stepped back inside his office, leaving her breathless, speechless, and shaken.

She exhaled, picked up her phone, and opened Aria’s last message.

She typed back slowly:

ELSIE:

Don’t rush me.

Then she deleted it after hitting the send botton.