Chapter 2
Pauline
Three weeks into my dream job, and I’d discovered that dreams were mostly just nightmares with better marketing.
California Times was a shark tank in business casual. My coworkers smiled with too many teeth and stole stories like pickpockets—quick and shameless. The senior journalists guarded their sources like dragons hoarding gold. The junior ones would sell their own mothers for a front-page byline.
And me? I fetched coffee.
I fact-checked other people’s articles. I transcribed interviews I didn’t conduct. I ran errands for colleagues who couldn’t be bothered to remember my name, calling me “new girl,” “hey you,” or—memorably—“the one with the hair.”
My hair was magnificent, thank you very much.
My grandmother had taught me to love my curls when the world told me to straighten them.
I had visited her twice this week already, sitting beside her hospital bed and letting her know I was here now.
She was weaker—tired in a way that scared me.
But she still smiled when she saw me, still called me her baby girl, and I held onto that like a lifeline.
“Pauline!” Gerald’s voice cut across the newsroom like a foghorn. “Where’s my latte?”
Gerald. Gerald was our floor manager, a man whose management style consisted entirely of shouting and whose belly arrived in rooms approximately three seconds before the rest of him.
He had opinions about everything. Deadlines.
Formatting. The proper ratio of cream to coffee.
The decline of modern journalism. The audacity of interns who breathed too loudly near his office.
He expressed all of these opinions at maximum volume, usually while bits of pastry flew from his mouth.
He reminded me of Meatball, actually. The same barrel chest. The same suspicious eyes tracking everyone’s movements. The same tendency to growl at anyone who got too close to his territory. Except Meatball was probably smarter, and definitely better groomed.
I fantasized about stapling things to Gerald’s forehead at least twice a day.
“Coming,” I called back, already rising from my desk.
This was my life now. Pauline Wells, college graduate, award-winning journalist at the Newark Tribune, reduced to fetching oat-milk lattes.
I made my way to the coffee station, passing Alice Pearson’s desk on the way.
Alice was technically my superior—a senior reporter with sharp blonde hair and sharper elbows who looked at me like I was something unpleasant she’d stepped in.
She was on the phone, laughing at something, twirling a pen between her manicured fingers.
She didn’t acknowledge my existence. She never did.
The espresso machine hissed and gurgled. I watched the liquid drip into Gerald’s favorite mug—the one that said “World’s Best Boss” in faded letters—and contemplated the life choices that had led me here.
I had wanted this job. I had wanted it so badly I could taste it. California Times was prestigious, respected, the kind of publication that made other journalists sit up and pay attention. Getting hired here was supposed to be the beginning of everything.
Instead, I was making coffee and praying that Gerald didn’t yell at me for the foam being too thick again.
“Hey.”
I turned. Ethan Miles stood behind me, holding two donuts on a napkin like a peace offering.
He was two years my senior at the paper, with warm brown eyes and a desk across from mine and an apparent immunity to the office’s cutthroat atmosphere.
He’d been kind to me since my first day.
Explaining the Byzantine politics of the newsroom.
Warning me which editors were approachable and which ones ate junior reporters for breakfast. Bringing me snacks without being asked, like I was a stray cat he’d decided to adopt.
“Rough morning?” he asked.
“Gerald wants his latte.”
“Ah.” He nodded sympathetically. “Did he do the thing where he yells your name across the entire floor like you’re a misbehaving dog?”
“He did the thing.”
“Classic Gerald.” He held out one of the donuts. “Chocolate glazed. Figured you could use it.”
I took it, because I was not above stress-eating pastries at ten in the morning. “You’re a saint.”
“I’m really not.” He grinned. It was a nice grin. Easy in a way that made my shoulders relax slightly. “But I’ll accept the compliment.”
We stood there for a moment—me holding Gerald’s latte and a donut, him looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Gerald’s voice thundered across the newsroom again.
“PAULINE! TODAY, PLEASE!”
I sighed. “Duty calls.”
I delivered Gerald’s latte and spent the next three hours transcribing an interview about municipal water regulations. Thrilling stuff. The kind of hard-hitting journalism I had always dreamed of doing.
By the time I got home that evening, my feet ached and my head throbbed and I wanted nothing more than to collapse on my bed and not move for twelve hours. Instead, I kicked off my shoes, grabbed leftover Chinese food from the fridge, and called Claudette.
She answered on the second ring.
“Finally! I was starting to think you’d forgotten about me.”
“Impossible,” I said, wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder while I struggled to open the container of lo mein. “You’re like a fungus. You grow on people whether they want you to or not.”
“That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“I’m very poetic.”
“Michael!” she called, her voice muffled like she’d turned away from the phone. “Pauline says I’m like a fungus!”
I heard Michael’s voice in the background, amused. “She’s not wrong.”
“I’m surrounded by traitors,” Claudette announced. “My own husband. My own best friend. The betrayal is staggering.”
I smiled despite myself. This was what I needed. Claudette’s warmth cutting through the cold of the day, reminding me that not everyone in the world was trying to step on me to get ahead.
“How’s married life treating you?” I asked.
“Perfect. Absolutely Perfect. He makes me breakfast every morning. He leaves little notes in my lunch. Last week he bought me flowers for no reason at all. I’m living in a Hallmark movie,”
“You should do an advert for marriage. You’d convince anyone.”
She laughed, bright and happy. Claudette had always laughed like that, like joy was something she had in endless supply.
Even when she was sick, even when the tumor was eating her alive, she had still found reasons to laugh.
“Okay, but enough about my disgustingly perfect life. Tell me about yours. How’s California?
How’s the apartment? Have you been eaten by Meatball yet? ”
“Meatball and I have reached an understanding. I don’t make direct eye contact, and he doesn’t try to sit on me.”
“That sounds like a healthy relationship.”
“It’s the most functional relationship I’ve had in years.”
Claudette snorted. “That’s depressing.”
“I prefer ‘realistic.’”
“Same thing, babe.” She paused, and I could hear her settling into what was probably a bed. “Okay, but seriously. How are you? How’s work going?”
I stabbed at my lo mein with a chopstick. “Work is… an adjustment. My boss makes Meatball look charming. My coworkers would push me down a flight of stairs for a byline. And I spent today transcribing an interview about water treatment facilities.”
“That sounds… awful.”
“Awful is an understatement. This isn’t the living-the-dream life I envisioned for myself.”
“What about that story you were chasing? The Simon Tucker thing?”
I groaned. Simon Tucker. Billionaire recluse. Notoriously private. The kind of interview that could make a career, if you could actually get him to agree to one. I had been trying for weeks. Emails. Phone calls. Messages through his company’s PR department. Nothing.
“Dead end after dead end,” I admitted. “The man is a ghost. I’m starting to think he doesn’t actually exist. Maybe he’s just a collective hallucination of the financial sector.”
“Jack knows him, you know. I could ask…”
“No.” The word came out sharp before I could suppress it. “I mean, thank you. But I want to do this on my own. If I get the interview, I want it to be because I earned it, not because my best friend’s brother made a phone call.”
Claudette was quiet for a moment. “You know that’s not how the world works, right? Everyone uses connections. Everyone.”
“I know.” I did know. That was the frustrating part. “I just… I need to prove I can do this. To myself, if no one else.”
“You’re annoyingly principled.”
“It’s my best quality.”
She laughed again, and the sound loosened something in my chest. I had missed this. Missed her.
“Okay,” Claudette said, her voice shifting into something more careful. “Speaking of it… have you… I mean, are you planning to…”
“Spit it out, Specter.”
“It’s Specter-Ashford now, thank you very much.” A pause. “Are you really not planning to see Jack at all?”
The lo mein suddenly tasted like cardboard. I set the container down on the coffee table and pulled my knees up to my chest. “No.”
“Pauline…”
“Claudette.” I kept my voice steady through sheer force of will. “You promised. You swore to me. Not a word to him about me being here. Not one word.”
“I know. I haven’t said anything. I won’t.” She sighed, heavy and frustrated. “But can I just say one thing?”
“You’re going to say it whether I give you permission or not.”
“True.” Another pause. “It’s been years. Whatever happened between you two, whatever went wrong… don’t you think it’s time to at least talk about it?”
My fingers found the gold chain at my throat. I twisted it once, twice. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“That’s not true and we both know it.”
“Claudette.”
“Fine. Fine. I’ll drop it.” She didn’t sound happy about it. “But for the record? Neither of you has moved on.” It’s painfully obvious. And I’m tired of watching two people I love be miserable when they could just communicate like adults.”
“I’m not miserable.”
“Sure, babe.”
“I’m focused on my career.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t have time for… whatever you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything.” Her voice softened. “I just want you to be happy. That’s all. And I still have hope that someday I’ll get to be maid of honor at your wedding.”
I laughed. “Not with your brother, you won’t.”
“I didn’t say anything about my brother. Duh.”
I rolled my eyes at that. “I love you,” she said finally. “You know that, right?”
“I know.” My throat felt tight. “I love you too.”
“Call me if you need anything. Anything at all. I’m only thirty minutes away.”
“I will.”
We hung up, and I sat in the silence of my apartment, staring at the wall. The radiator clanked. Somewhere through the thin walls, I could hear Candy’s TV playing what sounded like a dating show, complete with dramatic music and someone crying.
A relationship with Jack Specter was Mission Impossible anyway. He probably had enough supermodels to wallpaper a mansion. My presence in his city didn’t even register on his radar.
Saturday morning, I went shopping for necessities. Dish soap. Toilet paper. A new sponge, because my old one had developed what I could only describe as a personality. Time to let it go.
The thrilling lifestyle of a twenty-eight-year-old woman with a savings account that wept whenever I looked at it.
The grocery store was packed with weekend warriors—moms with coupons, dads who clearly had no idea what they’d been sent to find, college kids buying ramen in bulk like they were preparing for the apocalypse.
I navigated the aisles with my headphones in, letting a podcast about unsolved mysteries drown out the chaos.
Something about a woman who vanished from a cruise ship in 1998.
Very well-adjusted of me.
I grabbed what I needed. Paid. Loaded the bags into my trunk. Climbed back into my Honda—a 2014 Civic with a dent in the passenger door and an air freshener that had stopped freshening approximately six months ago but I kept it anyway because I was sentimental and also lazy.
The parking lot was chaos.
Cars circling like vultures. Pedestrians darting between vehicles with a death wish. Someone honking angrily at someone else for reasons that were either extremely valid or completely unhinged. No way to tell.
I put the car in reverse, easing backward.
That was when metal met metal.
That sound.
That specific, expensive crunch that meant my bank account was about to experience a traumatic event.
“Oh, fuck me.”
The words came out loud, and deeply heartfelt. I dropped my forehead against the steering wheel and allowed myself three full seconds of despair.
Then I threw the car into park and climbed out.
Okay. Okay. I could handle this. I had handled worse. I would be apologetic but firm. Acknowledge responsibility while noting contributing factors. The car behind me had been parked at a weird angle. I had checked my mirrors. This was at least partially not my fault.
Probably.
Maybe.
I turned around to assess the damage.
The car I’d hit was a sleek black monument to obscene wealth.
Low and predatory, all sharp lines and tinted windows—the kind of car that purred when it started and was more expensive than anything my entire bloodline had earned across three generations.
Fantastic. Wonderful. Excellent start to the weekend, Pauline. Really outdoing yourself.
I approached the driver’s side door, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Exchange insurance information. Be polite. Do not cry. Do not have a breakdown in the middle of a grocery store parking lot.
That was reserved for Tuesdays.
I raised my fist to knock on the window. It wound down at the same moment.
And Jack Specter’s eyes were staring back at me.
My brain stopped functioning. Just—Loss of signal. Technical difficulties. Please stand by.