Chapter 9
Avery
I arrived at Rowe Tower fifteen minutes early because I had developed a healthy fear of Benjamin Mercer and a deeply unhealthy desire to impress Callum Rowe.
The lobby looked different now that I was not sprinting through it in panic mode.
The black stone still shone, the suspended bridge models still hung in their glass cases, and the security guards still looked like they were guarding a royal palace.
But this time, when I gave my name, the man behind the desk did not print me a visitor badge.
He handed me a temporary employee pass with my picture already on it, which was alarming because the picture appeared to have been taken from my driver’s license and then insulted by a fluorescent lighting filter of some kind.
“Avery Hale,” he said. “Forty-seven. Mr. Mercer is expecting you.”
“I’m sure he is,” I replied.
I clipped the badge to my blazer and stepped toward the elevators, my stomach doing small, unpleasant acrobatics.
I had dressed like a person who wanted to be taken seriously.
I was wearing black trousers and blazer, a cream blouse, low heels, with my hair pinned back, and no distracting lipstick. Professional. Sensible even.
The elevator doors opened on forty-seven, and Benjamin Mercer stood there waiting.
He wore a dark blue suit, a silver tie, and the expression of a man who had been awake since the invention of electricity.
His tablet was under one arm, a coffee in one hand, and my first-day schedule in the other.
He looked me over once, not rudely exactly, but with the clinical attention of someone inspecting a bridge after an earthquake.
“Ms. Hale,” he said. “You are fourteen minutes early.”
“Good morning to you too, Ben.”
His eyes flicked to my badge. “Acceptable.”
“My badge?”
“Your arrival. Your shoes. Your general lack of glitter.”
“I considered a tiara, but it clashed with my desperation.”
His mouth twitched. It was tiny. Almost invisible. But it still happened anyway and I filed it away as progress.
“Do not make me like you before payroll has processed your tax forms,” he said. “It complicates my objectivity.”
“I’ll try to become less charming.”
“Please do. The building has enough structural stress this week.”
He turned and began walking, so I followed him through the glass doors and into the office.
People moved faster than they had yesterday.
Conversations stopped when Benjamin passed, then started again in lower voices.
Phones rang. Printers hummed. Someone near a bank of monitors said, “No, don’t send anything until legal clears the language,” in a tone that did not invite creative interpretation.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
Benjamin did not slow. “No.”
I waited, but he did not elaborate.
“Excellent. Love the transparency.”
“You are a first-day employee. Transparency will be issued to you in small, bite-sized pieces after you demonstrate you can be trusted not to choke on all of it.”
“That was both insulting and oddly maternal.”
“I contain multitudes.” He stopped beside a workstation near the operations area, a tidy desk with a monitor, keyboard, phone, legal pad, pen cup, and a tiny stack of forms. “This is yours for now.”
I looked at the desk.
Mine.
It should not have moved me. It was laminate and ergonomic equipment and a chair that still had the instructional tag dangling from one arm. But after years of drifting through jobs that had never really made room for me, the sight of an assigned place tightened an embarrassing knot in my chest.
Benjamin noticed, because he was the patron saint of noticing things I did not want noticed.
“It’s a desk,” he said.
“I know.”
“Do not imprint on it.”
“I’m not a werewolf.”
“Debatable.”
I turned toward him. “Do you practice this?”
“Constantly.” He set the schedule down on the desk. “Today is orientation, systems access, HR forms, confidentiality training, workplace conduct modules, cybersecurity, document retention, and a brief introductory meeting with Dana, who has promised not to devour you until at least Thursday.”
“Comforting.”
“She likes competence, hates excuses, and has a medical allergy to the phrase ‘I’m a people person.’ Do not say it unless you want to see a woman leave her body from irritation.”
“Noted.”
“Mr. Rowe is unavailable this morning.”
I looked down at the schedule too quickly. “Okay.”
Benjamin was silent.
I could feel him looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“That was not a nothing silence. That was a judgment silence wearing a tiny hat and fake moustache.”
“Accurate.” He tapped the schedule. “Mr. Rowe is dealing with an urgent matter related to the Hartwell contract. You will not ask people about it. You will not speculate. You will not text your friends dramatized theories. You will not attempt to be useful in areas where you know nothing. Today, your job is to learn where the bathrooms are, sign forms, and refrain from becoming a subplot.”
“I can do that.”
“Everyone says that before becoming a subplot.”
“Ben-ja-min.”
His face softened by one molecule, which, for Benjamin, was basically a hug. “He knows you’re here.”
I hated that I needed to hear it.
“I didn’t ask.”
“No,” he said. “You pouted internally with such volume that the lights flickered.”
“I did not pout, internally or otherwise.”
“Ms. Hale, I work for Callum Rowe. I can detect restrained emotion through many square yards of concrete and steel.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and decided dignity was sometimes a matter of retreat. “Where are the bathrooms?”
“Excellent pivot.”
The morning became a blur of passwords, forms, and Benjamin’s brand of corporate benevolence, which felt like being escorted through a museum by a man who suspected you might lick the paintings.
He introduced me to people so quickly I retained almost no names, only impressions starting with Marina at reception, who had kind eyes; Theo in IT, who set up my laptop and told me my temporary password with the dead-eyed resignation of a man who knew I would forget it; Priya from legal, who shook my hand while still reading something on her phone; and Dana, who appeared at 10:00 precisely, wearing a gray blazer and the expression of a woman who had no time for anyone’s shit.
Dana looked at me for three seconds.
“Can you take notes?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you take useful notes?”
“I believe so.”
“That is not the same answer.”
“I can take useful notes.”
“Good. Can you tell the difference between urgent and loud?”
I hesitated. “Usually.”
She sighed. “Honest. Unfortunate, but honest.” She looked at Benjamin. “She’ll do.”
“I’m relieved you conducted such an exhaustive interview,” he drawled.
Dana ignored him and looked back at me. “You’re here because Callum thinks you deserve a chance.”
I stood a little straighter. “Yes.”
“That means exactly one thing to me.”
I waited.
“It means Callum thinks you deserve a chance. It does not mean you are useful yet. Become useful.”
Then she walked away and I just stared after her.
Benjamin looked almost emotional. “Wasn’t she magnificent?”
“I think she just mugged my soul.”
“She likes you.”
“She said I wasn’t useful.”
“She said yet.”
After that, I sat through cybersecurity training in a glass-walled conference room with six other new hires and a video that appeared to have been filmed in 2009 by people who feared both hackers and joy.
I learned not to click suspicious links, not to leave confidential documents on trains, not to plug unidentified USB drives into company devices, and not to use password123.
Benjamin checked in twice, each time appearing at the door like a very judgmental ghost. Once he silently held up a bottle of water.
I nodded, and he set it beside my laptop before disappearing.
The training was aggressively boring. It was so boring that at one point I began reading the emergency exit diagram with the emotional investment of a detective.
But I could handle boring. Boring did not scare me.
Boring was, in fact, a welcome vacation from Marlena Cross’s preferred management strategy of psychological dodgeball.
The problem was Callum.
Specifically, the problem was that Callum was not there.
I didn’t see him anywhere. I told myself that was a good thing. Distance was good. Distance was what he had said we needed. Distance was mature, ethical, professional, necessary, and all the other words women used when trying to convince themselves disappointment was actually character development.
Still, every time footsteps passed the conference room door, I looked up and every time it was not him, something inside me dipped.
By lunch, I had become ridiculous enough that even I was annoyed with me.
Benjamin collected me at noon from the HR module called Creating a Culture of Respect, which was narrated by a woman who had the same tone of voice throughout the whole thing.
“Pause your educational cinema,” he said from the doorway.
The other new hires looked up.
I clicked pause. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes, but not with you. Unsettling novelty.” He glanced down at his tablet. “Mr. Rowe has requested your presence for lunch.”
My heart tripped over itself.
“For lunch,” I repeated.
Benjamin’s eyes flicked to my face. “That is what I said.”
One of the new hires, a guy named Mark or Matt, looked between us with interest.
Benjamin’s gaze shifted to him. “Do not form a thought.”
The guy looked back at his laptop immediately.
I stood, smoothing my trousers. “I thought Mr. Rowe was unavailable.”
“He is. He has made himself briefly less unavailable. Do not become poetic about it.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were approaching poetic. I saw it coming.”
As we walked out, I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “Are you always this mean to people on their first day?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I’m usually worse.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. He looked ahead, but I saw the edge of his mouth move again in a mostly upward direction.
Progress.