Chapter 13 Bree
Bree
Thursday morning.
The conference room is the same as always. Paloma stands at the presentation screen, clicking through slides with the weary determination of someone who’s been through this rodeo before and knows she’s about to get thrown.
Nico sits at the head of the table.
He’s in charcoal today. Suit jacket on. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the morning light catches the scar tissue along his jaw, and I hate myself for noticing how the contrast makes his features look sharper.
I focus on my laptop screen.
Notes. I’m taking notes.
“The revised media strategy focuses on proactive stakeholder engagement,” Paloma says, advancing to the next slide. “Rather than responding to each negative story individually, we control the narrative.”
Wait.
This is my idea.
Word for word.
I wrote this on a sticky note just the other night while eating cold pad Thai at my desk.
How did Paloma get her hands on it?
That’s it.
I’m done putting “helpful” notes on his desk.
I should’ve learned my lesson the first time.
I guess I thought he’d finally acknowledge me.
Fool me once, shame on you...
Paloma clicks through three more slides.
All mine.
Every single one of them filtered through sticky notes, left on his desk after hours, now being presented as Paloma’s work.
Which she probably thinks it is, because Nico must have fed her the ideas without attribution.
This is fine.
It’s not fine.
“The third messaging pillar needs work,” Nico says flatly. “The ‘human impact’ angle reads as emotional manipulation rather than authentic connection.”
My fingers freeze on the keyboard.
That’s.... that’s the pillar I was most proud of.
The one where I suggested highlighting actual patient stories. The one I spent an extra hour refining because I knew it was the emotional center of the entire strategy.
Why give it to Paloma, only to say it needs work?
Her shoulders drop slightly. “I can revise the approach. Maybe lean more into metrics instead of narrative?”
“Do that.”
I watch Paloma nod, her face carefully professional while something deflates behind her eyes. She’s good at her job. The fact that she can’t do it well right now isn’t her fault. It’s his. He’s so busy micromanaging and contradicting that he’s made her afraid to take any initiative at all.
And apparently when she does take initiative, using my ideas that he gave her without context, he shoots them down anyway.
What the hell’s his problem?
He wants to show me that my ideas suck, but he can’t tell me that to my face so he has to use another employee as a proxy?
Or maybe my idea doesn’t suck, but he takes grim pleasure in eviscerating it anyway, because it’s too hard for him to admit that his own ideas aren’t very good.
The meeting ends.
Paloma gathers her laptop and leaves without making eye contact with anyone. In moments, the conference room is empty except for me and Nico.
But he’s already heading for his office. The long strides of a man who expects the world to rearrange itself around him.
Something snaps inside me.
It’s not dramatic. Not loud. More like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far finally giving way with a quiet little crack!
I grab my laptop and follow him.
He’s almost to his office door when I catch up. He reaches for the handle. I shove past him and push it open, stepping inside before he can close me out.
He follows me inside. “Ms. Dawson, I don’t recall requesting a meeting.”
I make as if to leave, but when I reach the door, I close it instead, locking us both inside. The click sounds louder than it should.
“If you don’t like my work,” I spit. Literally. “Tell me to my face. Rather than through a proxy.”
My heart is hammering so hard I can feel my pulse in my throat.
Nico stares. “Excuse me?”
Oh, that tone. The one that’s supposed to make me realize I’ve overstepped and send me scurrying back to my proper place.
Not today.
“You’ve been using my work for a while now,” I continue. “So stop pretending I don’t exist when there are witnesses.”
He frowns. “I don’t know what—”
“The foundation proposal that the donors loved? Mine.” I’m aware my cheeks are getting hot.
Can feel the flush creeping up my neck. Don’t care.
“The donor email that saved three funding commitments? I wrote it. The media strategy Paloma just presented? My notes, repackaged. Even if you just eviscerated it. Right in front of me.”
His jaw tightens. I watch the scar tissue pull as the muscles beneath it clench.
Suddenly he touches the smart glass panel beside him, turning the glass opaque so that we’re sealed away from prying eyes.
“You want credit?” His voice has dropped to that dangerous quiet register. The one that makes everyone else in this building suddenly remember urgent appointments elsewhere. “For what? Doing your job?”
And there it is. The dismissal I knew was coming. The one that’s supposed to put me back in my box.
“For saving your ass repeatedly while you treat me like I’m beneath you,” I hiss.
The silence that follows is absolute.
I’m breathing too fast. My hands are shaking. I can smell his cologne.
His dark eyes are fixed on mine. Not looking through me for once. Actually seeing me.
“I don’t think you’re beneath me,” he says.
The admission is so quiet I almost miss it.
But I don’t. I hear every syllable.
And worse, I hear everything he’s not saying.
I need to leave right now before I say something else. Before he says something else. Before this conversation goes somewhere neither of us can come back from.
“Right.” My voice comes out strangled. “Good talk.”
Good talk?
GOOD TALK?
What are you, a middle school soccer coach?
I turn, and my hands are trembling so badly I can barely grip the handle. But I manage to open the door and walk out of his office.
Back at my desk, I sit down and stare at my laptop screen without seeing anything. My heart is still pounding. My face is still burning.
Thankfully, Nico keeps the smart glass walls of his office on the opaque setting. Because I don’t think I could stand to have his eyes on me right now.
You just told off a billionaire CEO.
Your boss.
The man whose company you literally cannot afford to get fired from.
Excellent decision-making, Bree.
But beneath the panic, there’s something else.
Something that feels almost like pride.
I said what needed to be said.
I demanded recognition.
I refused to be invisible.
Even if it costs me everything.
The afternoon crawls by. I answer emails. Coordinate calendar adjustments. Update the donor response matrix.
Nico doesn’t leave his office. At one point he sets the smart glass back to transparent, so I can see him on calls, reviewing documents, and doing whatever it is billionaire CEOs do when they’re not crushing their employees’ souls.
He doesn’t look at me.
Not once.
This is it. He’s figuring out how to fire me. Probably consulting with HR right now about severance packages and legal liability.
At least I said my piece.
At least I went out swinging.
At 5:47 PM, my laptop chimes with a new email.
I glance at the notification.
From: N. Rossi
To: B. Dawson
Subject: Tomorrow
My stomach drops.
Here it comes.
I click open the email.
Four sentences. No greeting. No signature beyond his initials.
3 PM tomorrow.
Board prep meeting, main conference room.
Prepare standard meeting materials and take notes.
Ensure coffee service is arranged for 2:45 PM.
-NR
No acknowledgment of our conversation.
No hint that he heard a single word I said.
Just... business as usual.
Take notes. Arrange coffee. Be invisible.
The message is clear: Nothing has changed.
My throat tightens. That fragile pride from earlier? Gone. Replaced by something that tastes suspiciously like humiliation and resignation.
Of course nothing changed. What did I expect? A heartfelt apology? A promotion? Some grand acknowledgment that I was right?
This is Nico Rossi. The man treats who emotions like inefficiencies to be optimized away.
I’m his secretary.
His secretary.
I close the email and shut my laptop.
Through the glass walls, Nico is still on a call. Still not looking at me.
Business as usual.
I’m done working late nights.
Done devoting myself to this job.
If this is how he wants to be, then I’ll treat this like any other job. Just a means to an end. Not a place where I can make a difference.
I gather my things and head for the elevator, my messenger bag feeling somehow heavier on my shoulder than it was this morning.
Tomorrow I’ll be invisible again.
But tonight?
Tonight I’m going home, opening a bottle of wine I can’t really afford, grabbing a carton of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream from my fridge, and seriously reconsidering every life choice that led me to this moment.
At least I said my piece.