Take It Offline (Out of Office #1)

1. Survival of the 1

CHAPTER 1

SURVIVAL OF THE 1%

EMMA

R ich bitch. Princess. Trust fund baby.

I’ve been called it all, and worse.

Lil heiress trying out a corporate job. Isn’t that cute?

It doesn’t matter that I’ve delivered everything asked of me, and I’ve done it early and under budget.

It doesn’t matter that I work late and never take sick days.

It doesn’t matter that I live paycheck to paycheck now, or that there could possibly be more to me than a last name and a pretty face.

Roberts (Karl, technically, but everyone calls him by his last name) stabs at the wall-mounted screen. “Change the colors. It’s too harsh. Try blue. The percentages don’t tell me anything, so change that back to full figures. And add filters for Discipline, Vendor, and Facility.”

A part of me wants the screen to fall on him.

Would it count as manslaughter if I manifested harm to my own boss?

On a related note, if karma truly exists, then whoever inflicted Power BI on the world will only ever know pain.

Rolling my shoulders, I note the changes he wants, reversing the suggestions he insisted I make last week.

“I know you’ve been struggling with this level of advanced reporting,” he says, as if he isn’t the reason this report is taking three weeks to complete, instead of three days.

I focus on the bar chart, wishing he was joking. It’s not the reporting that’s difficult to understand, it’s him.

He sits, clasping his hands on the table. The condescending pinch of his mouth makes my stomach drop. “But it’s important that you learn. If you want to make up for your lack of experience, you need to invest in yourself. I won’t be able to hold your hand next time.”

I’m shocked he doesn’t pat me on the head.

He’s right about one thing. Though I’ve worked for Helix for five years now, it’s still my first job.

But I’m determined to prove myself.

There’s no separating me from the reputation that comes with my name, but I’m damn well going to try.

Roberts points back to the screen. “I’ll need this finished before I present it to Emmanuel on Wednesday.”

Two days from now. Fantastic.

I don’t often dream about what my life would look like if my parents hadn’t thrown away our eight-figure net worth, but when I do, it’s because I’m stuck in one of the world’s longest meetings, wishing I could scream at my boss.

It turns out that smiling and nodding at condescending older men is a fact of life, no matter how engorged my bank account is.

The retail therapy is infinitely better, though.

Reactions to my last name are always the same. Conway? As in…? Yep. I’m a second-generation nepo baby, so people never understand why I would choose to work a nine-to-five, especially at Helix of all places, the “gas giant gone green” as the news announced a decade ago, shocking the world.

Back when my world consisted of trunk shows and St. Barts, I wouldn’t have pictured it either.

What nobody knows is that the great Conway legacy was gambled away on bad investments. The only reason my parents haven’t declared bankruptcy is because I sold off as much as I could and took this job to pay off the rest.

But, as life regularly reminds me, hard work isn’t always enough.

Karl Roberts, overseer of the Digital function and second-in-command to the CIO, seems to take pleasure in that.

Maybe if my parents had invested in Roberts’s ability to constantly move the goalposts, I wouldn’t have needed to take this job.

Another glance at the clock reminds me that Friday technically finished half an hour ago, but instead of curling up bra-free on my plush velvet couch and imagining how long I’d last in a zombie apocalypse, I’m once again working into the weekend.

“If you can get this right, it’ll benefit you,” he adds. “The ability to effectively communicate our results to the leads team and beyond is integral if you want to move up.”

Lately he’s been hinting at a promotion.

I want it. I’ve earned it.

It’s taken two years of overtime to get even a scrap of Roberts’s approval. Then, after the catastrophe that was last year’s staff briefing, I had to start over.

It still chafes. When I started working here five years ago, he asked for me specifically. Within weeks, I knew that Governance was the right place for me. Here, I get to lead change. Here, I create innovative solutions to real-world problems and—when I can convince Roberts—actually implement them.

And yet, despite all of that, I can’t shake the feeling that he wants me to fail.

But what else can I do except grin and bear it? This is simply another test in a long line of them, and I’ll rise to meet it, just as I have all the others.

I’m getting this promotion, and when I do, it won’t be because anyone—including my boss—did me a favor. It’ll be because I’ve earned it.

Me. Emma.

Not my parents. Not my net worth.

Me.

Then I’ll finally have the recognition I’ve been working my ass off for, and a raise that will return to me a financial stability I haven’t had since college.

“Two weeks,” I say, having finally escaped to meet Ivy for a post-work drink. It’s a credit to her powers as my best friend that I’m not currently: a) eating leftovers for dinner, and b) hunched over my keyboard while I do it. “That’s how long I’d last in a zombie invasion.” Maybe three if I used my Jimmy Choos as a weapon.

Ivy shakes her head, her long black ponytail swishing behind her. Around us, the bar is bustling with noise and activity, and the bartender has spent more time staring at Ivy’s bright pink lipstick than she has on the drinks she’s pouring.

“No way,” Ivy says. “Together? We could get through a couple months, easy. Just have to make it to the Winchester.”

I laugh, but the sound is cut short when my neck twinges. Too much stress, my mother would warn me . Tell me something I don’t know. “I swear Roberts hates me. I was stuck in a Zoom meeting about the citizen developer update for two straight hours last night.”

“That’s because he knows you’re smarter than him. No one knows the system the way you do.” Ever so casually, she flicks her hair over her shoulder, exposing a dual turtle dove tattoo, and I have to stifle a laugh at how quickly the bartender’s head turns toward her. The way Ivy is smiling tells me she’s noticed it too.

I love her. For every person who stares and wonders what the hell I’m doing at Helix, Ivy’s proven she couldn’t care less about my past.

We bonded quickly during an all-day women in tech workshop I was voluntold to attend and I haven’t let her go since. Like me, she’s a senior document controller within the company. While I work in governance, Ivy’s expertise is in development.

I wouldn’t have survived at Helix without her.

At five-nine, I tower over her, but don’t be fooled—she’s far more cunning than I am.

I shake my head. “That’s only because I spent eighteen months working on it with the enterprise team in the first place.” A less than thankless task in the end, because the lead team cut anything from our scope that wasn’t minimum viable product, signaling that the project was officially over budget and out of time.

Management didn’t care what was implemented as long as they got a bonus.

Unsurprisingly, what we delivered was not all it could be. At the end of the day, all anyone cared about was where the system failed.

And guess who got the blame?

“People still message me about your training. Even the Subsea guys are happy, and they hate dealing with documents. Steve gave up his hard copies. Do you know how long that man has been complaining about digitization? Probably since he was born. But you walk him through it, and now it’s ‘Ivy, did you know I can reply to vendor comments directly in the system?’ If I believed in the supernatural, I’d swear you hexed him.” She laughs, sparing a flirty glance at the bartender when she returns for our glasses. “I know training people directly isn’t in your job description, but?—”

“But nothing,” I say, even though she’s right. Training like that is not my responsibility, and if Roberts knew, I’d be in trouble. But what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt anyone. “I love you, and I’d do the same for anyone.”

Well. Not anyone, but 99 percent of them.

“Don’t look so worried,” Ivy says. “You’ve got this.”

“I’ve got this,” I repeat. Maybe if I say it enough, I can force my will into being.

The issue with always putting everyone else’s needs first is that there’s no end in sight. I don’t want to be the kind of person who doesn’t care, but I also can’t stop hearing the echoes of every authority figure in my life telling me to do as I’m told.

Fit the role. Play by the rules. Be a good girl.

If I could do all that, my life would be much easier. But some intrinsic part of me can’t help but go left when everyone else goes right. To test my limits in new ways, whether that is teaching myself DAX basics to improve a report or holding a plank for ten seconds longer than I did last week.

Nothing excites me more than a challenge.

“This is your year, Em. Don’t be afraid to be a little selfish. Step up and take what you’ve earned.”

She’s right. When I walk into work on Monday, I’ll do exactly that.