Chapter 6
"Cassidy, don't leave yet—stay at your desk until the end of the day," Clara says beside her while she's still trying to make sense of what just happened. "I'll have someone reach out to you tonight or first thing tomorrow."
The intern nods, not quite sure how to read what the marketing director is telling her, but she does as she's told and heads to the restroom to splash some water on her face.
Jason walks out of the conference room and stares at her, wide-eyed, like he's just witnessed something grotesque and can't find the strength to speak.
Cassidy can only conclude the guy is completely useless.
He's supposed to be her direct supervisor, and at the very least he should be guiding her if his unhinged boss decides to make the radical call to fire her.
"You wrapped up early. What do you say we go—" Tanya stops mid-sentence, because when she turns her head she sees her coworker looking so pale she's scared she might pass out. "Hey, Cassidy, are you okay?"
The girl has come back from the restroom and stands with her gaze fixed on some invisible point, still stunned by Diane's reaction.
She'd seen something in those eyes that didn't look like anger at an employee who'd corrected her—something that comes very close, she's sure of it, to a kind of admiration Diane was fighting hard to hide.
Then, all at once, the blue eyes had turned into two deep holes and those full lips had pressed together in fury.
"Diane Carter fired me," the intern manages to say out loud, and Tanya lets out a low, furious growl.
"That bitch," she snarls, though she keeps her voice down—she can't risk her own job, and if the Cobra heard her she'd end up in the worst kind of trouble. "What happened in there? Not that that woman needs much of a reason to throw people out."
Cassidy shakes her head, and now the anger starts clawing at her chest. It isn't fair—like so many things she's had to live through—because she was hired to do a job, and her double major isn't just a piece of paper hanging on a wall.
It's years of studying, sitting exams, understanding that a proposal built on a high return-on-investment promise is as fragile as a house of cards.
She doesn't question Diane's expertise—she assumes she's in that position because her experience backs her up—but the move struck her as so risky she couldn't stay quiet.
If Cassidy were the boss and an intern made that kind of observation, her response definitely wouldn't be to throw her out.
"She's an absolute bitch," Cassidy spits, her stomach turning. "All I did was point out something in the data that Jason was supposed to have looked into, and she couldn't stand that I pushed back on her answer."
Tanya raises her eyebrows and lets out a low whistle.
"Girl, you came in swinging." She puts a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry it went down like this. You've got a lot of potential, and I'm sure any other boss will see it."
Cassidy tells her Clara asked her not to leave right away, and Tanya takes the chance to pass along the contact info for a former coworker who now works at a smaller company in Santa Monica, in case they're hiring interns and she wants to send over her résumé.
The hours pass, and the closer it gets to quitting time, the hotter her anger burns.
It's coiled in her chest, squeezing her throat with an invisible grip.
Diane Carter is one of the most miserable women she has ever met—and in twenty-eight years Cassidy has met some truly unpleasant people—and if she thinks she can treat her like something scraped off the bottom of her shoe, she's wrong.
An idea starts taking shape in her head.
She's not sure if it's one of the good ones that tend to help her solve problems or—as Payton would say—a catastrophic one that only makes things worse, but in situations like this Cassidy falls into a loop, and no matter how hard she tries, she can't pull herself out of the thought.
"It was great meeting you, Cassidy." The hug Tanya gives her doesn't surprise her, because her coworker has been warm and easy to be around from the very first moment. "Here's my number. I'd love for us to catch up sometime."
Cassidy manages a smile, and even if it's a bitter one, at least she knows her time at Whitestone has left her with a potential friend.
When Tanya disappears at the end of the hallway, Cassidy saves the number in her phone and notices a message from Kenny.
Ken: Hey, Cass, what's up? Sorry I didn't answer—I've been at the shop since six. Ben needed a favor.
She immediately thinks back to that bad feeling she woke up with that morning and confirms it had nothing to do with her brothers.
Kenny, the one she always worries about, seems fine.
She was the one who'd starred in the disaster her body had been bracing for.
She writes back quickly, feeling awful that she hadn't managed to call her brother back yet.
Cassidy: So everything's good?
Kenny takes a while to reply, so she starts gathering her things at an easy pace. She hadn't brought much to the office—just a couple of notebooks, pens in different colors, and a stack of sticky notes she can't help filling with stray thoughts she finds important throughout the day.
The office empties out almost half an hour after she and Tanya said their goodbyes, and Cassidy, whose brain is still spinning like a wheel at full speed, decides she can't break the loop by sitting here. Waiting is pointless.
She walks straight ahead, eyes forward, until she reaches Diane's office door.
She takes two deep breaths and pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to ease the migraine that's been building since she walked out of that conference room—the one she knows will finally explode the second she steps inside.
She knocks three times and waits with very little patience.
She doesn't know how much time passes, but she figures at least a minute. She might have assumed no one was inside if not for the faint sound of typing and the thin strip of light under the door. She tries again. She's not going home without at least having tried.
The door swings open and Cassidy nearly stumbles back, but there's something about Diane Carter's presence that, rather than scaring her, gives her a calm she can't even explain to herself.
Who in their right mind would feel at ease when a pair of eyes turns into blue lightning that could reduce you to ash?
"Do I need to call security, or are you going to act like a grown adult and get out of my sight the way I demanded hours ago?"
Her voice is low—almost quiet—but the way the words leave her lips is what truly stops anyone in their tracks, because they land like a sworn promise: comply, or you'll pay for it.
"I want to talk to you first." Cassidy's voice doesn't even waver, and Diane's answer is to clench her jaw in a way that looks painful.
"Either you have a comprehension problem or you're simply too stupid to follow instructions," Diane murmurs, and Cassidy feels the tension climb into her own neck.
"You already fired me, didn't you? So you've got nothing to lose by listening."
Diane makes a sound the intern reads as a dry, humorless laugh as she tightens her grip on the door.
Cassidy doesn't know why or how, but from the moment she first saw her boss, she's been able to read her completely.
It's as if Diane is entirely transparent to her, and even though her words and gestures say otherwise, Cassidy knows she's genuinely curious about what she's come to say.
"You're wasting my time," the boss says, moving to close the door, calm as anything.
Cassidy doesn't back down and keeps the door from shutting in her face. Diane's left eye twitches and the skin along her jaw starts to flush red.
"I'm offering you a deal," Cassidy says quickly, before the woman can call security. "Because firing me is a mistake."
Diane's heart is hammering painfully. Her throat is dry, and the weight of those green eyes is ruining what's left of her afternoon.
She's already had to sit through Clara's unsolicited speech about how the girl had potential, that all she needed was decent guidance—Jason Thompson was certainly not that—and a real chance.
Normally, when Diane makes a decision, she doesn't make it lightly, whatever people think.
She's meticulous, and if she lets someone go, she has enough grounds—and evidence—to prove that person doesn't belong in the role.
With Cassidy Collins, though, she was impulsive.
She reacted in a way she couldn't control, doing nothing but tripping her own defense mechanisms against what she'd registered as a threat.
"I'd advise you to choose your words carefully." Diane barely moves her lips. "I'm not always this generous."
Cassidy presses her fingers to her left temple because the headache is killing her, but she won't leave without saying everything she needs to get out.
"One month, no mistakes." She lifts the index finger of the same hand she'd just pressed to her head. "If I slip up, I quit on my own. If I prove you were the one who made the mistake, I stay."
The head of the business development department goes quiet—not because she has nothing to say, but because she can't remember the last time someone held her gaze with that kind of ferocity without flinching.
Diane doesn't lie to herself: she's in a level-two executive role because she's earned it, but she's also made enemies along the way, sown fear and contempt wherever she's walked.
Even Clara, who holds the quiet power to do whatever she wants with her, can't stay in a disagreement with Diane for more than five minutes or talk her into anything.
What she has standing in front of her right now—as much as it stings to admit—is the most fascinating creature she's crossed paths with in at least the last decade and a half.
She brings her hand to her chin and taps it twice, dragging out the seconds of this absurd staring contest. She wishes she could sit at a bar and order a proper glass of whiskey, sip it slow while she lets her mind unwind over why a girl with nothing obviously remarkable about her keeps pushing her to make the wrong calls.
"We're also going to add that after your first mistake, I'll have your name put on a blacklist." Her gaze doesn't leave the intern's face. "You'll only be able to work for the competition—so you can drag them down while we keep closing deals."
No question about it. A tyrant.
"Then we have a deal." Cassidy extends her hand to seal it the old-school way, and Diane doesn't move, fully aware that if she touches this girl, the whole thing could blow up in her face.
As her only answer, she turns around and closes her office door, leaving the intern standing on the other side—and leaving herself with the certainty that the biggest mistake of her life will be her own.