Oops, He's My Boss

Chapter 3

"No way."

I stared at the ceiling. Then I picked up my phone and called Dana.

She picked up on the second ring. "Please tell me something good happened."

"I got the job."

Dead silence. Then: "WHAT. ANGELINA VEGA. YOU GOT THE JOB?!"

"I got the job."

"Oh my God. Oh my GOD. Okay. Okay, we are going shopping. Right now. Today. Get up."

"Dana it's eight in the morning—"

"I said get up."

***

Hargrove Mall on a Sunday morning was exactly the kind of controlled chaos Dana lived for and I merely survived — already buzzing with coffee cups, stroller wheels, and teenagers doing absolutely nothing productive.

Dana had a plan. Dana always had a plan. She'd mentally mapped out four stores before we even parked the car.

"You need power clothes," she announced, steering me past a perfume display with the focused energy of a general leading troops. "Like, you walk in on Monday and everybody knows. The fit has to say I'm unbothered but I will end you."

"It's just a job, Dana."

"It's not just a job, it's a CEO's office. There's a difference." She held up a blazer against me, tilted her head, put it back. "Too corporate. We want sharp but human."

I let her lead. Honestly it was easier. And quietly, somewhere under all the noise, it felt nice. To be doing something normal. To be picking out clothes for a job that was mine. Not something I'd put on hold for a man who didn't deserve it.

We moved through the second store, arms filling up with options, commentary flying freely between us.

"Okay but did you see Tasha's engagement post?" Dana said, flipping through a rack.

"With Marcus?!"

"With Marcus! Who showed up forty minutes late to his own birthday party. Who once called his mother Carol for a full year. Her name is Brenda."

I burst out laughing. Dana shook her head like she was reporting a national tragedy.

Tell her, Dana thought..... Hey Ange, your ex tried it and I broke his nose. Easy.

She glanced at Angelina — smiling at a blouse, genuinely relaxed for the first time in months.

…Or not.

Dana put a dress in the basket and said nothing.

They were heading toward the checkout when it happened.

A woman turned the corner right into their path and stopped dead.

Angelina stopped too.

Margaret. Adam's mother. In the flesh. Designer handbag, sharp eyes, the permanent expression of someone who had been looking down at people for so long it had become her resting face.

"Well," Margaret said, lips curling like she'd smelled something unpleasant. "Angelina. Shopping, are we? With what money, exactly? Last I checked you left my son with nothing."

Dana's grip tightened on the shopping basket.

And Angelina... smiled.

Not a polite smile. The other kind.

"Margaret," she said, in the warmest, most dangerously pleasant voice imaginable. "I was actually just thinking about you. You know how you think about a headache you used to have and you're just so grateful it's gone?"

Margaret blinked.

"I left your son with nothing?" Angelina continued, tilting her head gently. "Funny. I left your son exactly what he came with — absolutely nothing of value. The only thing I took was my seven years back, and honestly the refund wasn't even worth it."

"How dare you—"

"No, no, let me finish." Angelina held up one finger, calm as a surgeon. "You spent seven years treating me like a problem your family accidentally inherited. Every dinner, every holiday, every family event — I was too this, not enough that. You smiled at my face and talked behind my back so often I'm surprised you didn't get whiplash." She paused. "And your son — your perfect son — cheated on me so many times I lost count. But sure. Tell me more about what I took from him."

The silence around them had grown. People nearby had slowed down. A woman pretending to look at scarves was very obviously not looking at scarves.

Margaret opened her mouth. Closed it.

"The thing about women like you," Angelina said softly, "is that you confuse tolerance for weakness. I was patient because I was raised well. Not because I was afraid of you." She smiled one last time — bright, clean, completely unbothered. "Tell Adam I said nothing. Because he's not worth the syllables."

She stepped around Margaret like she was a display rack and kept walking.

Dana followed, walking fast, face completely straight, until they turned the corner. Then she grabbed Angelina's arm and whispered, "I need you to know that was the most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed in my life."

"I've been holding that in for seven years."

"It showed. Magnificently."

***

— Sophia —

From across the atrium, Sophia had watched the entire thing.

She hadn't meant to. She'd just happened to glance up from her phone at the right moment and somehow couldn't look away.

The woman was something else. No raised voice. No theatrics. Just words placed so precisely they landed like surgery. Clean. Deliberate. Devastating.

Interesting.

"Miss Sophia?"

Her assistant, Remi, appeared at her elbow with the particular apologetic energy of someone interrupting something they sensed was important.

"The tailor is ready for your measurements."

Sophia took one last glance at the woman across the atrium — laughing now with her friend, completely unbothered, like she hadn't just dismantled someone in the middle of a shopping mall — and then turned to follow Remi.

The fitting room was white, quiet, and smelled like fresh fabric. The tailor, a small serious man named Mr. Addo, moved around her with practiced efficiency, tape measure looping and relooping.

"The gown must fall perfectly at the hem," Sophia told him. "Not a centimetre off."

"Of course, Miss Sophia."

"And the neckline. It needs to be elegant. Structured. Not too much, not too little."

"Understood."

She stood very still as he worked, eyes fixed on her own reflection. The event was in three days. Everything needed to be perfect. The venue, the dress, the entrance.

Everything.

She smoothed the fabric sample against her waist and said, mostly to herself, "Stephen is going to be there."

A small pause. Then, quieter: "Everything has to be perfect."

Mr. Addo, professionally trained to hear nothing, heard nothing.

***

— Angelina —

Monday arrived the way bad things usually do — faster than expected, zero mercy. I was at the building by eight forty-five, coffee in hand, outfit selected by Dana, confidence approximately sixty percent assembled.

Mr. Cole was already waiting near the elevators.

"Ms. Vega." He nodded, professional, brisk. "Good morning. The CEO would like to see you before you get settled."

"Oh." I blinked. "Right now? I just got here."

"Right now," he confirmed, already moving.

I followed him into the elevator, down a corridor, and through a set of glass doors that opened into an office that was honestly too nice to be legal. Floor to ceiling windows. A desk the size of a small country. And behind it, already seated, already looking like he'd been awake for three hours and had thoughts about it — Stephen.

He looked up when I walked in. Said nothing for a moment.

"You're on time."

"I'm always on time."

"Good." He gestured to the chair across from him. "Sit."

I sat. Mr. Cole quietly disappeared.

"I just want to make sure we're on the same page," Stephen said. "Regarding our arrangement."

"Right, about that—" I leaned forward. "What if we just drew a line under the bar situation and moved on? Fresh start. Normal working relationship. No bill, no deal."

He stared at me. "That was a good speech."

"Thank you."

"The answer is no."

"Mr. Varon—"

"Fifteen thousand dollars," he said pleasantly. "Or the arrangement stands. The options have not changed."

"Fine. But I want it on record that I find this deeply unreasonable."

"Noted." He opened a folder. "There's an event tonight."

"Tonight?" My voice jumped an octave. "I just got here. I haven't even seen my desk yet. I don't know where anything is. I was going to spend today just getting familiar with the—"

"You'll be accompanying me."

"Can't someone else—"

"You're my personal assistant."

"I literally just started—"

"Fifteen thousand dollars," he said again, with the serene energy of a man who knew exactly what card he was holding.

I stared at him for a long moment.

"What time does it start?" I said flatly.

The corner of his mouth moved. Just barely. "Eight. Dress formally."

***

The venue was the kind of place that made you feel underdressed just by existing near it. Chandeliers, hushed important conversations, waitstaff gliding past with champagne flutes like they'd trained for this exact purpose.

I stepped through the doors beside Stephen and immediately felt like a glitch in the system.

Everyone here belonged. You could see it in how they moved — easy, unhurried, like wealth was just air. In seven years of marriage Adam and I never went anywhere like this. I was always too busy managing the household, the bills, the quietly falling-apart life we called normal.

I stood very still and tried to look like I absolutely intended to be here.

A glass of champagne appeared in my peripheral vision.

"You look like you're calculating an escape route," Stephen said, appearing at my side without any warning whatsoever.

"I'm just taking in the room."

"The room is fine. You're the one who looks like they've seen a ghost."

"I'm fine," I said, accepting the champagne. "I'm completely fine. I attend events like this all the time."

"Do you."

"Constantly."

He looked at me for a beat too long. "There's someone I need to speak with in twenty minutes. Until then—"

A hand landed on his shoulder from behind.

Stephen paused mid-sentence and turned slightly. Two men — one I half-recognised as someone from the office, the other with his back to me. They leaned in, the kind of body language that said this is work and it'll take a minute.

I pivoted smoothly, shifting my gaze to the far end of the room, giving them space. I lifted my champagne and looked out at the crowd like I was very fascinated by absolutely nothing.

Then I heard a voice.

Low. Familiar. Sliding in from just behind my left shoulder.

"—just joined the company last month actually, still finding my feet but honestly it's been a great move. Was hoping to formally introduce myself to the CEO tonight—"

My whole body went still.

The champagne glass stopped halfway to my mouth.

That cannot be.

I knew that voice. I had lived with that voice for seven years. I had cooked dinner to that voice, argued with that voice, lost sleep because of that voice.

There is absolutely no way.

I did not turn around. I stood there, every muscle locked, telling myself it was just acoustics. Pattern-matching. My brain doing that thing where you hear what you're afraid of hearing.

I was not pattern-matching.

***

— Sophia —

Sophia moved through the room with ease. Her gown was perfect — Mr. Addo had made sure of that. She accepted a glass of water from a passing waiter and let her eyes sweep the space until she found what she was looking for.

There. Near the far window. Stephen.

She smoothed the front of her gown and began to cross the room.

***

— Angelina —

I turned around.

Of course I turned around. I couldn't not.

And there he was.

Adam. In a fitted suit that still somehow managed to look slightly wrong on him. Champagne in hand. Standing right there with his back to Stephen, completely mid-sentence, completely unaware that his entire past was standing six feet away.

Then he turned and saw me.

The sentence died. His eyes went wide. His champagne tilted dangerously to one side.

"Angie?"

"Don't call me that," I said automatically.

"What— what are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." My eyes narrowed. "Don't tell me this is the new job you were so excited about."

"I— yeah." He straightened, scrambling to look composed. "Just joined last month. Same company." Said like I was supposed to be impressed. "What are you even doing here?"

And then he looked past me. To where Stephen was standing.

Something shifted in his face. Recognition, maybe. Or the particular uncomfortable expression of a man doing math he didn't like.

"Are you here with him?"

And my brain, with absolutely zero input from the sensible part of me, just… went for it.

"I'm his personal assistant," I said. "And his— his girlfriend."

Adam stared. "His what?"

I swallowed. Lifted my chin. "I said I'm his girlfriend. Yes. That is what I said."

No taking it back now. I held his gaze and tried to look like someone who had absolutely meant to say that.

From behind me I heard a sharp pause in conversation. Then nothing. I didn't dare turn around.

Adam's eyes slid past me. Looking for Stephen. Doing the math.

I felt rather than heard him approach. Half a second where I was absolutely certain he was going to correct me and this would become the most embarrassing moment of my adult life.

Then a hand settled at the small of my back. Warm. Steady.

Stephen appeared at my side — and I caught it, just barely, a fraction of a second of hesitation, like someone making a quiet decision — before his expression settled into something unreadable. His voice was even.

"Everything alright?"

He didn't correct me. Didn't flinch. Just stood there with his hand on my back like it was the most natural place in the world for it to be. The smallest, most infuriating curve sat at the corner of his mouth.

Adam looked between us. Lost for words for possibly the first time in his entire life.

And from just behind my shoulder came a quiet, stunned murmur.

"The lady from the clothing store… she's his girlfriend?"