Hired To Heal Him

Chapter 3: The Job Nobody Wants

POV: Cara Mills

By Wednesday, the joke was everywhere.

Someone had made a meme out of Damien Cole's corporate photo — the one from the Hartwell Properties website, the one where he was staring past the camera like the world owed him something. They had put the job listing underneath it.

Now hiring: Personal Assistant to New York's most feared boss. Must enjoy being ignored, dismissed, and spoken to like furniture. Competitive salary. Apply if you dare.

It had forty thousand likes.

I saw it during my morning break at the café and felt something uncomfortable move through my chest. Not pity exactly. Something quieter than that.

I put my phone away and went back to work.

The listing was still up on Thursday morning.

I had been checking it every few hours. Partly to make sure it hadn't been taken down. Partly because I kept expecting to see something change — a flood of applicants, a note saying the position had been filled, anything that told me someone sensible had already taken the job.

Nothing changed.

I found a forum thread on Wednesday night in a careers group I followed. The title was: Would you apply for the Damien Cole assistant position?

There were over two hundred replies.

Absolutely not. No amount of money.

I looked at the salary and I was tempted for about five minutes. Then I remembered I have a functioning nervous system.

My friend worked at Hartwell Properties two years ago. She said Damien Cole once made a junior analyst redo a thirty-page report because one font was inconsistent. One font.

The benefits aren't worth it if you're too broken to use them.

That last one got the most likes.

I closed the forum and stared at the ceiling.

I understood every single reply. Nobody owed Damien Cole their peace of mind. Normal people with normal options would scroll past that listing and not look back.

I was not in a position to be normal right now.

Thursday morning came faster than I expected.

I was up at five-thirty. Showered, dressed carefully, ate half a piece of toast I couldn't really taste. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror and looked at myself.

Black trousers. White blouse, ironed the night before. My good coat. Hair pulled back cleanly.

I looked like someone who had it together.

I was good at looking like that.

I picked up my bag, checked that my CV was inside — printed twice, just in case — and left.

The subway was crowded. I stood the whole way, holding the overhead rail, going over things in my head. My experience. My qualifications. The questions they might ask. I had done this fourteen times in the last month. I knew how to sit in a waiting room and look calm. I knew how to answer questions without revealing anything that actually mattered. I knew how to smile at the right moments and keep my voice steady even when my heart was doing something complicated.

What I had never done was walk into an interview knowing the person on the other side had been on the news three days in a row for making his last assistant quit on camera in front of four million people.

That was new.

Hartwell Properties headquarters was exactly what I expected and somehow still more than I was ready for.

The building took up half a block. All glass and dark steel, clean lines, the kind of architecture that said we have money and we want you to feel it. The lobby was visible through the revolving doors — marble floors, high ceilings, a reception desk that looked like it cost more than my apartment.

I stood on the pavement outside for exactly ten seconds.

Not because I was scared.

Because I was making a decision, properly, one last time. Looking at those doors and asking myself if I was sure.

I thought about my mother.

I went inside.

The lobby was cool and quiet. My heels clicked on the marble as I approached the reception desk. The woman behind it looked up — polished, professional, expression giving nothing away.

"Cara Mills," I said. "Nine o'clock interview. Personal assistant position."

Something moved across her face. Quick. Almost nothing. But I caught it.

Surprise.

She covered it immediately, typed something, handed me a visitor badge, and directed me to the seventeenth floor.

As the elevator doors closed behind me, I heard it — two voices at the reception desk, low, thinking I was already gone.

"She actually showed up."

"I know. She's the only one."

The doors sealed shut.

The only one.

I stood very still as the elevator climbed.

Out of everyone who had seen that listing. Out of everyone in this city. I was the only person who had walked through those doors.

Which meant one of two things.

Either I was the bravest person who had applied for this job.

Or I was the most desperate.

As the elevator slowed to a stop at the seventeenth floor, I wasn't entirely sure which one it was.

The doors opened.

At the end of a long, silent hallway, a door with a nameplate that read D. COLE was waiting.