The Playboy Billionaire's Secretary

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The Secretary

Elena’s POV

I adjusted my glasses for what felt like the tenth time, studying the woman staring back at me from the mirror, who looked nothing like the person I usually saw when nobody else was around to judge the difference. My hair, normally loose, was twisted into a messy bun with a few stubborn strands escaping around my face, and the blouse I'd chosen was two sizes too big, broadening my shoulders in a way that made me look like I was wearing someone else's clothes on purpose. The black trousers did nothing for my figure either, which was exactly the point, and the thick framed glasses sitting low on my nose finished the effect off nicely.

Plain. That was the word I kept coming back to, and it was exactly what I wanted people to see.

I grabbed my bag off the bed and gave myself one last look before my phone started buzzing on the nightstand. Maya's name lit up the screen, and I answered with a smile already forming.

"Please tell me you're ready," she said, skipping the hello entirely.

"I'm ready," I told her, though I could hear in my own voice that I didn't sound half as convinced as I wanted to.

"Are you sure? Because you sounded like someone about to cancel on me."

"I'm not cancelling, Maya."

"Good, because I've been waiting for this day since you first mentioned the interview." There was a pause, and when she spoke again her tone had dropped into something more serious. "You need this job, Elena."

"I know," I said quietly, sitting down on the edge of the bed, because saying it out loud somehow made the pressure feel heavier than just thinking it.

Maya knew exactly why I needed this the way other people needed air. She knew about the bills stacking up faster than I could clear them, about my mother's medication that never seemed to get any cheaper, about the debts my father had conveniently left behind when he decided walking out was easier than staying and fixing anything. She'd watched me cycle through one temporary job after another for years, each one paying just enough to keep the lights on and never enough to actually build something with. This one was supposed to be different permanent, stable, the kind of paycheck that would let me buy groceries without doing math in my head first.

"You'll get it," Maya said, with the kind of confidence I wished I could borrow.

"I hope so."

"No. Don't say hope, say you're getting it."

I laughed despite myself. "Fine. I'm getting it."

"Exactly. Now go get dressed ,wait, are you seriously wearing those glasses?"

I checked my reflection again, tilting my head as if a different angle might change her mind. "Yes."

"You look like a librarian who's never smiled in her life."

"That's the point, Maya."

She sighed loud enough that I could picture her rubbing her temples on the other end of the line. "You don't have to hide yourself just to get a job, you know that."

"I'm not hiding, I'm just not giving anyone a reason to look at me instead of my resume." I adjusted the blouse again, though there wasn't much adjusting that would actually help. "I want them to see someone who wants the work, not someone they can put in a headline."

"And you really think looking plain is going to stop that from happening?"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to," she said, and I could hear the smile in it. Maya had known me long enough to read between whatever lines I tried to draw, which was usually a comfort and occasionally very inconvenient.

The truth was simpler than she probably thought, though. I wasn't trying to trick anyone into anything. I'd heard enough about Adrian Black before I ever sent in my application everyone had, since it was hard to live in this city and not know his name. Attractive, wealthy, successful, and apparently unable to go more than a few weeks without his name showing up next to some new woman in the tabloids. None of that interested me in the slightest. I wanted a salary that didn't disappear the moment my contract ended. I wanted to stop calculating whether we could afford my mother's next refill before the end of the month. That was the whole list, and it didn't have room on it for anything else.

"I'll call you after the interview," I said, standing and slinging my bag over my shoulder.

"You better. And Elena?"

"Yes?"

"Don't let that billionaire scare you."

I smiled at that, even though she couldn't see it. "I won't."

"Good. Now go get your job."

Blackwell Industries was impossible to miss from three blocks away, all glass and steel catching the morning light like it was showing off on purpose, and the closer I got the more aware I became of how much my oversized blouse stood out against the sea of tailored suits moving in and out through the revolving doors. Maybe Maya had a point after all. I looked ridiculous, and I knew it, but I took a breath and reminded myself that I wasn't here to win a fashion contest, I was here for an interview, and that was the only thing that mattered in the next hour.

Inside, I walked up to the reception desk and gave my name to a woman who typed it into her computer without looking up until she found what she needed. She directed me to the thirty second floor, where Mrs. Moore was apparently already expecting me, and my palms had started sweating somewhere between the lobby and the elevator doors sliding shut.

I'd never been good at interviews, not because I doubted what I could actually do, but because I never knew exactly what people wanted to hear when they asked me to describe myself in thirty seconds or less. I could organize a schedule down to the minute, manage a dozen appointments without letting any of them collide, handle paperwork that would make most people's eyes glaze over, and stay calm under the kind of pressure that sent other people running for the door. Talking about all of that out loud, though, in front of a stranger who was deciding whether I deserved a paycheck, was an entirely different skill, and one I'd never quite mastered.

The elevator doors opened onto a floor that felt like it belonged to a different building entirely quieter, more deliberate, every desk arranged like someone had measured the space between them. An elegant woman in her late forties stood up from behind a desk near the entrance, and something about her expression told me she'd spent years dealing with difficult people and had never once let it show on her face.

"Elena Carter?" she asked, already extending her hand.

"Yes, that's me."

"I'm Evelyn Moore. It's nice to finally meet you." Her handshake was firm, her smile warm in a way that eased at least some of the tension sitting in my shoulders. She studied me for a beat too long before speaking again. "You look nervous."

I laughed, a little embarrassed. "Is it that obvious?"

"Only a little," she said, picking up a folder from her desk. "Come with me."

As we walked, I noticed how little noise there was on the entire floor no gossip drifting between desks, no one wasting time on anything that wasn't work, and somehow that made me feel steadier rather than more on edge. Evelyn stopped outside a large glass door and turned to face me before opening it.

"Before we go in, there's something you should know. Mr. Black is strict, he works long hours, and he expects everything done properly the first time."

"I can handle all of that," I said, meaning it more than I probably sounded like I did.

She smiled like she'd heard that promise before and was curious to see if I'd actually keep it, then pushed the door open and led me inside.

The man behind the desk was the first thing I noticed, and no photograph online had prepared me for what he actually looked like in person. Adrian Black was tall even sitting down, broad shouldered under a dark suit that fit him like it had been made for no other purpose than fitting him, his dark hair styled without a single strand out of place. He didn't stand when we walked in. He didn't offer his hand either. His eyes moved over me once, quick and assessing, the way someone checks an invoice for errors before signing it, and then went straight back to whatever he'd been reading before we interrupted him.

"Good morning, Mr. Black," I managed, once I'd remembered myself.

"Sit," he said, not looking up. No greeting back. No acknowledgment that I'd spoken at all beyond the instruction itself.

Evelyn introduced me properly while I lowered myself into the chair across from his desk, and he didn't so much as glance at her while she did it. He opened a folder, mine presumably and read through it in silence long enough that I started to wonder if he'd forgotten I was in the room.

"Why do you want this position?" he asked eventually, still not looking up from the page.

"Because I believe I'm qualified for it, and because I'm looking for something stable," I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could manage.

"Stable." He said it flatly, like the word bored him. "Everyone says that."

"It happens to be true in my case."

That got his eyes up off the folder, at least, though nothing in his expression softened because of it. "Go on, then."

"I've worked several temporary positions, but I'm ready for something I can actually build on instead of starting over every few months."

He asked about the company next ,what I knew about its divisions, its recent projects, the direction it had been expanding in , firing each question the moment I finished answering the last one, with no pause to acknowledge whether my answer had been good enough. He didn't nod. He didn't take notes. He didn't do anything that would have told me how I was doing, and by the fourth question I'd stopped expecting him to.

Eventually he closed the folder. "You can start tomorrow."

I blinked, certain I'd misheard him. "I'm sorry?"

"I said you can start tomorrow." He said it the same way he'd said everything else like a decision that had already been made somewhere else and was simply being announced to the room now, with no particular interest in my reaction to it either way. Evelyn's smile widened beside me, which was the only warmth in the entire exchange.

Relief hit me so fast I nearly forgot to respond. "Thank you, sir. I won't disappoint you."

He was already looking back down at his phone. "I expect you won't." It wasn't said as encouragement. It sounded more like a warning, delivered without the energy to actually make it sound like one.

The moment the office door closed behind us, I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding the entire time.

"You can breathe now," Evelyn said, laughing.

"I didn't even notice I was holding it," I admitted, and she gave me a look that suggested I'd be saying that a lot more often before this job was through.

As she walked me around the rest of the floor, pointing out where I'd be working and running through the basics of what tomorrow would look like, I couldn't stop replaying what had just happened. I'd finally gotten the job I'd spent weeks hoping for, and for the first time in longer than I wanted to admit, it felt like things were about to get easier instead of harder.

What I didn't know yet was that easier had absolutely nothing to do with what working for Adrian Black was actually going to be like.

The good mood lasted exactly as long as it took me to get home.

There were two men standing outside my apartment door when I came up the stairs Gary, who I recognized immediately from his last two visits, and someone I didn't know, younger, quieter, standing half a step behind him like he was still new to this part of the job. They weren't in any hurry to move out of my way.

"Elena Carter." Gary said my name like he was reading it off a clipboard, though his hands were empty. "Was starting to think you'd moved without telling anyone."

"I've been at work," I said, keeping my voice level as I stopped a few steps below them, bag still slung over my shoulder, glasses still on from the interview I hadn't had time to take off. "This isn't a good time."

"It's never a good time with you." Gary pushed off the wall, unhurried, like neither of them had anywhere else to be today. "You're three months behind again. I told you last time I wouldn't be as patient, and my boss is even less patient than I am."

"I know what I owe." My stomach tightened around the words. "I'm getting a new job. A real one, starting tomorrow. I can set up a payment plan once I have my first check."

"You said something like that in March too."

"This is different."

"It's always different, right up until it isn't." The younger one shifted his weight, glancing at Gary like he was waiting for a cue, and Gary studied me for a second before sighing instead of pushing harder, which was somehow worse than if he'd yelled. "Look, I don't enjoy this part of the job, alright? But my boss doesn't care about your new job or your sick mother or any of it. He cares about the number. You've got two weeks before this stops being a conversation between the three of us and turns into something else."

"Two weeks," I repeated, doing the math against a paycheck I hadn't even earned yet.

"Two weeks," Gary confirmed, already turning to head down the stairs, the younger one falling in behind him without a word. Gary paused halfway down, looking back up at me. "For what it's worth, I hope the job's a good one."

I didn't answer that. I just stood there on the landing until I heard the door downstairs open and shut behind both of them, and then I let myself breathe again, the same way I had outside Adrian Black's office an hour earlier, except this time there was no Evelyn beside me telling me it was safe to.

Inside, I dropped my bag by the door and leaned back against it, glasses still perched on my nose, the plain blouse still doing its job of making me invisible to everyone except the people who actually wanted something from me. Two weeks. One paycheck wouldn't cover what Gary's boss wanted, not close to it, but it would buy time, and time was the only currency I had left to negotiate with.

I thought about calling Maya, then decided against it. She already worried enough on my behalf without me adding tonight's visit to the list. Instead I sat down at the small kitchen table, pulled out the folder of bills I kept in the drawer nobody else ever opened, and started doing the math all over again, the way I had a hundred times before, hoping that this time the numbers would finally decide to be kinder.

They weren't. But for the first time in a long time, I had a reason to believe they might be, eventually and right now, that was going to have to be enough.