Off limits

Chapter two

Office 12 was at the end of the hall.

I know because I walked past it four times before I actually stopped in front of it. Not because I was lost, the floor plan Claire had given us was perfectly clear. But because there is a significant difference between knowing where you are going and being ready to go there.

I was not ready, I knocked anyway.

"Come in."

Two words. That was all. And yet something about the way he said them flat, unbothered, like my arrival was a scheduled inconvenience, made me want to turn around and walk straight back to Ohio.

I opened the door. His office was exactly what I expected and nothing like it at the same time.

Clean. Minimal. A wide desk positioned to face the door rather than the window, which struck me immediately most people in offices with views like that angled themselves toward the city. Floor-to-ceiling glass, the whole of Midtown spread out behind him like something from a film set. But Ethan Cole had his back to all of it, like the view was irrelevant. Like everything outside that office, it was irrelevant.

He was reading something when I walked in. He didn't look up. I stood in front of his desk for what felt like a week and a half. "Sit," he said, still reading.I sat. He finished whatever he was reading, closed the folder, and looked at me. Direct and unhurried, the way people look at you when they have already decided something and are simply waiting to be confirmed.

"Zara Collins," he said. Not a question.

"That's me," I said. I immediately wished I hadn't.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. More like the idea of one, considered and dismissed.

"Marketing track," he said, opening a second folder — mine, I realized. My application. My portfolio. Everything I had spent three years building was reduced to a stack of papers on his desk. "Ohio State. Graduated top of your cohort. Three failed applications to this program before this one."

I kept my expression neutral. "You read the rejection history too."I read everything." He closed the folder. "Why Nexus?"

It was the question I had prepared for. I had a clean, professional answer ready about the agency's reputation, its client roster, and the caliber of the work. I practiced it in my bathroom mirror twice last week.I said none of it."

Because it's the best," I said instead. "And I'm tired of working for anything less than that."

He looked at me for a moment. I couldn't read it, couldn't tell if it landed well or badly or somewhere in between. His face was a closed door.

"You questioned my strategy," he said. "Yesterday. In the team meeting."

My stomach tightened. "I offered an alternative perspective."

"You told the room my segmentation approach was too broad."

"I said it might be leaving a secondary audience unaddressed." I paused. "Which it was."

The silence that followed was the kind that has weight to it. I held eye contact because looking away felt like losing something, and I was not in the habit of losing things.

"You're right," he said.

I blinked. "I know."

This time the almost-smile was slightly more visible. He leaned back in his chair, one hand resting on the desk, and studied me with the particular attention of someone calibrating.

"You're going to be difficult," he said. It didn't sound like a complaint.

"Probably," I said. "Is that a problem?"

"Depends." He stood, which meant the meeting was ending. I stood too, on instinct. "On whether the difficulty is useful or just noise."

He picked up his coffee and moved toward the door not dismissing me exactly, but making clear the conversation was over on his timeline, not mine.

"I'll send you the Morrison account brief this afternoon," he said, holding the door open. "I want your initial thoughts by nine tomorrow morning."

I stepped into the hallway. "What kind of thoughts?"

"Useful ones." He closed the door.

I stood in the hall for a moment.

My heart was doing something annoying, and I refused to acknowledge it. It was first-day adrenaline. Professional nerves. A completely normal physiological response to a high-pressure environment. That was all.

I was halfway to the elevator when my phone buzzed. A new email notification. From: E. Cole. Time stamp: one minute ago.

Collins Morrison brief attached. The segmentation issue you raised yesterday is being revised. Don't make a habit of being right before I've had a chance to be wrong first.

I stared at the screen.

Then, in the privacy of an empty hallway on the forty-third floor, I smiled.

Just once. Small and quick and entirely to myself.

Then I straightened my blazer and went back to work.