Me and My Billionaire Duke

CHAPTER ONE The office had been loud before. But not like this. The first thing I noticed when I walked off the elevator was the noise. I heard it the moment I stepped off the elevator…voices bleeding through walls. Not the usual hum of keyboards, the distant ringing of phones, the low murmur of people moving through their Monday with coffee in hand and nowhere particularly urgent to be. This was different. This was the kind that was sharp and overlapping the kind of noise that meant something had gone very wrong before most of us had taken our morning coffee. I adjusted the strap of my bag, and smoothed the front of my blazer and braced myself for whatever was happening inside. The thirty-second floor looked like it was quietly having a breakdown. People clustered in tight groups around their desks, phones pressed to ears, people running in and out of executive offices. The television mounted above the reception area, which usually cycled through financial news nobody watched, had people standing directly beneath it, necks craned, faces doing things faces weren't supposed to do before nine in the morning. Every screen was lit. The same headline cycling across every monitor I could see from where I stood, bold and nearly impossible to look away from I slowed my walk just enough to read the headline crawling across the bottom of the screen. LEO GROUP UNDER FIRE — FINANCIAL MISCONDUCT ALLEGATIONS ROCK COMPANY AS NEW CEO’S FITNESS TO LEAD CALLED INTO QUESTION. And beneath it, the second line that made something drop quietly in my stomach. EXCLUSIVE: MULTIPLE WOMEN COME FORWARD WITH ALLEGATIONS AGAINST LEO GROUP NEW CEO. I read it twice. Then I kept walking. It's not much of my business, I am a Junior staff in the marketing department of the Leo Group, which means I show up, I work hard, I take notes, I adjust other people's ideas and I keep my opinions to myself. That is the job. That has always been the job. I reminded myself of that as I walked to my desk. "Did you see it?" Priya, a co worker from the desk beside mine spun her chair toward me the moment I dropped my bag on the desk, her voice dropped to something urgent and low. "It's everywhere. Every channel. My cousin texted me before I even got on the train this morning." "I saw it just now in the reception" I said pulling out my laptop. "Financial misconduct and women." She said it like she was reading a menu. "Both. At the same time. Whoever did this wanted him destroyed." She widened her eyes My business this morning was the campaign deck sitting in my laptop bag, the notes I needed to finish for my boss, Miss Cole, and the coffee I hadn't had yet. Whatever storm was breaking thirty-two floors above street level was above my pay grade. I nodded in unison and just before I could come up with a response to Priya "Seymour.” I had lasted exactly a minute at my desk before I heard her voice "Conference room. Now." The voice came from across the floor and it did not need to be loud to carry. It never did. Her eyes found mine across the room. Miss Diana Cole was already moving when I looked up, heels precise and deliberate against the floor, the kind of woman who made a corridor feel smaller just by walking through it. She was the Senior Director of Marketing. My superior, my superior's superior, and the reason I had learned very early on to be invisible when I didn't need to be seen. She was brilliant, she was demanding and she had very specific opinions about junior staff and their place in the order of things. "Everyone from PR and Marketing. Leave whatever you're doing." She commanded louder, to the cluster of desks around. She didn't wait. She walked and expected to be followed. I left whatever I was doing, and hurriedly grabbed my notepad The conference room was already full by the time we got there. Senior directors, department heads, people I recognized from floors I had no regular business being on. Miss Cole moved to the front without hesitating, taking her place among the other executives. I stayed close enough to catch everything she said yet far enough from the front that I was furniture. I flipped my notepad open and held my pen and prepared to be invisible. Miss Cole was already talking when the room went suddenly, completely quiet. Not because she stopped. Because he walked in. I don't know how to explain what happened to the room when he walked in except to say that it stopped. Not gradually …immediately. The room went from chaos to complete silence in less than a second. I had seen the CEO exactly twice before today. Once in the elevator for about twenty seconds, I remember his scent being utterly intoxicating for those few seconds in the elevator, he hadn't even looked at anyone. Once across the lobby walking out of the building with an ally for like five seconds. Both times I had registered him the way you registered something that didn't quite seem real. Too composed. Too deliberate. The kind of man who took up space without trying to. He was tall in the way that rearranged the scale of a room. Broad shouldered, dark curly haired, brown blistering skin, a jaw that looked carved rather than grown. He was wearing a suit that cost more than three months of my salary and wearing it like it had simply arranged itself around him out of respect. He walked to the front of the room with two other men trailing behind him with stoic expressions, and he did not rush and he did not look rattled and he did not smile. He stood at the front of the room and said nothing for a moment, dark eyes moving across the space with the slow, unhurried patience of someone who had never once in his life needed to ask for attention. He got it anyway. Every single person in that room gave it to him without being asked. His eyes moved across the room once. Slow. Deliberate. The kind of gaze that made you feel individually seen and immediately aware of every mistake you had ever made. Then he spoke. "This morning, every major publication in this country ran a story about my company and about me personally. I'm not interested in what happened." His voice was low and controlled and had something underneath it that I can only describe as the very quiet beginning of fury. "I'm interested in how we fix it. Talk." He spoke with so much authority I felt chills, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one that felt it… judging by the look on their faces. Silence. Then everyone started talking at once. Ideas were thrown out and dismantled. Talking points were suggested and immediately exposed as inadequate. Miss Cole was measured and articulate and said a great deal of nothing. The senior directors were performing the appearance of having answers without actually having them. I sat still and wrote notes I wasn't going to need and tried very hard to keep my thoughts behind my teeth where they belonged. “An apology” someone said with complete seriousness “We should issue a formal public apology. Get ahead of the allegations. Show accountability” He proudly repeated Some employees murmured agreeing to his suggestion I thought about how an apology for allegations that had not been proven was not accountability. It was confession. I thought about how the moment he apologized the story stopped being allegations and started being guilt. I thought all of that very quietly and I wrote my notes and I kept my mouth shut. "A formal apology would demonstrate good faith," the man said again. "It shows the public he's willing to take responsibility" An old sickly-looking man standing among the executives said in confidence "That would make it worse." The notepad was still in my hand. My pen was still moving. I was not entirely sure when I had decided to say that out loud. The people around me turned slightly and stopped talking. "Miss Seymour.” Miss Cole's eyes found me across the room like a searchlight, and they were not warm. “Ms?” The old man I interrupted asked with narrowed eyebrows The CEO was looking directly at me. "An apology confirms guilt," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Miss Seymour. That is enough" Her voice was precise The CEO simply looked at me and then looked at Miss Cole and made a small, unhurried gesture with one hand for me to continue. The room went quiet again. Different from before. I felt my spine straighten on its own. "You haven't been convicted of anything. The moment you apologize you hand them the narrative and you don't get it back. You don't fight this by defending yourself. You fight it by making people look somewhere else. Give them a bigger story. Something that changes what -" "That's ridiculous” Ms Cole interrupted me She scoffed without even processing anything I had just said He looked at me for a moment. Then he looked away. "Legal associates. My office. Now." He spoke