BECOMING THE PRINCESS'S LACKEY

ONE

Isabeau’s POV

” You’re firing me? I’ve only been here eleven days.”

“Twelve,” I corrected, “and yes.”

My mother, the queen, always told me that a leader who explains every decision has already lost the room. I’d lived by that since I was nineteen, and that was not about to change just because Felix – Felipe?

He was lost for words: “Was it the coffee thing? Because if it is, I’m sure that I can fix it.”

“No, it’s not the coffee thing.” Yes, it was, in fact, the coffee thing among eleven other things– I counted. But giving him a list will only give him a chance to argue with it. “HR will process your return to the general pool by the end of the day. You are a capable young man. You’ll do well somewhere with considerably lower stakes.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, and left with his wounded pride, like a man who had clearly been rehearsing something better on the elevator up.

Twenty-one.

I made a mental note of it the same way I noted everything else, then went back to the quarterly figure on my screen, because the board call was in an hour and a half. A damned soul in logistics had decided that the Q2 numbers for the eastern distribution hub didn’t reconcile, and with my twenty-first personal assistant out of service, officially, I have to handle it myself.

My intercom buzzed, “Your Highness, HR is sending up a replacement.”

I almost laughed; it was as if there was a fire brigade somewhere in this building, waiting to fill the position. Well, I could use a hand right now; maybe this one will last a full twenty-four hours.

“Fine, send them up.”

***

A knock came at the door the second the call on the intercom dropped. If that were my new assistant, I wouldn’t have to worry about speed ever.

“Come in,” but I couldn’t resist not looking up at this man, and the first thing I noticed was his gorgeous face and his striking height while simultaneously making a mental note to shop for heels with more inches. He looked like someone who had just run seventeen floors and decided at the last minute to pretend that he didn’t.

His curriculum vitae popped up on my screen. “Matthias Cole,” I read from the screen. On an MBA scholarship with good grades, currently running his internship– pause, “internship.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

I didn’t even realise I said that out loud; I had never been assigned an intern. I rolled my eyes right to the back of my head, and I can’t be picky right now with the board meeting just an hour from now.

“Board meeting is at eight. I need the Q2 figures on this file fixed, the executive summary and the acquisition templates fixed.” I stacked the files one after the other on the desk in front of him. “You have a question; you figure that out yourself.”

He seemed unshaken by that; I found that slightly irritating. “I assume this board meeting is at eight tomorrow.”

“You have fifty minutes for those to be ready.” I turned back to my screen.

“Anything else?”

Looking for more fire, aren’t we, Mr. Cole? “Yes,” I answered him, “you’ll sit at the board meeting. I need the minutes in full, no summary, no shortcuts; I need all events, who said what and when.”

He sighed, “Noted.” I could tell that he knew I only wanted to be the devil to him today. And he was not wrong.

He turned and left. I watched him sit at his desk through the glass wall, and I wondered how long he would last.

***

Matthias POV

I popped on the chair at my desk. I had forty-nine minutes to fix mistakes that I didn’t make. Story of my life.

It happened so fast, at that. The call from HR, the juicy offer that could cover my college debt and set me up for life, the black card benefit tied to this job. I loved every bit of it except her.

I looked at her again through the glass, calm and composed, but my mind kept seeing the invisible horns on her slick back dark hair. She was the devil.

A pretty hot one at that.

I turned back to work, making a mental note not to look through that glass again.

“Mon chéri.” I looked up, and Dom was standing by the doorway, carrying two cups of coffee, looking like someone who had heard something interesting and couldn’t contain himself.

“So,” he said, setting one cup on my desk, “executive floor.”

“Don’t.”

“Twenty-first floor, brother.” he scanned the place through his square glasses. “They moved you away from the rest of us ordinary interns.”

“I noticed,” I said without looking up from my work.

“Meanwhile, Mr. Presley is still grinding us to the bone.”

“Dom,” I began to say- I wanted to say I would give anything except this job to be pushed and pressed by Mr. Presley instead. But I kept quiet.

“I’m just saying.” he leaned against the edge of the desk and looked through the glass wall into her office. I didn’t follow his gaze. “So what’s she like? Is she as bad as they say?”

“What exactly do they say?”

“Well, you know, that she works her assistants to the bone, that she makes sure they work for every single dime that’s paid, that she sucks blood and eats flesh.”

I paused and looked at him. He was serious. “It’s not Teen Wolf,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Then how can you explain how Felix lost ten pounds in eleven days?”

“It’s twelve,” I cut in.

“I mean, it only means that he was eaten to the bone in this office.” Dom ignores me.

“I have a whole lot to complete before the board meeting.”

He turned to me and grabbed me by my shoulders dramatically. “Please, swear to me that you will survive.”

“I’ll try,” I shrugged him off. “Get out; I’m trying to work. Thanks for the coffee.”