Blood and Boardrooms

Chapter One: The Hire First Person POV (Lena) The receptionist smiled at me like I belonged there. I smiled back like I agreed. Morozov Tower was a massive forty-two-floor glass and steel building in Midtown. The kind of building that screamed money and power. I had spent three weeks studying its blueprints. The server room was on the thirty-first floor. The private elevator needed a fingerprint scan. And Nikolai Morozov hadn’t done a single press interview in two years. I sat down in the waiting area and kept my eyes forward. Looking around would make me seem nervous. And nervous people have something to hide. I had everything to hide. Twelve other candidates sat in the same row of chairs. Most of them were actually there for the job; senior financial analyst for Morozov Group’s audit team. They had laptops open and thick folders on their laps. Two were already comparing resumes out loud. I gave them six months before the FBI came for them too, just for being in the wrong building. At 1:58, a man in a dark suit came in and called my name. Not a question; a command. I followed him to the elevator. We rode up to the thirty-eighth floor in complete silence. The doors opened straight into the office. No hallway. No waiting room. Just the office. Floor-to-ceiling windows faced south. The whole city was spread out below like Nikolai Morozov personally owned it, which, legally and illegally, he mostly did. His desk was wide, dark, and almost completely empty. Just a laptop and a phone. No papers. No photos. Nothing personal. He was standing at the window with his back to me. “Close the door,” he said. I did. He turned around, and I immediately understood why the surveillance photos hadn’t done him justice. According to his file, Nikolai Morozov was thirty-four. But he looked older, not tired, just hardened, like someone who had made a lot of tough calls. Dark hair. Light gray eyes that were easy to track across a room. A sharp jaw that had never once looked soft. He looked at me. And he stopped. Not in a professional way. Not like he was sizing me up. He just stopped. Like something inside him slammed into a wall he didn’t see coming. I noted it and kept my face blank. That kind of reaction meant recognition. Either my cover was blown, or he’d seen my face somewhere in his security footage and was trying to place me. Either way, this meeting had just taken a different turn. “Lena Vasquez,” he said. Calm. Controlled. Whatever had thrown him, he was already pushing it down. “Yes.” I walked over and held out my hand. He glanced at it quickly before shaking it. His grip was short and firm, and he let go faster than normal. Like he wanted to limit the contact. Interesting. “Sit down.” We sat. He opened the laptop and looked over my resume like a man who’d already read it twice and made up his mind. The FBI’s documents team had built me a solid ten-year work history at a mid-size firm in Chicago, great references, no gaps, two promotions. He asked me three questions: how I handled inconsistencies between different companies’ records, what I did when the numbers didn’t match what a client was telling me, and whether I could work with incomplete information. I answered all three honestly, because the honest answers were also the right ones. I was actually good at this job. That was the whole point. The Bureau needed someone who could genuinely move through Morozov’s finances, not just pretend to. He listened without writing anything down. His eyes stayed on my face the whole time. “You were at Halloran & Finn for nine years,” he said. “Yes.” “Why did you leave?” “They merged with a bigger firm. The culture changed.” I kept it short. Over-explaining is the first mistake. He nodded slowly, like he was thinking something through. “You could have stayed. Your numbers were strong. They would have kept you.” He had looked into my fake performance records. My handler hadn’t mentioned he’d gone that deep. I kept my face still. “I prefer smaller operations. More direct access to the people making decisions.” “You’ll have that here.” He closed the laptop. “The job is yours.” I waited for the rest, the HR steps, the conditions, the next meeting. Nothing came. “You haven’t interviewed the other candidates,” I said. “No.” “There are eleven people outside.” “There are.” I held his gaze. “That’s an unusual way to hire.” “I have unusual instincts.” He stood up, signaling the meeting was over. “My assistant will handle the paperwork. You start Monday.” I stood, picked up my folder, and walked to the elevator. As I pressed the button, I was already running through the math in my head, why me, why so fast, what did he know or think he knew? I was three steps into that thought when his voice came from behind me. “Ms. Vasquez.” I turned. He was still at his desk, hands in his pockets, watching me quietly. His expression gave nothing away. “You’ll find that things are very direct here,” he said. “I don’t like things left unsaid.” “Neither do I.” The elevator opened. I stepped in. The doors closed. I stood in that steel box and breathed slowly through my nose. I didn’t let myself react until I was twelve floors down and sure the camera in the corner was a standard model, not one his security team would review personally. Then I let myself think it clearly. He knew. Not what exactly, not how much. But he could tell something was off about me. Which meant I had until Monday to figure out what he’d spotted, before he decided what to do about it. My phone rang. My handler. I’d debrief in an hour, tell him the interview went clean, tell him I was in. I wouldn’t mention the moment Nikolai Morozov froze when he saw me. Or the way he looked at me like he was already running his own calculations. That was mine to keep until I understood it. The lobby doors opened and the city swallowed me whole. Back upstairs, on the empty desk of the thirty-eighth floor office, Lena’s new employee welcome packet sat next to a single printed note. It read: I know why you’re really here.