Behind The King

Chapter 1

Dani Evans stared at her laptop screen like it had betrayed her. The email had been sitting there for the past ten minutes, crisp black letters against a white background, refusing to rearrange themselves into something that made sense.

She hadn’t gotten a single assignment—not one—in thirty-four days. Thirty-four days since she had returned, thirty-four days of awkward smiles in the break room and hushed voices that stopped when she entered, thirty-four days of being shoved further and further into irrelevance. And now this?

It wasn’t adding up.

“Ms. Evans,” the message began in stiff, corporate politeness.

R.E: Special Assignment

You have been selected to conduct a five-day exclusive interview with Adrian King. This is rare considering how he usually steers away from the press. Confirm your availability before closing.

Her first thought was that someone had made a mistake. They didn’t give jobs like this to people like her. Not to Dani Evans—the woman they’d shoved into Desk 404, a forgotten corner wedged between the janitor’s closet and the lunchroom vending machine. The spot no one wanted.

She leaned back in her chair and muttered under her breath, “Yeah, sure. Me. The one everyone forgets about.”

The newsroom buzzed around her—phones ringing, voices rising and falling, the clatter of keyboards like a constant rain—but Dani felt cut off, floating in a bubble of disbelief. Someone nearby laughed too loudly, the sound bouncing off the glass partitions, sharp and grating. She stared harder at the email, half-expecting the words to vanish.

“Did you get it yet?”

Dani jerked her head up. Paula stood at her desk, arms folded, a smug smile tugging at her mouth. Paula always looked like she knew something the rest of the world didn’t, and in this moment, she definitely did.

“Five-day exclusive with the billionaire? Yeah, I got it,” Dani said flatly.

“And?” Paula pressed, eyes bright with mischief, like she was waiting for Dani to say the wrong thing just so she could pounce.

“And what? This feels like a setup.” Dani dropped her voice, leaning in. “You don’t give your best writers Desk 404. You don’t hand the office outcast the most coveted interview of the year. It doesn’t add up.”

Paula tilted her head, regarding her like she was a puzzle she already knew the solution to. “Maybe it adds up more than you think.”

Dani gave a short laugh. “Come on, Paula. Don’t play with me. I hear the whispers. I know what they say about me when they think I can’t hear. No one believes in me. Half of them don’t even remember I exist until I bump into them in the hallway.”

She gestured to the mop bucket next to her desk, half-filled with gray water that smelled faintly of bleach. “This is where people leave their trash on the way to the kitchen. That’s how invisible I am.”

“And yet…” Paula leaned against the edge of Dani’s desk, lowering her voice so only Dani could hear. “When the bosses sat down to talk about who would take this job, I pitched your name.”

Dani blinked, sure she’d misheard. “You what?”

“You heard me. They were tossing around the same three golden kids like always. But I told them none of them had the right angle for Adrian King. You do.”

Dani frowned. “How? I don’t have anything.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Paula shot back, her tone sharp as a whip. “Adrian King avoids the press because they all come at him the same way—money, power, business headlines. You’re not like them. You see details. You listen. You dig. You write people, not headlines. That’s why I threw you in.”

Dani shook her head, still unconvinced. “Paula, you don’t get it. I’m a risk. If I mess this up—”

“You won’t.” Paula cut her off without hesitation. “I didn’t put your name forward because I wanted to be nice. This isn’t charity. I put you there because you’re the only one I trust not to blow it.”

The words landed heavy in Dani’s chest. Trust. It was the first time in months someone had used that word about her.

Paula leaned closer, her eyes narrowing, voice lowering even more. “Look, Dani. You can stay here, complain about Desk 404, and convince yourself the world is out to get you. Or—you can step up, take the assignment, and prove them all wrong. Which one sounds better?”

The question lodged itself inside Dani, uncomfortably close to the part of her that still, stubbornly, wanted to fight.

Her fingers hovered over her keyboard. Her heart thudded in her ears, equal parts fear and adrenaline.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Yes, you do.” Paula’s voice softened now, less steel and more something else. Belief. “You’ve been waiting for something to light a fire under you again. This is it. Don’t waste it.”

Dani searched Paula’s face, trying to find even a flicker of doubt. There was none. Just steady conviction. The kind Dani hadn’t felt for herself in a long time.

Finally, Dani drew in a slow breath. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Paula arched a brow.

“Okay,” Dani said again, louder this time. “I’ll do it.”

A grin spread across Paula’s face, sharp and satisfied. “That’s what I wanted to hear. I’ll let the bosses know you’re in.” She straightened, then gave Dani’s desk a light tap with her palm. “Pack your nerves away, Evans. You’ve got work to do.”

Dani watched her walk off, her chest tight. She glanced back at the email on her screen, reading the words again. Five days with Adrian King. Billionaire. Elusive. Untouchable.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she typed out her reply: Confirmed. I’ll be available.

The moment she hit send, a strange mix of dread and exhilaration coursed through her veins. What was she doing? She wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t built for this. And yet, for the first time in a long time, the world felt like it was cracking open.

She closed her laptop slowly, almost reverently. Around her, the newsroom noise returned to focus—the ringing phones, the chatter, the clatter. But inside Dani, something had shifted.

This was more than an assignment. She didn’t know how she knew, but she felt it in her bones. This wasn’t just about Adrian King’s story. Somehow, it was about hers too.

And something told her that once this began, there would be no going back.