THE SECRETARY'S REVENGE

CHAPTER4

LEAH MORGAN

"You signed on my behalf." Alexander's voice doesn't rise. It doesn't need to. "Without my name. Without my authorization. In my own office, while I was at a dinner you arranged."

"Sir, the terms were…"

"I know what the terms were." He says it like they're the least of his concerns. "That's not what I'm asking you to explain."

My lips part, and for half a second, I almost believe he wants to hear it.

"What I want to know," he says, quieter now, "is how a woman I hired yesterday morning already knew enough about my business, my shares, and Mr. Houston's flight schedule to make a decision that size without asking me first."

I don't have an answer that makes this better.

“Damn it, Leah. You were supposed to follow simple instructions,” Alex’s voice rages over the ceilings. “What have you done?”

My lips part for the second time. “I…”

"Oh, you know what?" His tone doesn't change. "Gather what little things you have in this building and f**k off. You're done here."

Cold settles into my veins before the words finish landing.

"But, sir, I…"

"You don't want to test my patience, Leah. I won't repeat myself." His voice drives the rest of my sentence back down my throat. Past him, I catch his two bodyguards already moving toward me, like they were waiting for this exact cue.

I don't fight them. There's no version of fighting that doesn't make the next five minutes worse.

The doors swallow the sound of the office behind me. Then it's just rain, concrete, and my knees hitting the ground harder than I meant to let them.

Not for the first time, the Holtons have humiliated me. This time, at least, they did it where everyone could watch.

My chest caves in on itself. I thought I had it in me. I thought I could bring the most powerful name on this continent to nothing, and instead I'm on my knees in the rain, fired before I've finished my first day.

A pair of red heels stop in front of me.

"I could swear I recognize you from somewhere." Clara's smile doesn't reach anywhere near warmth. "Doesn't matter now, does it?"

She walks past without waiting for an answer, leaving me to whatever the weather wants to do with me next.

****

Sylvia opens the door before I knock, like she's been watching the street. One look at me and her face crumples.

"Oh, Leah." She pulls me in without asking what happened, soaked coat and all, and for a moment I let myself stop performing entirely.

"I thought I could do this, Sylvia." My voice comes apart somewhere in the middle of the sentence. "I thought I could bring down the people who took my parents from me, and I lasted one day."

She doesn't ask which people. She's known since we were children, long enough that the words don't need any more weight than I've already given them.

She sits me by the heater and wraps my hands around a mug I don't remember her making.

"You don't have to explain it to me," she says. "I was there, Covey," It slips out of her like it always does when she's not thinking about it; the name only she still uses, the one my mother gave me before anyone else had the chance to call me anything else. "You don't have to do this alone."

I close my eyes, and for a moment I'm not twenty-three. I'm ten, standing outside a house that isn't mine anymore, watching my mother's handwriting on documents I'd hidden under my own mattress because she told me no one would think to look there.

I think about Clara too; the version of her that used to hold my hand on the walk home from school, the version I told everything to. Including where those documents were.

I don't tell Sylvia that part. Some wounds I still keep to myself.

"It's not over," Sylvia says, like she can hear the thought anyway. "You just learned something today you didn't know yesterday."

"That I'm not as careful as I thought."

"That the Holtons notice competence before they notice loyalty." She says it simply, like a fact she's always known. "Use that."

I don't answer. I let the heat work its way back into my hands and try not to think about how close I came to winning something, before I lost it.

The knock comes just past ten. Three sharp raps, nothing like the building's usual late-night noise.

Sylvia answers. I hear her voice catch. "...Can I help you?"

"I need to speak with Leah Morgan."

My blood runs cold, instantly. I know that voice in my body before my mind catches up to it.

I come to the door still wrapped in one of Sylvia's old sweaters, hair barely dry, and find Alexander Holton standing in the hallway like a man who has never once had to wait for anything; except, apparently, this.

"Mr. H-Holton."

"Houston's documents were on my desk when I got back tonight." He doesn't ask to come in. He doesn't apologize either. "Signed. Terms I would have spent a week negotiating, and you closed them in an afternoon."

"I'm aware of what I did, sir."

"Then you're also aware I fired you before I knew that."

I don't answer. There's nothing safe to say to that.

"I don't like being wrong." He says it like admitting the category exists costs him something. "I like it less when being wrong costs me something I wanted to keep."

The rain hasn't let up outside. He doesn't seem to notice it; the way a man stands in something he's already decided isn't allowed to bother him.

"Be at your desk tomorrow morning. It's exactly where you left it."

He doesn't turn to leave yet. For one beat too long, his eyes move over me; not assessing, not testing, just looking, like he's seeing something he didn't expect to find in a doorway at ten at night.

Then it's gone. His jaw resets. He files it away.

Warmth moves through my chest before I can stop it.

No. Not this. Not for a look in a hallway.

I let myself smile anyway, after he's already turned. Not for him.

For what I just saw.

And what I now know I can use.