The CEO’s Secret Secretary

The plant on the billing office counter was dying, and Emma Carter had spent most of the meeting staring at it so she wouldn't have to look at the woman across the desk. "I want to be clear that this isn't a threat," the woman said. That was the worst part of St. Aldric's Hospital. Nobody was ever unkind. They were tired and sorry and they had forms. "The balance goes to collections review in twelve days. After that, your mother's treatment can't continue under the hardship program." "Twelve days," Emma said. "Unless there's a payment. Even a partial one shows good faith." Emma had forty-one dollars in her checking account and a pay stub from a diner that had closed in March. She nodded, because nodding was cheaper than telling the truth, and signed where the woman pointed. In the corridor, she pressed her back against the wall and let herself breathe for exactly ten seconds. Her phone buzzed. Lena: Did you eat? Answer honestly. Emma typed, Defining eat, and then deleted it and wrote, Yes. Going to the interview now. Emma smiled at the screen and went to say goodbye to her mother. Grace Carter was awake, propped against two pillows, a paperback open on her chest that she was clearly not reading. Even now, with the tubes and the gray in her skin, she had the habit of looking at Emma as if Emma were the one who needed looking after. "You wore the blue blazer," Grace said. "It's the only one." "It's the right one." Her mother's eyes dropped to Emma's wrist, to the thin silver bracelet with the small chipped sparrow charm. "You haven't taken that off in years." "Neither have you taken off that look." Emma kissed her forehead. "I'll be back tonight. Eat the pudding." "The pudding is a crime." "Eat the crime." She was still smiling when she reached the elevator, and she held onto it as long as she could. --- Black Meridian Group occupied the top eleven floors of a glass tower that seemed designed to make visitors feel they had arrived somewhere they might not be allowed to leave. The temp agency had called her at six that morning. Hartwell Staffing, a voice she didn't recognize, an interview at ten-thirty, a position that had not been posted anywhere. Personal secretary to the Chief Executive Officer. She had asked why they'd picked her, a woman with two years of diner work and a half-finished business degree, and the voice had said only, "They were specific." She had decided not to think about that. She needed the job too badly to be suspicious of it. On the forty-third floor, the elevator doors opened onto a reception area the color of expensive silence. A woman was coming the other way, fast, a cardboard box clutched against her chest. Her mascara had run. Her blouse was perfect. She stopped when she saw Emma, and her eyes traveled from the blazer to the folder in Emma's hands, and something like grim amusement passed across her face. "You're the next one," the woman said. "I'm sorry?" "Olivia Grant. Nine years." She shifted the box. "Don't be late. Don't be early. Don't ever hand him a document that isn't flat." She stepped into the elevator, and the doors slid shut on her last words, which sounded like good luck but weren't. A man in a charcoal suit appeared in the corridor as though he had been waiting for the elevator to finish. Broad shoulders, a quiet face, eyes that took inventory of Emma in a single pass. "Miss Carter. Daniel Reyes, security. Mr. Black will see you now." "Now? My appointment is at ten-thirty." "It's ten twenty-eight," Daniel said. "He doesn't like to wait." He led her down a corridor lined with glass and nothing else, no art, no family photographs, and opened a heavy door without knocking. The office was enormous, and almost bare. A desk the length of a small boat. A wall of windows with the city laid out beneath them like something he owned, which, Emma supposed, parts of it were. A man stood at the glass with his back to her, hands in his pockets, perfectly still. "Close the door, Reyes." Daniel left. The door clicked. Alexander Black turned around. She had assumed the cold look in his magazine photographs was a pose. It wasn't. He was thirty-one, tall, dark-haired, with a face that might have been warm if anyone had given it permission. His eyes were gray and unnervingly steady. He looked at her the way a man looks at a contract he suspects has a clause hidden in it. "Sit." Emma sat. He did not. He crossed to the desk and lifted a single sheet of paper. Her résumé, she realized. It had been printed on thick stock, and there were no notes on it. "Two years waitressing," he said. "One year of business classes, unfinished. Reference from a diner that no longer exists. Why should I hire you?" She had rehearsed an answer on the train. It left her entirely. "Because I'm very good at being underestimated, Mr. Black, and that makes me hard to surprise." Something moved in his face, too quickly for her to read. "Everyone who has sat in that chair has told me how organized they are." "I'm not organized. I'm afraid. It works out the same." "Do you have family in the city?" "My mother." "Her condition?" Emma's spine went rigid. "I didn't mention a condition." "The hospital's name is on your emergency contact form. St. Aldric's has one oncology ward." He said it flatly, not cruelly, the way another man might read out a weather report. "Your father?" "Is that relevant to typing?" "Humor me." "He left when I was ten." The words were smooth from years of use. "I don't talk about it." Alexander's hand tightened very slightly on the paper. Then his gaze dropped to her wrist, to the silver bracelet and the chipped sparrow, and stayed there a moment too long. The air in the room changed. She felt it, though she could not have said how. "That's an unusual piece," he said. "It was a gift." "From whom?" "I don't remember." It was a lie, and not a good one. She had no idea why she'd told it. He looked up, and for the first time his eyes were not the eyes of a man appraising a contract. Something raw flickered behind them, like a light left on in a house everyone thought was empty. Then it was gone, so fast she wondered if she had imagined it. "The salary is three times what you're worth," Alexander said. "You will arrive at seven-fifteen. You will leave when I do. You will not speak to the board unless I speak first. You will not discuss anything you overhear, not with friends, not with family, not with a stranger on a train." Emma blinked. "You're offering me the job." "I'm informing you of its conditions." "Mr. Black, there were other candidates." "I have seen all of them." He placed the résumé on the desk. "You are the one I want." The words should have been flattering. Instead, the back of her neck went cold. "And if I say yes?" "Then you start tomorrow. You will meet Mr. Hale, who runs the board, and Miss Black, my sister. You will be polite to both. And Miss Carter," he added, with the first hint of warmth she'd heard all morning, which was alarming because it was so clearly practiced, "you'll have the advance on your salary by noon. I understand certain deadlines are approaching." She had told him nothing about a deadline. She opened her mouth, and then she thought of her mother's paperback, unread on her chest, and the dying plant, and the twelve days. She closed it again. "Yes," she said. "I'll take it." "Good. Reyes will show you out." Daniel was waiting at the door. Emma rose and followed Daniel across the carpet. At the threshold she glanced back, though she wasn't sure why. Alexander had returned to the window. He wasn't looking at the city anymore. His reflection in the glass showed a man gripping the edge of a drawer, pulling out a thick folder, and slipping it quickly under a stack of papers on the desk. But not quickly enough. The tab on the folder had been printed in small black capital letters. CARTER, E. And beneath it, in handwriting she recognized from nowhere and everywhere at once, a date from last Tuesday, a full day before Hartwell Staffing had ever called her.