The Secret of Secretary

08. Elisa : Tragic Memories

The CVs arrived in neat little stacks, printed on cream paper that smelled faintly of toner. Astrid had arranged them in a folder marked Applicants: Secretary Position, her handwriting sharp and efficient across the tab. By Monday morning, the folder sat squarely in the middle of Elisa Rendelle’s desk like an accusation.

Elisa stared at it as though it were a trespasser. She didn’t touch it. Didn’t even open the flap. She adjusted the edges so that the folder lined up perfectly with the corner of her desk, then turned back to the glowing screen of her laptop.

Across the office, Astrid watched her.

“You could at least read them,” Astrid said finally.

Elisa’s lips pressed together. “Again, I don’t recall approving the need for a secretary.”

“You don’t recall a lot of things these days,” Astrid muttered. Then, louder: “You didn’t approve it, true. But I did. As HR. And now we have fifty-seven applications because people actually want this job.”

Elisa’s jaw tightened. She typed something into the Croswell campaign file with mechanical precision. “We don’t need sma here.”

The words snapped sharper than intended. Strangers at a desk beside her—answering phones,filing emails, watching her every slip. Strangers with pens that could take notes and ruin lives.

Astrid pushed up from her chair and planted both hands on Elisa’s desk. “We don’t need strangers? Elisa, that’s how it works if you’re boss who needs working bees. this place is drowning. You are drowning. And again I am drowning alongside you because you keep dumping everything you can’t handle onto me.”

Elisa looked up sharply, frowning. “I don’t forget. I prioritize.”

Astrid gave a humorless laugh. “Is that what you call payroll being signed twelve hours late? Nordwell’s invoice untouched until the vendor called me directly? Prioritizing?”

Elisa bristled. She hated being reminded of lapses. Hated the heat climbing her throat. “I handle the important things. Clients. Campaigns. Creative direction. The rest—”

“The rest falls on me,” Astrid cut in.

The silence carried, heavy as frost. Outside the glass walls, Elisa felt staff stealing glances.

“If you don’t want to help me,” Elisa murmured, “then don’t.”

Astrid’s hands slapped the desk. Elisa’s coffee trembled. “Don’t you dare twist this. I have been helping you. For months. I’ve been HR, scheduler, accountant, assistant, barista—everything. You think I like running two jobs while you kill yourself with perfectionism?”

Elisa opened her mouth, but nothing emerged.

Astrid leaned close, voice lowered. “I nearly lost you once already, Elisa; I have your back since we interned at your dad’s. I won’t watch you collapse again just because you’re too proud to hire secretary.”

The word secretary burned. Elisa’s body recoiled as if Astrid had dragged a ghost into the room.

A secretary. She remembered her father’s Rendelle enterprise. The open-plan floor, the quiet laugh from the desk near her father’s office, the way she seemed trustworthy until the day the numbers stopped lining up. Elisa had seen the discrepancies first. She had carried the proof to compliance when no one else would.

The fallout had been merciless. she was dismissed, his name splashed in headlines. And then—too soon after—the news that she had jumped.

She had been twenty-four. Too young to understand how guilt can braid itself into bone.

And now Astrid wanted her to hire another? Another stranger with a smile and a pen who could one day twist into a blade? No. Not again. Elisa would not open that door. Not after her. Not after the tabloids carved her name beside his obituary.

She dropped her gaze back to her laptop, her voice flat. “I said no.”

But the folder sat there, cream and innocent, as if it did not know what the word secretary meant to her.

The elevator opened to the private hallway like a mouth remembering her name. Elisa stepped out with the week still clinging to her—cappuccino on her breath, graphite on her fingers, a ghost ache behind her eyes that felt like a weather change she could not stop.

Her key slid through the lock. The door yielded to silence the way frost yields to a warm palm: reluctantly, then all at once.

The suite greeted her with its neat, expensive emptiness. Pale wood floors; white walls; windows like a clean wound cut across the city. Last week’s lilies sat on the dining table, crisped into the elegant, faintly tragic shape of what refuses to rot.

She flicked on the lamp beside the sofa. A small cone of gold gathered the room close without warming it.

“Home,” she said aloud, testing the word.

No one answered. Of course no one answered. She had built a life in which silence was the honest thing.

Her bag landed on the entry bench. From it, she extracted the hospital discharge papers she still hadn’t filed. Rest. Hydrate. Delegate. That last word sat on the page like a dare. She folded the packet in half and buried it beneath a stack of magazines, as if paper could suffocate memory.

The studio light was already on. She toed off her heels and padded barefoot across the wood floor. Canvases leaned in quiet rows, tall as waiting witnesses. On the easel, her latest painting—a storm of white and blues, half war, half weather.

She breathed, and paint answered. Her shoulders lowered a fraction.

But Astrid’s voice from the morning still followed her: I nearly lost you once already. And behind that, another voice she couldn’t shut out. The voice—steady, kind—before everything curdled.

She tied her hair back with the elastic from her wrist, the gesture dragging her face into a younger version of itself. The version that once believed loyalty was protection.

She reached for a pencil. Its weight steadied her until the graphite touched paper and the past pulled closer. Then the memory sinks.

The corridors had smelled of carpet glue and air conditioning, the kind of cold professionalism that never asked questions. She had always been there before her, straightening files with the patience of a monk, her suits always the right shade of navy.

“Ms Rendelle,” she’d greeted her once, his smile calm, her hands stacked with reports. “One day you’ll run places like this. You’ve got the vision. Me? I just make sure the trains run on time.”

She had almost believed her.

Until the late nights, when she noticed discrepancies in the ledgers. Figures that didn’t match, accounts that doubled back on themselves. And her, always the last to leave, closing his laptop too quickly when she walked by.

She remembered the conversation as if the office still held its breath around it.

“You’re moving money,” she’d whispered, slamming a folder onto his desk.

Her face had flickered—not guilt, not fear, but weariness. “Elisa, you don’t understand. Everyone does it. We’re just smoothing edges. The company knows.”

She shook her head, horrified. “That’s not yours to take. You’ll ruin everything.”

She stepped closer, lowering his voice. “If you report this, they’ll forgive me. But they’ll never forgive you. You’re a Rendelle. You’ll look like the heiress who betrayed her own.”

She remembered the day she walked into her director’s and her father’s office with the evidence. The way the secretary’s face had hollowed when she saw her file the report. She didn’t plead. She didn’t argue. She only looked at her as if she’d signed his death certificate.

And maybe she had been right. But the next morning she had carried the evidence into her boss’s office anyway, her hands cold, her jaw locked.

She could still see the pen she’d used to sign her statement, the blue ink dragging across the page like betrayal made physical.

Two days later, she was gone. A rooftop. A fall.

And the headlines had twisted her name into a weapon:

RENDLLE HEIRESS BLOWS WHISTLE — SECRETARY DEAD IN RENDRELL SCANDAL.

ICE-BLOODED ELISA RUINS PROMISING CAREER.

She’d walked through corridors filled with whispers, every pair of eyes branding her. Not hero. Not savior. But executioner.

It had been four years, and yet tonight, in the quiet of her studio, the memory still painted itself onto her like ash she could never scrub away.

She could still see her face on the tabloid covers, paired with his obituary photo. Her chest remembered the cut of guilt, sharp as paper.

Now Astrid wanted her to hire another secretary. Another pen at another desk. Another chance for history to rhyme. Elisa’s stomach clenched. She pressed the pencil too hard; the point snapped.

“Fine,” she told it, voice low. “Fine.”

She sharpened the pencil with practiced movements, the blade making small music. She sketched again—lines that wanted to be a horizon, but tonight they bent into something darker. The edge of a knife. The memory of a ledge.

She dropped the pencil and crossed to the kitchen. Poured water. The glass chimed gently against the counter, like it was mocking her for needing something so simple.

On the fridge, one postcard hung beneath a magnet: an exhibition photograph of icebergs. On the back, her own handwriting: Nothing that looks like stillness is actually still. She traced the words with her finger and wondered if she had written them as comfort or warning.

Back in the studio, she picked up her brush. Paint steadied her better than memory. Stroke, lift, breathe. The whites and blues bled into each other until borders gave up pretending.

“You almost killed yourself,” Astrid had said that morning.

And behind Astrid’s voice, another headline whispered: Secretary Dead After Heiress’s Betrayal.

Her grip trembled. She set the brush down and pressed both palms to the easel, grounding herself. She inhaled. The air smelled like acrylic and regret.

It wasn’t about refusing help, she told herself. It was about refusing the story of needing it. The story tabloids would spin into ruin if she gave them another secretary to write beside her name.

Elisa sat on the low stool, sketchbook open on her knees. She drew three columns. In the first: Things I can control. In the second: Things I can influence. In the third: Things I will not pretend I can fix.

She stared at the third column until her throat tightened. The name could have gone there once. But she hadn’t left it alone. She had believed exposure was justice, and the price had been a life.

No.

Rendelle Heiress Drives Girl to Suicide.

Ice Queen Whistleblower Destroys Career, Life.

The whispers followed her through every hallway: she wanted attention, she wanted glory, she wanted blood.

Her father’s silence had been worse than any headline because it’s just gained good attention to him.

The pencil rolled an inch, clicked against the spine of the book. The sound startled her. She whispered to the room: “You are not weak. You are not guilty. You are not your father’s daughter.”

But the silence did not answer, and the canvas did not forgive.

She walked to the window. The city glittered below like glass pretending to be fire. In another apartment, a man was teaching a child to brush their teeth. In another, a woman laughed into her phone. Ordinary lives unbroken by betrayal.

Elisa pressed her palm to the glass. The pane held firm. Barriers always did.

She turned back to the easel, forced her brush to move again. She told herself Astrid’s folder would remain closed. She would not hire a stranger. She would not repeat.

And yet, when she finally switched off the light and lay down in her bed, one thought followed her into the dark like a hand on her shoulder: Astrid would not stop. Astrid would bring her another name, another secretary, another chance for guilt to bloom.

Elisa closed her eyes and waited for sleep to arrive like mercy.