The CEO's Secret Assistant

He knows my name Mr. Collins was still hovering by my desk when I shut my laptop, like he wanted to say something else and thought better of it. "The CEO wants to see you," he said. "Now, if you can." I almost asked if I was in trouble. I didn't, because asking would've made it feel true. The walk to the executive floor took longer than it should have. I kept rehearsing apologies for mistakes I couldn't actually name. By the time the elevator opened, I'd talked myself into three different scenarios, none of them right. I knocked once. "Come in." Damian was at the window, back to me, hands in his pockets. Manhattan looked small behind him, which felt like it was probably the point. He didn't turn around right away. When he finally did, there was a coffee stain on the cuff of his shirt, small, like he'd been up since before the building opened. "Ms. Hayes." He didn't gesture at the chair. I sat anyway. "Sit down." I told myself I would. Then I did it a beat too late, because I was still deciding whether sitting made me look guilty of something. He picked a file off the old desk, the corner bent from being opened too many times and set it in front of me without a word. I didn't need to read it. I recognized the color of the folder before I saw the name. Daniel Hart. My father's name, in print, in this building, after four years of it existing nowhere I could reach. "Do you know what this is." Not really a question, the way he said it. "A financial report." I heard how stupid it sounded the second it left my mouth. "That's not what I asked." Silence. He let it sit there longer than was comfortable, and I understood that was deliberate. "Your real name is Amelia Hart." He wasn't looking at the file anymore. He was looking at me. "Isn't it." There didn't seem to be a version of lying that would work in that room. "Yes." "Four years, working under your mother's maiden name." He said it slowly, like he was still working out whether he believed it himself. "Yes." "And you've spent a good deal of that time digging through files that have nothing to do with your job." "Because nobody would give me a straight answer any other way." That came out sharper than I meant it. I didn't take it back. Something shifted in his face not anger, more like he was recalculating something. "My father didn't take that money," I said, before he could ask. "You sound very sure." "I am." "Why." "Because I know him." It sounded thin the second it left my mouth, and I knew he'd hear it that way too. "That's not evidence." "Neither was half of what they used to convict him." He didn't answer right away. He just watched me, like he was rethinking whatever he'd assumed about me on the walk over quiet employee, forgettable, no complaints and finding it didn't match. "Tell me what you found," he said finally. "Why would I do that." "Because I'm asking." "And if I say no?" A faint, almost amused look crossed his face, there and gone. "Then you go back to your desk and wait for HR to call you down." I hated that he had the leverage to say that and mean it. I hated it more that I needed something from him anyway. "There was a transaction," I said. "One of the missing transfers from before everything came out. It doesn't match the original filing. Someone changed the account details after it had already gone through." He didn't interrupt. "I thought it was a clerical error, at first. Then I found a second one. Same pattern. Different accounts." "Where." "Northstar Holdings." His fingers, resting against the file, went still. It was a small thing. He probably didn't mean for me to catch it. "You know that name," I said. "Yes." "Then you understand why I kept looking." He stood, came around the desk, stopped a few feet from my chair. It was only then that I registered we were alone on the entire floor, as far as I knew. "I'm not firing you, Amelia." Hearing him use my actual name did something strange to my chest. "Then why am I here?" "Because I want you working for me." I laughed once, short, before I realized he wasn't joking. "I'm not qualified for that." "You found records my own legal team couldn't." "That's not a qualification. That's a liability." "For me, it's the same thing." I studied him. "What's the catch?" "Six months. You work directly under me. You get access to certain files. In exchange, you stop going through company records without authorization." "And if I refuse?" "You're terminated, and I report the access." It wasn't an offer, not really. Just a choice between two versions of losing. Still one of them got me closer to what I'd spent four years trying to find. "Six months," I repeated. "Six months." "You expect me to trust you?" "No." He held my eyes. "I expect you to work with me." That answer unsettled me more than if he'd asked for trust outright. I stood, straightened my blazer out of habit, more for something to do with my hands than anything else. "Fine." "Good." He was already back behind his desk before I reached the door. "One more thing." I turned. He was looking down at my father's file again, not at me. "You're not the only person looking into what happened four years ago." "Who else." He didn't answer right away. When he did, he still hadn't looked up. "That's what we're going to find out." I should have gone back to my old desk, packed the little I kept there, and left. Instead I stood in the doorway a second too long, and by the time I moved, the decision had already made itself. They gave me a new office that same afternoon, three doors down from Damian's. I stood in front of the nameplate longer than I should have. Amelia Hayes -Executive Assistant to the CEO. Wrong name, wrong title, wrong floor. I'd spent four years learning to be unremarkable, and in one morning I'd become the person sitting closest to the most powerful man in the building. Damian passed by not long after and stopped when he saw I hadn't touched the files on my desk. "You haven't started." "I was admiring the door." "It's not a promotion." "That's reassuring." Something close to a smile. Not quite. "It's a test." "You could've led with that." "I did." "No. You said 'position.'" He looked at me for a second longer than the exchange really needed. "You're going to be difficult." "I thought you liked honest employees." "I like competent ones." "Then we're both satisfied." The corner of his mouth moved before he caught it and turned toward his office. I watched the door shut and hated that I'd noticed the almost smile at all. That wasn't why I was here. I opened the first file instead. Three years of Northstar transactions, mostly unremarkable, except for a handful buried in the middle that didn't belong. I copied down the dates, crosschecked them against the records I'd kept hidden on a drive at home for the better part of a year. They matched. My pulse was still catching up when Damian's door opened again. "Found something." "Maybe." I turned the page toward him. He read over my shoulder, close enough that I was aware of it in a way I didn't want to examine. "These were processed before the case went public." "This account shouldn't have existed yet." "How sure are you?" "Very." He took the file, read it a second time, quieter this time. "Then we find out who opened it." I nodded. For the first time since walking into his office that morning, it felt like we wanted the same thing. It should have been a relief. Instead, something about it felt like I'd just opened a door I wouldn't be able to shut again. Before I left for the night, he said my name from his doorway. "There's something you should understand," he said, holding the same worn file, "before we go further." Whatever had been in his voice earlier the almost teasing edge was gone. "What happened to your father wasn't only about missing money." "Then what was it about." He took his time answering. "He found something." I waited. "Something someone wanted buried." A cold feeling moved through me. "What did he find?" "I don't know yet." He closed the file. "But four years ago, somebody worked hard to make sure nobody else did either." "You think he was framed." "I think," he said, carefully, "we don't know the whole story." He turned back toward his desk. I understood I was being dismissed, but I stopped in the doorway anyway. "Damian." He looked up. "If we find out he was innocent what happens then?" He didn't hesitate. "Then everyone finds out." I carried that answer home with me. Four years, I'd spent looking for one thing,proof that Daniel Hart wasn't the man they'd made him out to be. Now I had access to someone who might actually help me find it. I just didn't know yet whether Damian Blackwood wanted the truth because he believed my father or because he was protecting a truth of his own.