CHAPTER 8 The Rules
608 Words
He gave her four minutes on the second morning.
She knew it was four minutes because she had the meeting log open on her screen and noted the time when he called her in, which was twenty past nine, and the time when she left, which was twenty-four minutes past. She was precise about things like that. It was useful to be precise.
His office was exactly what she would have expected from the desk outside it. Clean lines, nothing unnecessary, the kind of organized space that suggested its occupant found disorder personally offensive. There was a view of the city through the full-length window behind his desk and the morning light came in at an angle that made everything look very still and deliberate.
He was standing when she came in, looking at something on his desk. He did not gesture for her to sit, and she did not sit.
"Reports on my desk before eight," he said, without a preamble. "Not in my inbox, not with a notification. On my desk. Physical copies for the morning briefing, digital copies were filed in the system at the same time."
"Understood."
"All external meetings are managed by you. Nothing gets on my calendar without confirmation from me or Colt. If there is any ambiguity, the answer is no until I say otherwise."
"Understood."
"Calls from the following companies are to be put through immediately regardless of what I am doing." He handed her a card with six names on it. "Everything else goes to voicemail or to Colt depending on urgency."
"Understood."
He looked up then. It was the first time in the conversation that he had looked directly at her, and she felt the full quality of his attention in a way that was different from the hallway, more concentrated, as though in the office he permitted himself more focus and less distance. His eyes were that grey she had noted in the elevator, and they were very steady, and they seemed to be evaluating something she could not quite identify.
"Do you have questions?" he said.
"Not yet," Ava said. "I will come to you or to Colt when I do."
Something moved across his face, brief and unreadable. "Good," he said, and looked back at his desk.
She understood she was dismissed.
She went back to her desk and opened the briefing materials and started building the systems she was going to need to make sure his reports were on his desk before eight every morning without fail. She was not particularly bothered by the brevity of the introduction. She had worked for demanding people before. Demanding was fine. Demanding usually meant they cared about the work, which she found easier to deal with than indifference.
What she did not tell herself, carefully and deliberately, was that the four minutes had felt longer than four minutes, or that the quality of his attention when he had finally looked at her was the kind that stayed with you in a way you could not entirely account for.
She had a job to learn. That was what mattered.
She made her list. She started at the top.
At eleven o'clock, a tall man with a steady face and watchful eyes stopped at her desk and said, "You must be Ava Chen. I am Colt Harrow. If you have questions, I am the one to ask." He said it the way someone said something they meant, without embellishment.
"I have three already," Ava said.
Something in Colt's expression shifted very slightly in a direction that might have been approval. "Ask them," he said, and pulled up the chair.
- Writer
