HELLBOUND WITH THE ALPHA

CHAPTER 6 She Got the Job

The call came on Wednesday at half past two in the afternoon while Ava was in the middle of a shift at Vega, restocking the bar before the evening service started. Her phone buzzed in her apron pocket and she pulled it out and saw an Ashenvale number she did not recognize and felt something in her chest lift and tighten at the same time.

She stepped into the back corridor and answered.

"Ms. Chen? This is Caroline from Varek Industries Human Resources. I am calling to let you know that we would like to offer you the position of executive assistant, pending the completion of our standard background check. Do you have a moment to discuss the details?"

Ava pressed her back against the wall and closed her eyes for exactly three seconds.

"Yes," she said. "I have a moment."

Caroline went through the details. The salary was what had been listed, which was more than Ava had earned in any previous position and enough to cover rent and the bills and the quiet ongoing anxiety about whether she was going to be all right. Start date was Monday of the following week, pending the background check clearing. She would receive a full briefing on her first day.

Ava thanked her. She wrote down everything. She ended the call.

She stood in the back corridor of Vega for a moment and breathed.

Then she went back to restocking the bar because she still had a shift to finish and she had always believed in finishing things properly.

She called Zara from the pavement outside at the end of her shift and did not manage to get through more than two words before Zara made a sound loud enough that the couple walking past both turned to look.

"I told you," Zara said, over and over, in the particular rhythm of someone who was very pleased about having been right. "I told you, didn't I? One foot in the door. That is all you needed."

"It is only the beginning," Ava said, but she was smiling in a way that was difficult to stop.

"It is a very good beginning. We are celebrating. I am buying the wine. Do not argue with me about the wine."

Eli took them both to dinner at the small Italian place near the flat that they had been going to since university, where the portions were generous and the owner called them by name and the lighting was warm enough to make everything feel slightly more celebratory than it was. He sat across from Ava and listened to her talk about the interview and the callback and the details of the role with an attention that was one of his best qualities, the kind of listening that made people feel that what they were saying was actually interesting.

"Executive assistant to the head of the company," he said. "That is a significant position."

"It is a starting position," Ava said. "But a real one."

"You will be excellent at it."

"You do not know that yet."

"I know you," Eli said simply. "That is enough."

Zara raised her glass. Ava raised hers. Eli raised his and smiled at Ava across the table with the particular warmth of someone who meant every word of what he had just said, and Ava felt the rightness of the moment, the small solid reality of people who cared about you being happy when good things happened.

She went home and set three alarms for Monday morning and lay in bed thinking about the building and the lobby and the way the floors counted down in the elevator, and she was asleep within twenty minutes, which was unusual for her and suggested, she thought, that she was exactly where she was supposed to be.