The boardroom was all glass and shadows and the muted gleam of power.
The lights of downtown Los Angeles bled through the floor-to-ceiling windows, streaks of white and red and neon reflected in polished stone and the sleek chrome edge of the sixteen-foot table. At the head of it sat Marcus Kane, one hand wrapped around a tumbler of single malt, the other resting flat on a leather folder that had the power to ruin at least three people in this room.
He didn’t look like he was about to ruin anyone. That was part of the problem.
He looked…bored.
“So,” he said, his voice low and even, “you’re telling me we’re five days from closing and suddenly our environmental impact assessment has…vanished.”
The room tensed at the quiet emphasis on the last word.
“My team is working on it,” said Daniel Cross, head of Legal. He was sweating through a shirt that cost more than some people’s rent. “We had a system migration last quarter and there’s a chance—”
“You signed the compliance report yourself.” Marcus didn’t raise his voice, but the steel in it cut through Daniel’s stammer. “Are you telling me you attested to a filing you didn’t read?”
The only sound was the faint hum of the air-conditioning and the far-off city.
“Of course I read it,” Daniel recovered, fingers worrying his tie knot. “I’m saying there’s a chance IT—”
“IT,” Marcus said, with a hint of contempt, “does not certify legally binding documents on acquisitions valued at four point six billion dollars. If the EPA decides to go hunting for headlines, that report is the one thing between Kane Global and an enforcement action that will cost us more than the acquisition itself. Where is it?”
Daniel’s gaze flicked, not to the windows, not to his notes.
To the empty seat half an arm’s length from Marcus.
“Mr. Kane, until last week, all hard compliance copies were monitored by—”
“Don’t.” Marcus’s jaw flexed. “Don’t say her name.”
A beat of awkward silence followed, almost comic if it hadn’t been so painfully real.
She was *gone*. That was the point.
Marcus rolled the glass between his fingers, watching amber liquid coat crystal. “Let’s be clear, Daniel. Either you find that report, or you draft a resignation letter. Those are your options. Understood?”
Daniel swallowed. “Yes.”
“Yes…?”
“Yes, sir.”
Across the table, someone shifted. The HR director, a precise woman with a flawless chignon and the permanent expression of someone who smelled something unpleasant, cleared her throat.
“If I may,” she said, “it would be helpful to assign a temporary executive assistant to coordinate document retrieval. You’ve been operating without one since—”
He let out a breath, something like a laugh with no humor in it.
“I noticed.”
Her eyes flicked to that damn empty chair again. “We have several strong internal candidates. And some promising external applicants for the permanent position. I can arrange interviews as early as tomorrow.”
“No.”
The word landed like a dropped gavel.
“We are five days out from signing with Arcturus Logistics,” he said. “I don’t have time to break in someone green. Rotate one of the executive pool to Daniel for the week. I’ll manage.”
“Mr. Kane,” HR said carefully, “that isn’t sustainable. You’ve missed three investor calls this week, your calendar is—”
He cut her a look that shut her up mid-sentence.
“I built this company without an assistant. I can function without one for a few weeks.”
The lie tasted bitter. Because while he could *function*, the past seven days had been a particular kind of hell.
He’d always hated inefficiency. He’d designed his life to eliminate it. And then for seven years he’d had perfection—a system, a person, who’d made everything run like a machine so well-oiled it was invisible.
And then last week she’d walked in—five minutes early, of course—put a letter on his desk, and detonated his day with fourteen lines of polite suicide.
I deeply appreciate the opportunities I’ve had at Kane Global, but—
He’d scanned the page twice, waiting for a but not right now, or a request for three months’ unpaid leave. Something temporary. Something fixable.
Instead there had been *children*. Infertility. A husband in Seattle with tenure and a positive sperm count and a doctor who said their window was closing.
She’d cried when he’d offered her a forty percent raise, more equity, the goddamn moon—and she’d said no.
“You of all people should understand,” she’d whispered, voice shaking. “You taught me this job will eat as much as you give it. I don’t have anything left to give if I want a life too.”
Now her sea of color-coded spreadsheets, encrypted task lists, and arcane knowledge that lived only in her head had collapsed into a black hole that had been sucking his schedule into oblivion for a week.
“Marcus.”
The quiet voice to his right belonged to his CFO, Oliver Chen. Mid-forties, lean, immaculately dressed, eyes sharp behind rimless glasses. The one person in this room who never looked nervous around him.
“Let HR bring you a shortlist,” Oliver said. “You don’t have to hire anyone tomorrow. But at least meet them. You’re doing too much admin work. That’s not where you add value.”
Marcus’s lips thinned. “Since when did you start sounding like a leadership podcast?”
“Since I watched you book your own car service this morning,” Oliver said dryly. “You typed your own travel destination into an app. I thought you might faint.”
A few scattered chuckles broke the tension.
Marcus didn’t smile. “The app survived.”
“You’re proving my point,” Oliver said. “You’re doing tasks that are beneath your comp level. You tell every VP in this building not to do that. Practice what you preach.”
“Fine.” Marcus set the glass down. “Veronica, send me your top three candidates. External, not internal. If I’m going to go through this again, we’re not doing half-measures.”
Relief flickered on the HR director’s face. “Of course. I’ll have files sent to your office by nine.”
“Tonight.”
There was a beat.
“It’s nearly ten p.m. now,” she said. “We’ll need—”
“Nine,” Marcus repeated. “As in eleven hours from now. This is me compromising.”
Oliver’s mouth quirked. “And on that generous note, can I suggest we adjourn so Legal can go tear the building apart for that report?”
Murmurs of agreement rose around the table.
Marcus stood. The room rose with him, a practiced wave—heels scraping back, chairs whispering against stone as people collected tablets and hopes they wouldn’t be the next one in his sights.
“Daniel,” Marcus said without looking at him, “update me at eight. If you haven’t found that report by then, we call the outside firm and get ahead of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The others filed out, voices low, relief palpable. As the door hissed shut behind the last of them, the expansive room fell into a silence that hummed with the muted city.
“More fun than a Lakers game,” Oliver said.
“You need a new definition of fun.”
Oliver came to stand beside him at the window, both men reflected in the dark glass. They made a study in contrast—Marcus broad-shouldered in a charcoal suit that was cut to accommodate actual muscle, not just a tailor’s dream; hair too dark to soften his hard features, eyes a cool, pale gray that rarely betrayed anything. Oliver, all quiet precision and contained intensity.
“You look like hell,” Oliver said mildly.
“Good, then it’s consistent with how I feel.”
“You could have given Veronica twenty-four hours.”
“Then she’d have taken forty-eight.” Marcus slipped his hands into his pockets. “I want this done.”
“You want your life back,” Oliver corrected. “She was with you a long time.”
“Seven years.”
“You considered her a friend?”
Marcus’s jaw ticked. “She was the best assistant I’ve ever had.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He didn’t answer.
Oliver glanced at him. “You know it’s okay to admit you miss her.”
“I miss not having to search my own inbox for flight confirmations and gate changes,” Marcus said. “That’s what I miss.”
“Hm.” Oliver didn’t sound convinced. “I also notice the bottle of Macallan on your desk is breathing a lot more freely this week.”
“If you’ve turned into my therapist, I need a refund.”
“You can’t afford me.” Oliver’s gaze returned to the city. “Look. You don’t have to like the process. But you have to do it. You can’t run Kane Global without a gatekeeper. You’ll burn out.”
“People love to tell me what I can’t do. It’s adorable.”
“You’re not twenty-eight anymore.”
“Thanks for that.”
“You’re welcome.” Oliver hesitated. “When you look at the candidates, try not to choose another clone.”
“You mean competent?”
“I mean someone who lives in your office, knows your coffee intake by heart, and thinks their only purpose on this planet is to keep you happy.”
“That worked quite well for me.”
“Did it?” Oliver’s voice softened. “Because the woman just quit so she could try to conceive before her ovaries stage a rebellion. That should tell you something about the job description.”
It lodged under Marcus’s ribs more than he liked.
“What do you suggest?” he asked, voice flat. “A part-timer who asks for mental health days every time I raise my voice? Someone who gets the vapors because I expect them to work past five during a deal week?”
“I’m suggesting you hire someone who has a life outside this building,” Oliver said. “Someone who won’t let you make them a martyr.”
“That sounds…annoying.”
“It’ll also force you to remember the rest of the world exists.”
Marcus exhaled through his nose. He knew Oliver was right. He also knew that he didn’t have time for some idealistic twenty-two-year-old who thought boundaries were a personality.
“Nine a.m.,” he said. “I’ll look at the file. That’s all I’m promising.”
“I’ll take it.” Oliver started toward the door, then paused. “Oh, and Marcus?”
“Mm.”
“Try not to terrify them *all* in the first five minutes.”
“No promises,” Marcus said.
***
He lasted nine hours and thirty-seven minutes before snapping.
The email from HR hit his inbox at 8:49 a.m., right between a calendar reschedule and a Bloomberg alert about Portvale Capital’s interest in Arcturus. Three profiles. Three faces.
He clicked the first, skimming credentials. Impeccable. MBA, seven years as a senior EA to a hedge fund partner. The second—ex-military, logistics background, ran operations for a private equity firm. The third—
The third was…odd.
Undergraduate degree in communications. No advanced degree. A patchwork of jobs—office manager at a production company, project coordinator for a nonprofit, freelancing as a digital organizer. On paper, she was the least qualified by a mile.
Her photo wasn’t a professionally lit corporate headshot.
She was outside somewhere, hair pulled up in a high knot, a faint sunburn along the bridge of her nose. Brown skin, deep brown eyes framed by thick lashes. Not classically beautiful in a fragile, airbrushed way—her features were bold, expressive. Wide mouth slightly crooked in what looked like an actual laugh, not a posed smile.
He stared at the screen longer than he meant to.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he muttered to the file.
Her name: *Maya Camille Brooks.*
There was a short note from HR at the bottom: *Unconventional profile. Strong references. Interviewed extremely well.*
Unconventional was HR-speak for *we don’t know what to do with her, but she made an impression*.
Marcus closed the file.
He opened the first one again. *Karen Liu*. Perfect. Safe. Exactly what he needed.
His intercom buzzed.
“Yes,” he said.
“Mr. Kane,” came Veronica’s smooth replacement voice from the executive pool—a woman whose name he still kept forgetting, which told him everything he needed to know about her impact level. “You asked me to remind you about the candidate interviews at ten?”
He glanced at the time. 9:12.
“I did. Confirmed?”
“Yes. Ms. Liu at ten. Mr. Harper at ten-thirty. And Ms. Brooks at eleven.”
His fingers stilled on the mousepad.
“Brooks?”
“Yes, sir. Do you want me to cancel her?”
He almost said yes. It would be efficient. Cut the long shot, focus on the proven track record candidates.
Instead, something perverse in him said, “No. Keep them all. And bring coffee at nine forty-five.”
“Yes, sir.”
He disconnected.
For a moment the office was silent around him—the sprawling corner space on the sixty-second floor with its own conference nook, couch area, and a view that usually helped him remember how far he’d come.
It didn’t help this morning.
His eyes drifted back to that laughing-face photo.
“Unconventional,” he said softly. “Let’s see how long you last.”
***