The whispering woman near the elevators spoke up, her voice carrying across the silent lobby. “Apparently, the emergency was a mud wrestling tournament.”
More laughter rippled through the space. My fingers dug so hard into the soaked folder that the cardboard tore slightly. Tucked inside were my resume, my references, a comprehensive operations proposal I had stayed awake until 3 a.m. refining, and a small Polaroid of my brother, Milo. Milo was nineteen, possessing a mind like a steel trap, trapped in a body that made speech and movement a daily war. Before I left our cramped apartment that morning, he had typed on his speech tablet: Do not let the suits scare you. They put their pants on one leg at a time, just with exponentially more expensive pants.
I had laughed then. Now, my eyes burned with the threat of tears.
The receptionist picked up her phone. “Ms. Crane? Your 8:45 has arrived. Yes, the Bellamy interview. She’s… here.” A long pause. The receptionist looked me up and down with clinical distaste. “Yes. Highly inappropriate. Extremely muddy.” Another pause. She hung up and offered me a thin, apologetic smile. “Cassandra Crane says the interview window is firmly closed. Have a good day.”
My breath hitched. The fault line that had been forming in my chest all morning finally cracked open. “Please,” I heard myself say, hating the desperation in my voice. “I understand I’m late, but if she could just look at my portfolio for five minutes—”
“Company policy, Ms. Bellamy.”
A man in a charcoal pinstripe suit stood up from a leather armchair. “If you want to work in logistics, sweetheart, maybe learn to navigate around puddles.”
The lobby chuckled. I turned to look at him. My knees throbbed. My hands were scraped raw from rusted wire. But suddenly, the desperation vanished, replaced by a cold, anchoring anger.
“It wasn’t a puddle,” I said, my voice eerily calm.
Before the man could respond, the private executive elevator chimed. The heavy steel doors slid open, and the entire atmospheric pressure of the lobby shifted.
No one announced him. The silence did the work for them.
Grayson Pierce stepped out, flanked by two nervous-looking executives. He was tall, with sharp features, silver-flecked black hair, and the quiet, crushing authority of a man whose surname was bolted to the outside of the building. He was the Billionaire CEO. The corporate predator known for dissecting failing supply chains and making them terrifyingly profitable.
The receptionist shot to her feet. The mocking man in the charcoal suit suddenly found his shoelaces intensely fascinating.
Grayson stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t look at me with disgust. He didn’t look amused. His dark eyes locked onto mine with an intense, laser-like focus. He scanned the mud, the missing heel, the scraped palms, and finally, the soaked folder I was guarding like it was a vital organ.
“What happened to you?” he asked. His voice wasn’t loud, but it commanded every square inch of the room.