New York,
Katrine,
United States
The sixth day of training began the same way as the previous five: with coffee served too hot, schedules that contradicted each other, and a workload substantial enough to make any reasonable person regret signing anything at all.
Fortunately, I'd given up on reason the day I agreed to deliver pizzas at night in a forest.
A week ago, I was wearing a burgundy helmet and looking up addresses on GPS.
Today, I was learning to manage the international travel arrangements of a man I'd never met.
The progression was debatable, but the salary was less so.
—No.
I looked up from my screen. Ashton was leaning against the edge of my temporary desk, a smoked-glass panel set into the corner of the main hallway, facing a window that looked out over the rooftops of Midtown. His arms were crossed, and he had the air of someone waiting for me to reach the conclusion myself.
—No, what?
—No, you can't move that meeting.
—Why?
—Because the president will be in Geneva.
—Then we could-
—No.
—Why?
—Because he'll also be in London.
I looked at him. He looked at me. Outside, a pigeon landed on the windowsill with the nonchalance of someone who had no idea what square footage cost in this neighborhood.
—The laws of physics are mildly opposed to that.
—You're learning fast.
—I read a lot.
He smiled. That brief, almost involuntary smile—the only one I'd started to recognize as the one he couldn't control.
For five days now, the image I'd built of Ashton Gray had been quietly eroding, piece by piece. His reputation for being cold probably came from the fact that he thought before he spoke, which people tend to read as arrogance because it forces them to wait. In reality, he was simply patient. Methodical. And surprisingly kind, which remained the most unsettling detail of all.
I still hadn't seen him raise his voice. Not when a CFO misplaced a sensitive file. Not when a partner cancelled at the last minute. Not even when the main printer gave up the ghost on a Friday at 3:58 p.m., taking thirty pages of urgent documents down with it.
I would have committed at least two crimes in the same day.
—Today will be devoted to the president.
I closed my notebook.
Finally.
For five days I'd been learning to manage his schedule, decode his professional habits, navigate his security protocols—which had all the complexity of a diplomatic treaty. But the president himself remained an abstraction. People talked around him, never about him. Like some invisible mass whose presence you only registered through its gravitational pull on everything nearby.
Employees straightened up when his name came up. Meetings changed character. Even the air seemed to stand a little more upright.
—What should I know?
Ashton thought about it. Really thought, not the polite half-second people give rhetorical questions, but actual consideration, his eyes drifting slightly, as if he were weighing each piece of information before deciding whether to hand it over.
—He doesn't like wasting time.
Logical enough, for someone whose time was billed at a rate I preferred not to calculate.
—He notices everything.
Less reassuring.
—He hates being lied to.
Even less.
—And?
—And he's generally more pleasant than people expect.
—That's it?
—That's already a lot.
He checked his watch. A precise, almost unconscious movement he made several times an hour. Then his phone buzzed on the desk. He turned it over, read the screen. Something shifted in his face—imperceptible to anyone who hadn't been watching him for six days. A slight tightening of the jaw. Nothing more.
—Problem?
—Some foreign partners have decided to create one.
He slid the phone into his inner pocket.
—I'll need to step out for a few hours.
—I'll survive.
—I hope so.
He paused at the door that one-second hesitation he sometimes had, as if a last thought needed checking before the door closed.
—If you've finished today's files, take the time to familiarize yourself with the president's archives.
—The ones nobody touches?
—Exactly those.
Then he disappeared down the hallway, and the fifteenth floor settled back into its usual silence, the kind of silence that wasn't an absence of noise, but the presence of something heavier.
★★★
An hour later, my brain began filing a formal complaint.
The archives were fascinating in content and excruciating in format, a combination I'd recommend to no one. Files arranged chronologically, contracts in several languages, meeting minutes that gave you the distinct impression you'd missed something important without ever figuring out what.
I decided to get coffee before I lost all sense of priorities for good.
The break room took up an entire corner of the floor: pale leather sofas, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a coffee machine whose touchscreen interface probably required its own training course. The view over Midtown was spectacular, the kind of panorama that reminds you the world keeps existing outside the archives.
I wasn't alone.
Four employees were chatting near the windows, cups in hand, with the focused energy of people taking advantage of a strategic absence to say things they normally wouldn't. I didn't know them yet, familiar hallway faces, names not yet attached. I settled in quietly near the machine.
I had no intention of listening.
Then I heard my name.
My sense of ethics immediately took an extended lunch break.
—I'm telling you, it's strange.
What is?
—Arzons.
I stared intently at the machine's menu. The menu didn't betray me.
—Ashton spends all his time with her.
—He's training her.
—Since when does Ashton personally train anyone?
A telling silence.
—Good question.
I turned slightly away from the group and took a sip of coffee with the discretion of someone who heard absolutely nothing.
—You're jealous.
— I'm not jealous.
—You are completely jealous.
—Maybe a tiny bit.
I looked at the ceiling. Then the window. Then my cup.
—Honestly, another voice picked up, I think they go well together.
I nearly choked.
—Ashton's polite with everyone.
—Exactly. With her, he smiles. A real smile.
—He smiles at me too.
—Once. In six months.
The others burst out laughing. I stared at my coffee with the intensity of a woman thinking about very important things and definitely not listening to other people's conversations.
I had officially become a topic of gossip on day six of my contract. My social integration was progressing at a remarkable pace.
Then the conversation pivoted with the natural fluidity of a discussion that had exhausted its first subject.
—Speaking of unreachable men…
—Mr. More?
—Mr. More.
A collective sigh swept the room, the kind of synchronized sigh that requires no rehearsal, just pure emotional convergence.
I suddenly felt like I was watching a documentary about a rare and understudied species.
—I've run into him three times.
—And?
—I don't know how to explain it.
—Try anyway.
A thoughtful silence. The kind you take when searching for a word that doesn't exist yet.
—He's… magnetic.
I raised an eyebrow at myself.
—Magnetic?
—Yes.
—That doesn't mean anything.
—I know. But it's the only word that fits.
—Very helpful description.
—You should've seen him.
Another one chimed in—short hair, burgundy lipstick, the kind of woman who talks with her hands even while holding a cup.
—And he's nice. Ridiculously nice. Which is honestly unfair.
—Completely unfair.
—We should be allowed to be angry at someone unreachable. At least it would spare us that particular option.
Another collective sigh, deeper this time, with a hint of philosophical resignation.
—Still, they've got walls up.
—Yeah.
—Like they're untouchable. They can smile all they want, you know you don't belong to their world.
Silence.
Then one last exhale, soft and unanimous, that said everything there was to say on the subject.
I couldn't help it. The laugh escaped, short, muffled, but audible. All four women turned to look at me at the same time.
I left immediately, with all the dignity available in the situation.
Which is to say, a modest but non-negligible amount.
★★★
The afternoon passed in unusual calm.
And for the first time in a long while, since the forest, since the empty box, since the knife under the pillow, I caught myself feeling almost normal. Not at peace. Not safe. But normal, which was already a great deal.
No pizza box.
No silent threat.
No green eyes lurking in the corner of my memory.
Just files, a coffee machine, and a CEO who apparently smiled so rarely that people noticed.
I liked my new job. Arabelle was doing well. For the first time in months, I had financial stability.
Then the thought slipped in, the way it always did, quietly, through a crack I hadn't been watching.
Maybe the box had been a warning. A simple message. Shut up. And I'd shut up. End of story.
The idea was absurd.
I knew that.
My brain knew that.
But part of me—the tired part, the one that had spent too many nights watching the curtains and counting the locks—wanted to believe it. Badly. Because the alternative required an amount of energy I wasn't sure I had left.
I closed the last file of the day and gathered my things.
★★★
The sun was setting behind the trees of Brooklyn when I pushed open the gate. The air smelled like wet leaves and the clean cold of November. The house stood in the evening's golden light, its grey stones taking on warm tones at this hour, as if the building itself were granting a small concession to softness.
Passing by the pool, I noticed Arabelle.
Stretched out on a white resin lounge chair, legs crossed, in a black two-piece swimsuit, gold-rimmed sunglasses on her nose, and an open book resting on her chest.Factfulness, by Hans Rosling, which was either a deeply serious choice or the perfect cover for napping with a clear conscience.
Her breathing was slow.
With Arabelle, there was no way to tell whether she was asleep or simply waiting for someone to disturb her so she'd have an excuse to talk.
I decided not to test the theory. I went inside.
The staircase. The hallway. The black-and-white portraits, still passing judgment on the quality of my shoes with admirable consistency.
Then I stopped.
My door was ajar.
Barely. Just a few centimeters, a thin gap, almost nothing, the kind of space you leave without thinking when you duck in for a charger or a hairbrush.
Arabelle had done it before. It was a habit of hers, moving through the house as if every room belonged to her equally, which, strictly speaking, it did.
Nothing unusual.
Except something bothered me.
A feeling. Not a thought, a feeling, lower than that, something coming from a place logic didn't reach.
My heart picked up.
I pushed the door open.
The room looked normal. The bed, the desk, the wardrobe, the bedside lamp, everything was exactly where it should be, with that quiet precision of things that hadn't moved. Nothing knocked over. Nothing out of place. Nothing that justified the pounding in my throat.
Then I saw it.
The notebook.
Sitting on my desk.
Open.
I froze.
I'd closed it that morning. Closed it and slid it under the left corner of the desk pad, edge aligned with the edge of the desk, a habit of precision I'd never even put into words. I was certain of it, with the kind of certainty that leaves no room for doubt.
I walked over slowly. My footsteps on the hardwood suddenly seemed too loud. My fingers trembled slightly as I rested my hands on the desk.
The pages were open to the end. My own handwriting stared back at me—cramped, slanted, the notes from that sleepless night, the account I'd written down because there needed to be a record, just in case something happened to me.
Someone had read it.
Someone had come into this room, found the notebook, opened it, read it.
And wanted me to know.
Because on the last page, beneath my final lines, in handwriting that was elegant and even—handwriting with no urgency and no hesitation, the kind that belongs to someone with all the time in the world—there was a sentence.
Just one.
''You've forgotten several details.''
My heart skipped a beat. Then another.
Arabelle was outside. How long had Arabelle been outside?