Page 102 of His Good Girl

“Did you know about the note?”

“What note?”

I noted that he answered far too fast.

“Benjamin.”

“I am a vault.”

“You are a vault with commentary.”

“A superior vault.” He straightened. “For the record, if there were a note, I would not know its contents. I would only know that Mr. Rowe visited your desk at seven this morning, looked unnecessarily severe while doing so, and left with the expressionof a man making a decision he planned to call thoughtful and disciplined later.”

I swallowed.

“He was here at 7:00?”

“Mr. Rowe has many enemies, but sleep is the one he courts most inconsistently.” Benjamin tapped the operations guide. “Read. Rewrite. Do not stare at the back of your legal pad like it contains scripture.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then you’ll have no trouble ignoring it.”

He left before I could ask whether vaults could be strangled.

I kept working somehow. I did not know how.

The first summary was so dense with consultant language I had to read it twice before realizing the entire paragraph meant: The east entrance will be temporarily closed. I rewrote it in actual English, which felt satisfying enough to temporarily distract me from the note burning a hole through my legal pad. The second was about public access during construction. The third involved stakeholder engagement, which I cut so aggressively I imagined Dana feeling a disturbance in the force and smiling.

Shortly after ten, my email chimed.

I almost ignored it, because serious employees did not leap every time Outlook made a sound, but I glanced up and saw the sender was Callum Rowe.

My lungs suffered immediate paralysis and my body went still.

Subject: Schedule adjustment

Avery,

After work is too far away.

You will come to my office at lunch.

C.

I stared at the email while my pulse tried to climb out of my throat. I should have been alarmed. I was alarmed. Somewhere in the responsible portion of my brain, a small woman with a clipboard was screaming about professionalism, power dynamics, and the fact that I had been employed for approximately the length of a long weekend.

Unfortunately, she was being drowned out by the rest of me, some parts louder than others.

I read the email again.

Benjamin, three desks away, said without looking up, “Whatever that email is, your face has become a liability.”

I closed it so fast I clicked the wrong window and opened the bribery training module from yesterday.

“I hate open-plan offices,” I muttered.

“Good. You’re becoming one of us.”