Page 10 of The CEO’s Assistant

“It’s ten o’clock, and you’re probably standing in your kitchen with a glass of wine. Don’t tell me about late.” A clink of ice on Astoria’s end, then a scrape of a chair. “Come to dinner Thursday. Miller’s cooking.”

Cordelia didn’t say anything at first, just maneuvered around the island with the two plates in hand and the phone tucked in between her ear and shoulder.

“Say yes,” Astoria said.

“Yes.”

“That was too quick. You’re saying it to get me off the phone.” Astoria paused, and then her voice dropped a register, the one she used when she stopped performing for a non-existent audience. “You sound strange. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Her voice was even, and it came out easily. To her own ear, it came out true. Six months of not telling Astoria the one enormous thing had made a small one—a shared dinner with her assistant to go through files—weigh nothing at all.

Astoria was quiet for a moment. Whatever she evidently heard, she let it go. She’d always known when to stop, which was half the reason why Cordelia had kept her around as a friend for twenty years. “All right,” she said, breaking the silence. “Thursday at seven. Wear something that isn’t gray.”

And then she hung up and was gone. Cordelia finished clearing the island. She rinsed the plates and staked them, wiped down the board, and corked what was left of the wine. Two glasses sat by the sink. She washed her own and set it aside to dry. Then she reached for the second one but didn’t pick it up. A swallow of red liquid still sat at the bottom of it, and the faint mark of Wren’s lipstick was on the rim. She set it down in the sink, unwashed, and turned off the kitchen light.

6

Chapter 6: Wren

The coastal fog had burned off by nine, and by ten-forty, spring light shone through the antechamber windows. Wren had the next quarter’s calendar consolidation open across both screens and was three weeks into a job she had not yet found the core of her role. Between seasons, the building had gone dry since the heat had been shut off, but the air conditioning wasn’t turned on to replace it. She tried to ignore the dryness.

Her email softly chimed twice, the signal there’s something flagged. It was from Veronica Kepling’s office, forwarded down with a single line on top: Wren, can you handle this? Veronica ran operations, and for nine years, she had been Cordelia’s right-hand person. Wren had spoken to her twice in three weeks, both times briefly, both times having left with the sense of having been read down to the studs in under a minute.

Wren read the thread under it to gather all the facts. An internal audit query had landed on a single expense from last quarter’s books. On its face, it was routine. But the expense ran to a vendor Wren knew—one of the relationships folded into the confidential restructuring she had been working on since her second day—which meant it was not the small housekeeping item the audit team took it for. The second message had set a deadline to have the documentation by the end of the day, and the third was from the legal department.

She read through it again, this time slower.

It was a leak. Not a bad one yet, but leave it sitting, and it would turn sour. Someone in audit would keep pulling at the Halvorsen expense thread until it led them, sooner or later, to the restructuring, and it wasn’t ready to go public to the rest of the company yet. A day, maybe two, and it would be exposed.

Something in her had already started moving. Six years of this work, and her body knew the order of how to contain this before her mind did, already lining up the calls, one behind the next. She was on her feet without quite remembering standing.

She crossed the antechamber to the open door of the inner office. Cordelia sat at her desk with two folders squared in front of her, the phone cradled against her ear, saying something low and firm into it. Wren stopped in the doorway and waited. She’d learned over the last three weeks not to announce herself and to let Cordelia address her in her own timing.

Cordelia looked up at her. “I’ll call you back later,” she said on the phone, then hung up.

Wren stepped forward. “There’s something you need to know about. An audit query came up on the Halvorsen expense, and they want it documented by the end of the day.”

Wren didn’t offer a solution. She had learned that about Cordelia too. She wanted the facts stated plainly without any embellishment, and Wren had learned to deliver the news that way, even if she had to bite her tongue. Cordelia didn’t ask her any questions, which was strange in its own right. Every other boss she had ever worked for if handed a leak wanted to verbally process it, wanted to go through every detail, every name, every date until they scoured the whole paper trail, as if repeating it could reassure them and keep it from getting out.

But not Cordelia. She only looked at Wren, something moving behind her eyes that Wren couldn’t quite interpret, and then said, “Handle it. Come back when it’s done.”

Wren stared at her, waiting for more direction but none came. There was no checklist of what Cordelia was expecting Wren to do to solve the issue, and she fully delegated it without a second thought. Even Wren’s brilliant and careful bosses had kept a piece of it for themselves, just in case. Something in Wren warmed at it, at being handed the whole of something and being trusted to carry it through.

“I’m on it,” Wren said and walked out.

Back at her desk, she made the first call before she fully sat down. The first one was to Margot Pell, the senior auditor whose name was on the query. Wren had met her once, in her orientation week. Margot had been wearing a gray suit and had a firm handshake, and Wren had instantly recognized her name from the organizational chart she had built her second week. She found Margot’s direct line in the company directory and dialed.

“This is Wren Davies from Ms. Hale’s office.” She kept her voice easy and unhurried, like a woman with all the time in the world. “I noticed you’ve got a query open on the Halvorsen file, and I’ve got the documentation for it. I’d rather not send it over cold, though. There’s some context that’s best explained in person. Could I come down within the hour and walk you through it?”

There was a pause filled with papers shuffling as Margot found the file. “Within the hour is fine. I’ve got until the end of the day to close this loop.”

“You’ll have it before lunch.” Wren set the phone down.

That was the part that mattered most, which was why Wren had made it her first call. As long as the audit team was waiting on her for the paperwork, they weren’t off chasing it down on their own and turning a small problem into a much larger one.

The second call was to legal. She hadn’t yet met the corporate attorney, but she knew Petra Voss was a younger woman. Wren had seen Petra’s name on a handful of memos, always the first to answer a thread. She dialed her extension.