Page 3 of Bosshole Daddy

But behind him, through those wall of windows, Manhattan sprawled in all its unforgiving glory.

Somewhere out there was my landlord, waiting for rent.

My student loan servicer, preparing another letter about my deferment ending.

My empty refrigerator, my maxed-out credit card, my life held together with ribbon and desperate hope.

I couldn't afford to leave. Literally could not afford it.

So I stayed. Frozen in place like a deer that had already seen the headlights but couldn't process what came next. My silence stretched between us, and something flickered in those gray eyes. Surprise? Disappointment? Calculation? It was gone before I could identify it.

"Good," he said finally, and the word felt like both a verdict and a sentence.

He turned back to his desk with the same fluid grace, dismissing me without dismissing me.

"Your desk is outside. Computer password is your employee ID number.

Calendar access should already be loaded.

I have a conference call with Tokyo in twenty minutes.

I'll need coffee—black, no sugar, temperature exactly 140 degrees.

The kitchen is on the fifty-eighth floor.

If it's cold when it gets here, you'll remake it.

If it's too hot, you'll remake it. If it's anything other than exactly what I asked for, you'll remake it until you get it right. "

He sat back down, attention already returning to his computer as if I'd ceased to exist. "Close the door on your way out."

Welcome to Stone Enterprises, Isla. Try not to be the next cautionary tale.

*

By eleven o'clock, my hand had developed a permanent cramp from trying to keep up with Damian Stone's machine-gun delivery of orders, critiques, and casual corporate destruction.

The conference room—all glass and chrome and barely contained hostility—housed twelve department heads who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else.

I perched on a chair in the corner, my planner already a disaster of crossed-out notes and frantic scribbles.

"The quarterly projections are unacceptable.

" Damian didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.

His words dropped into the silence like stones into still water, sending ripples of panic across every face at the table.

"Henderson, your department is down eight percent. In what universe is that acceptable?"

Henderson, a man old enough to be my father, shifted in his seat like a schoolboy caught cheating. "Mr. Stone, the market conditions—"

"Are the same for everyone." Damian cut him off with surgical precision. "Yet somehow Pearson's department managed a twelve percent increase. Unless you're suggesting Pearson operates in a different economy?"

Pearson, a blonde woman with shark eyes, didn't quite smile, but her satisfaction radiated across the table. The politics in this room were thicker than the air conditioning, alliances and enmities I couldn't begin to map.

My pen flew across the page, trying to capture every word. Marketing down eight percent. Henderson excuse—market conditions. Pearson up twelve. Stone response—The abbreviations were getting sloppier as my hand tired, but stopping wasn't an option. Missing something might be catastrophic.

"The Berlin acquisition needs to close by end of month." Damian had moved on, leaving Henderson's career bleeding out on the conference table. "Legal, where are we on due diligence?"

A nervous man in wire-rimmed glasses cleared his throat. "We're still waiting on the environmental assessment—"

"Then stop waiting and start demanding." Each word was precise, clipped, designed to cut. "If I wanted excuses, I'd have hired my nephew."

Someone laughed—a nervous, quickly stifled sound that made Damian's gray eyes narrow. The temperature in the room seemed to drop another degree.

Numbers flew past faster than I could write.

Percentages, deadlines, project codes that meant nothing to me but everything to the people whose careers hung on them.

My shorthand devolved into something barely resembling language.

When Damian mentioned something about "the Singapore timeline," I lost the thread entirely.

"Excuse me," I said, so quietly I hoped only he would hear. "Could you repeat the date for Singapore?"

The room went silent. Not the normal pause between topics, but absolute stillness. Every head turned to look at me, and I felt the weight of their stares like physical pressure.

Damian's voice, when it came, could have frozen hell. "Pay attention, or go home."

The words hit like a slap.

Public. Dismissive. Designed to humiliate.

My face burned so hot I was surprised the sprinklers didn't activate. Tears pricked at my eyes, and I blinked hard, fast, desperate not to cry in front of these people who probably had a betting pool on how long I'd last.

"Yes, Mr. Stone," I managed, the words barely a whisper. "Sorry, Mr. Stone."

He'd already moved on, but the damage was done. I felt the room's assessment shift—from invisible assistant to confirmed liability. The woman next to me actually scooted her chair slightly away, as if failure might be contagious.

I lowered my head and kept writing, though the words blurred through the tears I refused to let fall.

My handwriting deteriorated into something resembling crime scene evidence.

But I didn't ask another question. Didn't breathe too loudly.

Tried to disappear into the chair while Damian continued his systematic destruction of every department that had failed to meet his impossible standards.

The meeting dragged on for another forty minutes that felt like forty years.

By the time he dismissed everyone with a curt "That's all," my notes looked like they'd been written during an earthquake.

The department heads filed out quickly, gratefully, none of them making eye contact with me.

I was already a ghost to them. Another assistant who wouldn't make it to Friday.

I stayed behind to collect the scattered papers, the abandoned coffee cups, the detritus of corporate warfare.

My hands shook as I stacked documents, trying to match pages that had gotten mixed in the shuffle of hasty exits.

The conference room felt enormous with just me in it, all that glass and space and failure.

Damian remained at the head of the table, typing something on his phone. I tried to work quietly, efficiently, invisibly. But when I reached for a folder near his end of the table, my trembling fingers betrayed me. The folder slipped, papers cascading across the floor in a mockery of competence.

"Oh God," I whispered, dropping immediately to my knees. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

The papers had scattered everywhere—under chairs, beneath the table, one had even managed to sail all the way to the window. I crawled after them, my skirt riding up, my careful bun coming undone. Pieces of hair fell in my face as I stretched under a chair for a runaway profit report.

"Typical." The word was quiet, almost conversational, but it hit harder than his earlier dismissal.

I froze, hand extended toward a paper, my position suddenly, horribly vulnerable. On my hands and knees, hair falling loose, scrambling after papers like a child who'd spilled her crayons. Everything about me screamed incompetence, inadequacy, failure.

"I'm sorry," I whispered again, because what else could I say? "So sorry, Mr. Stone. I'll get them. I'll fix it. I'm sorry."

The words tumbled out, automatic and desperate, the same placating tone I'd used my whole life when I'd disappointed someone. When I'd been too much or not enough or simply in the way. I gathered papers against my chest, crushing them in my hurry, making everything worse.

But he didn't leave. I could feel him watching, the weight of that gray gaze as I crawled under the table for the last escapee. When I finally emerged, face flushed and hair completely destroyed, he was leaning against the table, arms crossed, studying me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Stand up." This time, his voice wasn't harsh. It was almost . . . curious?

I struggled to my feet, papers clutched against my chest, trying to smooth my skirt with one hand while managing the mess I'd made. My ribbon had come completely undone, hanging loose against my shoulder. I must have looked like I'd been through a tornado, yet a strange thrill coursed through me.

His eyes roamed over me slowly, drinking in every detail of my dishevelment. But there was something different in his expression now. Not the cold dismissal from before. Something more considering. More interested. My heart raced, betraying me with an unexpected flutter of attraction.

"You apologize too much," he said finally.

I opened my mouth—to apologize for apologizing, probably—then closed it again. My cheeks burned hotter, if that was possible, and I felt an unwelcome excitement at his attention.

"Get yourself together," he said, but the cutting edge had left his voice. "Then bring me the Morrison contract. Third drawer of your desk, blue folder. Don't drop it."

He left then, gliding past me with that fluid grace that left my pulse quickened, leaving behind only the intoxicating scent of expensive cologne and the feeling that I'd just been tested in ways I didn't understand.

The door closed with a soft click, and I was alone with my wrinkled papers and wounded pride, and a strange yearning I couldn't quite quell.

Had he felt it, too?

*

By six o'clock, the sixtieth floor had emptied like a sink with the drain pulled.

The exodus started at five-thirty—first the admins, then middle management, until only the ambient hum of computers and climate control remained.

I sat at my desk, shoulders aching, neck stiff from hunching over my disaster of a planner, trying to decode my own handwriting.