Page 12 of The Secretary Volume II

Lease in hand.

Expression unreadable.

But I canfeelit—the weight of it pressing against her, the silentI really hope I didn’t just fuck myself over.

I take another slow drag of my cigarette, letting the smoke coil lazily around my fingers.

Oh, sweetheart.

You have no idea.

7

Lena

Istare at the note in my hand, crumpled now from how tightly I’ve been holding it.

You don’t belong here.This place will kill you.

Four hours into my first day, and I’m already wondering if it might be right.

The Shergar Corp orientation video plays on a loop in the glass-walled conference room.The same polished executive has welcomed me to“the family”seventeen times now.I’ve counted.My notebook is filled with corporate buzzwords I’ve jotted down between moments of existential dread:synergy, disrupt, leverage, ecosystem.Words that mean nothing, designed to fill space where something real should be.

“Blackwell.”

I glance up.

Andra, my new supervisor, stands in the doorway, sharp-eyed, severe, and unimpressed with my existence.Her blouse is ironed within an inch of its life, her posture rigid.She looks exactly the same as she did in the company headshot I skimmed last night—except, in person, there’s something harder about her.More calculating.

But on the bright side, she’s not Marjorie.

“Follow me.”

Nowelcome aboard,nohope you’re settling in.Justfollow me.

Her heels click like a metronome as she leads me through a maze of identical glass corridors.No offices have nameplates.No one looks up as we pass.It’s like I’ve stepped into some corporate hive mind, where everyone is plugged into the same invisible frequency.

“Everyone’s excited to meet our new executive assistant,” she says, though no one we pass even looks up from their screens.“Especially after what happened to the last one.”

I nearly trip.

“What happened to the last one?”

Andra stops so abruptly I almost collide with her.

She turns, head tilted like a curious dog—but there’s nothing friendly about it.

“Oh, didn’t they tell you?Heart attack.Very sudden.Very sad.His office was actually where yours is now.”

A disembodied voice from the ceiling announces something about quarterly projections, and I swear it sounds like it’s laughing at me.

We reach a frosted glass door.Andra swings it open without knocking.Inside, eight identical suits sit around a long, gleaming table.Too many teeth.Too many unreadable expressions.

“Everyone,” Andra announces, “this is Lena.”

Eight heads turn in unison.

I feel like I’m auditioning for a cult.