By 7:42 a.m., my inbox was on fire and my coffee was cold.
The entire twenty-third floor vibrated with a manic, caffeinated buzz that even the fluorescent lights couldn’t keep up with. Someone had dragged a ficus into the corridor overnight, like greenery could fix the way Hartwell Dynamics had swallowed us whole.
“Evans!” Jenna’s voice cut through the open office like a thrown paperclip. “He’s early.”
Of course he was.
I checked the time again, as if it might change its mind. 7:43 a.m. Noah Hartwell, corporate legend and professional harbinger of layoffs, was supposed to arrive at eight. I still had three agenda versions to polish and one board packet that wouldn’t print.
“He can’t be early,” I said, mostly to the printer. “I’m not emotionally prepared.”
The machine whirred in what I chose to interpret as sympathy before spitting out the last, precious pages.
Jenna appeared at my desk, breathless, her lipstick already perfect. She perched on the edge, ignoring the stack of binders like I wasn’t one papercut away from a meltdown.
“Internal email just dropped,” she said, waving her phone. “He’s in the lobby. With an entourage. The capital-H Hartwell has landed.”
My stomach performed a neat little drop. “How does he have an entourage before he has a security badge?”
“Money,” she said, like it was a punchline. “Also cheekbones. Did you see the profile Forbes used last month? Man looks like he bench-presses spreadsheets for fun.”
I had seen it. Everyone had. He’d been all over the feeds—turnaround king, ice-blooded, the man who walks into dying companies and walks out with trophies.
And, unknown to anyone in this building, late-night reader of a tiny blog written by me.
Muse, I reminded myself. At work, I was Lily Evans, executive assistant, wearer of sensible flats and keeper of calendars. Online, after midnight, I was Muse—a disembodied voice talking about burnout and invisibility to strangers who sent me anonymous hearts and occasionally wrote back things like, You put words to the ache I didn’t know I had.
One of those strangers, tucked behind a username that sounded like a throwaway—Northbridge—left comments so specific they’d started to feel like fingerprints.
I shook myself. Now was not the time to think about Northbridge’s last message: When you write about feeling hollow in a room full of people, I don’t feel so insane anymore.
“Lily,” Jenna said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “Earth to my favorite overachieving ghost. You good?”
“Completely fine,” I lied. “Just mentally drafting my resume in case he decides assistants are an unnecessary overhead line item.”
Her expression softened. “You’re the one person here they literally can’t function without. If he has half a brain, he’ll realize it by noon.”
I didn’t tell her how much I hoped he wouldn’t notice me at all. Being invisible had its perks. Invisible people were rarely targets.
The elevator dinged down the hall. A series of nervous coughs and chair scrapes rippled through the open-plan space.
Showtime.
I smoothed my navy dress, stacked the binders in my arms, and pretended my pulse didn’t feel like a bass line in my ears. My desk sat directly outside the glass-walled corner office that used to belong to Mr. Caldwell, our previous, golf-obsessed CEO. Yesterday, they’d taken down his framed pictures; today, the walls were bare, waiting for a new owner.
