Chapter 5

At eight-thirty, I arrived at the base of Fordwell Group's building.

It was a fifty-two-story office tower with an all-glass exterior, and the sunlight bouncing off it was almost blinding.

I stood at the main entrance and took three deep breaths before walking up to the reception desk. "Hi, I'm Claire Simmons from BrightEdge Media. I have a nine o'clock meeting with Mr. Bennett."

The receptionist checked her appointment log and then looked up at me. "Ms. Simmons, Mr. Bennett's assistant said you can just go straight up when you arrive. Thirty-second floor."

I thanked her and headed for the elevators.

There was a mirror inside, so I took a quick look at myself.

It was not bad. I didn't look like someone who had been up all night, which was a relief. At the very least, I looked like a normal human being.

The elevator doors opened on the 32nd floor.

Charles' assistant was waiting for me at the entrance and led me to a small conference room.

"Mr. Bennett is finishing up a meeting. He should be with you in about ten minutes. Please, have a seat," she said.

"No problem. Thanks," I replied.

Once the assistant left, I found myself alone in the room.

I settled into a chair, set my tablet down on the table, and noticed that my palms were already sweaty.

Ten minutes had never felt so long.

My gaze drifted across the room with white walls, a projector, a row of gray chairs, and an unopened bottle of water sitting on the table.

It was the kind of standard client-side conference room I'd presented in more times than I could count.

Only today, I wasn't here to pitch. I was here to take a beating.

The door opened, and Charles walked in.

As the brand director of Fordwell Group, he was probably in his mid-thirties, the kind of man who looked sharp in dark gray suits and gold-rimmed glasses.

In the normal course of working together, he was never one for small talk or smiles, but he was never harsh either.

His feedback was always crisp, his communication organized, and by client standards, he was actually someone I didn't dread dealing with.

But today, as he stepped into the room, his face was completely blank.

He sat down across from me, gave me a brief look, and said nothing.

I decided to break the ice first. "Mr. Bennett, about what happened in the group chat yesterday..."

"I know where this is going," he said, cutting me off.

I closed my mouth.

He took off his glasses, gave them a quick wipe, and slid them back on. "You said we get our heads stuck in a door."

The heat rushed to my face before I could stop it.

There is really no more brutally effective form of public shaming than having someone look you in the eye and quote your own rant back at you.

I stumbled into an apology. "That was a purely emotional comment. Totally unprofessional. I..."

He didn't wait for me to finish. "Eight rounds of revisions, am I right?"

I blinked. "Yes."

"You're frustrated." It was not a question but a flat statement, as if he was simply holding up a mirror to my own mood.

opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

To say yes would be admitting out loud that I resented the project, but to say no would be such a transparent lie that it wasn't even worth uttering.

Charles held my gaze for a moment. "To be honest, it wasn't really the content of your message that pissed me off the most."

"Then... what did?" I asked.

"What got to me," he said, after a brief pause, "is that eight rounds in, your proposals have somehow managed to get worse with every single revision.

"You said I got my head stuck in a door. Honestly, I feel like your whole agency has had its head slammed in a door."

I wasn't sure how to respond, mostly because he wasn't entirely wrong.

Over eight rounds of revisions, the creative direction had swung back and forth so erratically that the whole thing had devolved into a complete mess.

And the final output was genuinely not good, a fact I was well aware of myself, even if I still couldn't understand why the direction kept changing the way it did.

The chat logs I had gone through last night came rushing back to me.

What Charles had actually said, and what Richard had passed down to me, were two different things.

The thought hovered at the tip of my tongue for a second before I pulled it back. This was hardly the right moment to bring it up.