Chapter 6
"Mr. Bennett, I reworked the proposal last night," I said, sliding the tablet toward him. "I was hoping you could take a look."
Charles studied me for a moment. "You did this overnight?"
"Yes."
He didn't reach for the tablet. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "I'm not the one who can make the call on this anymore, to be honest."
My chest tightened. "What do you mean?"
"After everything that happened yesterday, I had to flag this to senior leadership. Mr. Ford wants to hear about the situation directly from you."
Alexander Ford was the president of Fordwell Group.
Although I had been working on their account for three months, I had never once laid eyes on the man himself.
Charles had always been my sole point of contact.
So when Charles told me that Alexander wanted to see me in person, my brain struggled to process the information for a moment.
A junior-level agency employee badmouths a client in a group chat, and somehow that piece of news makes its way all the way up to the group president? It sounded absurd just thinking about it.
"He has some time right now," Charles said as he stood up. "Come on up."
"Up? As in right now?"
"Yes. The forty-seventh floor."
When I got to my feet, my legs felt oddly unsteady beneath me.
The 47th floor was fifteen stories above the 32nd, and as Charles walked ahead of me toward the elevator, I followed in a daze.
We stepped into the car, and the doors closed behind us with a soft hiss.
The elevator was completely silent, and with every number that lit up on the panel, I could feel my heartbeat climbing in tandem.
By the time we approached the forty-seventh floor, my fingers had tightened around my tablet so firmly that my knuckles had gone white.
The doors opened with a quiet ding, and I stepped out into a world that could not have been more different from the 32nd floor.
It had wide corridors lined with deep, dark carpet, paintings hanging at measured intervals along the walls, and a stillness so profound that the only sound I could hear was the soft rhythm of my own breathing.
Charles led me to a door at the far end of the hallway and knocked twice.
A voice came from inside, low, even, and utterly unhurried. "Come in."
Charles pushed the door open, and I followed him inside.
The office was enormous, dominated by a dark wooden desk positioned by the window, and behind that desk sat a man who looked up as we entered.
I finally got a clear view of his face, and he was far younger than I had expected, probably not even thirty.
His features were sharply defined with high cheekbones, a slight depth beneath his brows, and eyes that revealed absolutely nothing in the way of emotion.
Alexander glanced at me and then spoke. "So you're the one who thinks I've got a problem with my head?"
His tone wasn't confrontational, more like he was simply confirming a mildly amusing piece of information.
There was no anger in his expression, just a glint of something that looked almost like curiosity, the way a hunter might regard an animal that had just wandered into a trap.
I stood there rooted to the spot, not exactly frozen with fear, but because something about that look told me he wasn't actually upset.
He seemed to be expecting me.
Alexander leaned back slightly in his chair, one hand resting casually on the armrest.
The posture was less like an interrogation and more like a relaxed conversation starter, almost as if we were making small talk, but that casual quality only made me more nervous, because I had no idea what was actually going on behind those eyes.