Chapter 04 (Part 02)

He stood at the window when I entered, hands in his pockets, suit jacket folded neatly over the back of a chair. Sunlight caught on his profile, illuminating the angular planes of his face while leaving the rest in shadow. The skyline stretched out behind him, a fortress of steel and glass—beautiful in its rigid geometry, intimidating in its scale. He didn't turn when I approached, his attention seemingly fixed on some distant point beyond the glass.

The office was immaculate as always. Files arranged with mathematical precision on his desk. Not a single item out of place. The air carried the faint scent of his cologne—subtle but distinctive, like everything else about him.

"You said you were good under pressure," he said, the words landing in the space between us. It wasn't a question. He'd done his research before hiring me—read recommendation letters that praised my ability to meet deadlines, handle crises, maintain composure when others faltered.

My heart skipped a beat, but my voice remained steady. "Yes."

"Prove it."

He turned then, his expression unreadable, and handed me a thick folder. The weight of it was substantial in my hands—not just the physical mass of paper, but the implicit weight of expectation.

"New York division reports. A mess of contradictions. I want a complete summary, with inconsistencies flagged, before four."

I blinked, processing the request. The folder contained at least a hundred pages, possibly more. Dense text. Complex financial data. And he wanted analysis, not just review. In less than four hours.

"Today?" The question escaped before I could stop it—a momentary lapse in the composure I'd worked so hard to maintain.

His head tilted slightly. A subtle shift, almost imperceptible, yet somehow changing the entire dynamic between us. "Do you need longer?"

Challenge infused the words. Not mockery, exactly, but something adjacent to it. Testing boundaries. Assessing limits.

"No. I—no." I clutched the folder tighter, the edges pressing into my palms. A small discomfort to ground me in the moment.

He moved closer. Not enough to crowd me, but enough to make it clear this wasn't a negotiation. In the shifting light, his eyes appeared darker—storm clouds rather than clear sky. His height advantage meant I had to tilt my chin slightly to maintain eye contact, a subtle power dynamic that surely wasn't lost on him.

"You have the access. You have the tools. If you're as capable as you claimed, this won't be a problem."

I swallowed, tamping down the flutter of anxiety building in my chest. "It won't be."

He studied me for another beat, then stepped aside. A dismissal. "Good."

The word hung in the air between us—not praise, but acknowledgment. An expectation articulated. A standard set.

I turned and walked toward the door, conscious of his gaze tracking my movements. The folder seemed to grow heavier with each step, the responsibility it represented expanding to fill every available corner of my consciousness.

As I reached the threshold, his voice stopped me once more: "And Miss Quinn?"

I paused, half-turning. "Yes?"

"Details matter."

A warning wrapped in casual observation. I nodded once and left, closing the door softly behind me.

Back at my desk, I dove into the report like it was a minefield. And in a way, it was. Numbers that didn't match from one page to the next. Charts without proper labels or context. References to appendices that didn't exist. Pages of bloated jargon designed to hide the fact that someone, somewhere, was either covering up a mistake or too lazy to care.

The New York division had clearly submitted reports with the expectation that no one would actually read them carefully. They'd counted on busy executives skimming rather than scrutinizing, on bureaucracy protecting mediocrity.

They hadn't counted on Killian Vale. Or on me.

I worked in silence, occasionally sipping lukewarm coffee, my mind laser-focused on the task. I created a spreadsheet to track the inconsistencies, color-coding by severity and type. Green for minor numerical discrepancies that could be simple typos. Yellow for methodological problems that affected calculations but might have innocent explanations. Red for what appeared to be deliberate obfuscation—places where language seemed specifically crafted to mislead.

The deeper I dug, the clearer the pattern became. Someone at the New York office was manipulating data to hide underperformance. The methods were clever—spread across multiple reports, buried in technical language, disguised as accounting quirks. But the cumulative effect was unmistakable.

I made notes in the margins, using a system of symbols I'd developed during law school to flag different types of concerns. My eyes burned from staring at the screen, but I didn't pause. Time was a luxury I couldn't afford.

By 3:53 p.m., I had a complete summary, flagged every inconsistency, and added side notes with possible explanations for each discrepancy. Some could be innocent mistakes. Others...not so much. I reviewed it twice for accuracy. Then once more for clarity. Then stood, rolling my shoulders to release the tension that had accumulated during hours of focused concentration.

My back ached. My fingers were stiff. A dull headache pulsed behind my eyes. But the work was done—thorough, detailed, and ahead of deadline.

I walked toward his office with the folder in hand, my pulse loud in my ears like distant drums. The distance between my desk and his door stretched by anticipation.

Knock once. Enter.

He was seated behind his desk this time, reading something on his screen. Blue light reflected in his eyes, giving them an otherworldly quality. He looked up when I walked in, his expression revealing nothing of his thoughts.

"Done?" The word was clipped, efficient.

I handed him the folder. "Yes."

He opened it and scanned the first page. Then the second. His brow didn't twitch, but his eyes flicked fast, processing information at a speed that seemed almost inhuman. I stood perfectly still, hands clasped loosely in front of me, waiting.

"You added footnotes," he said after a moment, glancing up from the page.

I wasn't sure if that was a criticism or not. Had I overstepped? Added unnecessary complexity? "I thought they might be useful."

Another pause.

Then, quietly: "They are."

That one sentence hit harder than it should have. Three simple words that somehow carried more weight than effusive praise from previous employers. I felt a flush of—what? Pride? Relief? Something warmer and more complicated that had no place in this sterile professional context.

He kept reading, and I stood there like a statue, unsure if I was dismissed or not. The silence stretched between us, punctuated only by the soft sound of turning pages and the distant hum of the building's systems.

Eventually, he closed the folder. "You missed lunch."

I blinked, caught off guard by the shift in topic. "What?"

He leaned back in his chair, regarding me with that unreadable expression. "You didn't leave your desk."

It wasn't a question, but an observation. He'd noticed. Been aware of my movements—or lack thereof—throughout the day. The realization was unsettling in ways I couldn't quite articulate.

"I wasn't hungry," I said, defensive before I could stop myself. The truth was more complicated: I hadn't even considered eating. The task had consumed me entirely, leaving no room for basic physical needs.

He didn't argue. Just tilted his head slightly, a gesture I was beginning to recognize as his way of indicating interest or mild surprise. "Discipline is admirable. But exhaustion makes mistakes."

"Noted."

He watched me for a long moment, his gaze steady and assessing. I had the odd sensation of being measured again—not just as an employee, but as something… else. A puzzle to be solved. A variable in some complex equation only he could see.

Then he said, almost too softly to hear: "You surprise me, Miss Quinn."

I swallowed, unsure how to respond to the unexpected admission. "Because I'm competent?"

"No. Because you're still here."

The words landed with unexpected weight, revealing volumes in their simplicity. Because you're still here. As if my presence was the anomaly. As if survival was the real test, and the work itself merely the vehicle for that evaluation.

That night, I stayed in the office longer than I needed to. Not because he asked me to. Not because I had work left to do. All urgent tasks had been completed, all emails answered, all schedules updated for the following day.

But because something about his words stuck to me like burrs, small and sharp and impossible to brush away casually.

You're still here.

As if he'd expected me to break already. As if people like me—people from state schools rather than Ivy Leagues, people who worked their way through college rather than coasting on family connections—never made it past day one in his rarefied atmosphere.

The office was quiet now, most employees long gone. Even the cleaning staff had finished their rounds, leaving behind the faint scent of lemon polish and emptied trash bins. The lights had dimmed automatically to their evening setting, casting soft pools rather than the harsh fluorescence of working hours.

Through the windows, the city transformed into a constellation of lights—some steady, some blinking, all of them forming patterns that spoke of life continuing in countless hidden spaces. The glass reflected my image back at me, superimposed over the urban landscape.

I stared at my reflection in the office window, watching the city shimmer behind it like an elaborate backdrop. In this light, my features seemed sharper, more defined. Less like the person who had walked nervously into this building yesterday morning and more like someone who might actually belong here.

And for the first time since stepping into ValeCorp, I let myself wonder:

What kind of man gets off on watching people break?

Because that was the implication, wasn't it? That others had sat at this desk before me, faced similar tests, and crumbled under the pressure. That Killian Vale had witnessed their fall—not with disappointment, but with a kind of detached curiosity. Like a scientist observing the failure point of materials under stress.

And what does it mean that I want to understand him?

This question was more troubling. Because it wasn't professional curiosity driving me. Not entirely. There was something else—something that had taken root during our brief interactions. A fascination with the mind behind the facade. With the forces that had shaped such a man. With the question of what might exist beneath that carefully maintained surface of cold precision.

I gathered my things slowly, shutting down my computer and straightening my desk for tomorrow. As I walked toward the elevator, I passed his closed office door. No light showed beneath it. He was long gone, probably returned to whatever fortress of solitude awaited him outside these walls.

Tomorrow would bring new tests. New challenges. New opportunities to either prove my worth or discover my breaking point.

I stepped into the elevator and watched the doors close on the darkened office.

Tomorrow, I would be ready.