Chapter 1:My Idol In A Towel

“Who is she?”

Luca Zhao stared at the black-and-white footage on his office surveillance cam.

The girl on screen sat on a bench just outside the staff entrance, knees pulled to her chest, hands tangled in her curls.

“Nah,” he muttered. “That can’t be Gia.”

He leaned forward, tilting his head. “Damn, she’s pretty. I think I know what to do.”

He sucked on his lips, half in amusement, half in curiosity. Then he pressed the intercom.

“Send the girl in. Quietly. No crowd.”

“Yes, sir,” came the assistant’s voice.

Before that, in the entrance hallway, where we were all seated, I was busy thinking about my dreams of ever meeting my idol finally coming true...but then it began to crumble, one name at a time.

One by one, the names were called by Miss Harper.

She started with, “Jay Orton, you will work under Blockchain Analysis.”

He grinned happily. Finally, his days of straining his eyes to read through books with the tiniest writings were over.

“Myra West,” she continued. The tiniest with the biggest brain, was placed in Strategic Planning.

She squeaked in joy as she went with her supervisor for a briefing.

“Juan Bellamy. PR Research,” she said. That was what he wanted, and he got it.

Each of them received a sleek welcome kit, a security badge, and an elevator key card. Real departments. Real pay. Real futures.

Then Harper glanced down at the last name on her clipboard.

“Seraph Hampton…”

“Yes, ma’am,” I raised my hand like I was still in kindergarten.

“Internship, right?” she asked with a cringed smile.

“Yes!”

“Relax, dear. I’ll soon attend to you. Your colleagues are workers, while you’re an intern, so they’ll be needing more attention,” she smiled before leaving the reception.

I sat on the reception bench, trying to rub off the pain of being stalled. I held my mother’s worn-out leather bag tighter...the one she’d always wear while working three jobs under my dad’s best friend.People always wondered why my mum had to work under my dad’s best friend.

After my deadbeat dad left us, we were stuck with nothing but a house that was falling apart. So, my mum needed a job. She eventually got hired after a series of begging.

We thought it would be a blessing—after all, she was being hired by my dad’s best friend, a man who couldn’t visit us without gifts.

Unknown to us, he would end up treating her like some kind of garbage. She would always be asked to work late—sorry, forced! But she couldn’t disagree, because no one would be ready to give a woman in her late forties a job. To cut the pathetic story short, she became sick and left me to navigate this world, which I was literally getting lost in.

It’s been over thirty minutes since Miss Harper had kept me on hold.

That same internship position which made me hyper now felt like working at the security post.

I remembered how ecstatic I became when I received the email that I had been picked among other orphans to become an intern at Luca Leverage. I wished I had taken matron xander's advice, and rejected the intern offer, which was way better than seating all day on a smooth, cold bench which represented indirect rejection.

Just as I was about to give up and cry, Harper showed up again—only this time, no clipboard in sight.

"Hey Seraph!, you're needed on the sixtieth floor" Upon hearing her say those words, I knew I had gotten into trouble, but I couldn’t realize why, could it be the sandwich wrapper I threw on the floor or the time I placed my foot on the bench.

She didn’t even let me sit down to think about what I did, before reminding me, "em, excuse me,did you forget you're needed on the sixtieth floor" she reminded me giving me a glare that made me want to teleport to the sixtieth floor.

She already looked tense, so I didn’t want to get her annoyed by asking how to use a damn self-explanatory elevator to get to the 60th floor, which even an eight-year-old was capable of doing. So, I just followed the same instinct that helped me pass the recruitment exam.

After minutes of stomping up the stairs I couldn't even tell where I was. All I could see were polished doors with silver knobs, all looking alike. After opening several doors and still finding nothing, I wanted to try the last door in that hallway, which was slightly open.

Not knowing that the last door wasn’t just a door—it was the entrance to the biggest mistake of my life.

What I walked into… was not the 60th-floor office. Or reception. Or anywhere an intern should be.

This was… a lounge. But not just any lounge.

This was his private lounge—with black and velvet couches, bookshelves lined with arranged documents, a window that offered an amazing view of the entire city, and at the far end was another door, left slightly ajar. I heard running water.

Then silence.

My heart nearly left my chest.

Just as I was about to step back out and pretend nothing happened—that was when the door swung open.

And he walked out… in a state that traumatized me.