CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Aria’s POV

I arrived at the office today at exactly eight fifty-three, seven minutes before the normal resumption time.

I stopped by at Priya’s desk to pick some files, then I went to my desk and got busy almost immediately with the Harrington file, focus with the attention of a woman who had decided that professional competence was the only currency that mattered today.

No room for unnecessary distraction and internal replay at work.

By ten-thirty I had cleared another section of the reconciliation.

By eleven, Marcus had forwarded me a secondary account to review alongside it, which I took as confirmation that the first week’s impression had held and focusing on the work was both a right decision and a functional distraction.

By eleven forty-five, Xavier’s EA called down to the accounts floor.

“Ms. Ashford? Mr. Beaumont would like to see you. Right at the moment.”

Priya looked over from her desk with an expression she didn’t bother fully neutralizing.

“It’ll be about the Harrington account,” I said, before she could say anything.

“Of course it will,” she said, in the tone that actually meant the opposite.

***

The tenth floor was different from the fourth quieter, the kind of space that communicated authority through restraint.

Xavier’s office was at the far end of a wide corridor, a corner room with floor-to-ceiling windows that put the entire financial district on display like a space he had arranged for his own reference.

He was at his desk when I came in, reviewing something on his screen. He looked up the moment I came in, looking all poised and composed. There was no acknowledgment of last night in his expression.

“Thank you for coming up. Sit down.” He gestured to a seat across from him.

I took it.

“The Harrington reconciliation,” he started, turning his monitor slightly so I could see it. “Marcus sent me your progress notes this morning. You already detected a discrepancy in the quarter two entries that none of the previous team caught. You’ve done a good job.”

“Thank you sir.” I said. “It was buried under three other entries that were also incorrect, it was easy to miss if you were reviewing them individually rather than as a sequence.”

“Then, how were you able to catch it?”

“The individual numbers weren’t wrong enough to trigger errors. But the sequence had a rhythm that didn’t fit the account’s behavior across the other quarters.”

He looked at me for a moment with the specific attention he gave things he found genuinely interesting. “That doesn’t seem like a standard audit approach.”

“Maybe,” I said. “It’s just how I read numbers.”

“Can I ask where you develop such unique skills?”

“Two years of an accounting degree,” I said flatly. “And three years of making one income cover two people’s lives. You get good at spotting where the pattern breaks.”

He looked at me the way he had looked at me in the car last night, a look closer to sympathy.

He swings in his chair.

“You’re wasted on reconciliations.”

“I’ve been here a week already,” I said. “I’m getting used to it already.”

The air in the office felt colder.

I was about to say something but I don’t know how best to put it to sound sensible. Suddenly the office door opened without a knock.

Ivanna walked in with the ownership step of someone who had never needed to knock on doors she considered accessible to her by right.

She was dressed impeccably today too, as always. Her eyes moved from Xavier to me with a speed that suggested she had already known I was here before she opened the door.

“Baby,” she said to Xavier, warm and entirely pointed. “Your EA said you were in a meeting. I didn’t realize it was with,” her eyes settled on me with a smile that had nothing kind in it, “the accounts team.”

“Aria is here to review the Harrington discrepancy,” Xavier said, his voice unchanged.

“How thorough of her,” Ivanna said. She moved closer and sat in the chair beside mine.

She looked at me with the polished directness. “You’ve settled in quickly, haven’t you? For someone who was cleaning the building a month ago.”

The accounts floor existed twelve floors below us, but somehow the silence in this room felt like the whole building had heard it.

I held her gaze.

“Fumigation,” I corrected .

Ivanna’s smile didn’t shift. “Of course. My mistake.” She said mischievously. “I suppose Mr. Beaumont has a talent for finding unexpected uses for people.”

The words sounded exactly as she intended, not loud enough to be called an attack but sharp enough to draw blood through the gap between what was said and what was meant.

“Ivanna. Do you realize I’m seated here.” Xavier said.

Ivanna rose from the chair with the calm grace of a woman who had said exactly what she came to say and had no need to stay for the aftermath.

She walked over to Xavier and adjusted a hairline that doesn’t need any adjustment.

“I was passing by and I thought it is okay to say hello to you. And to remind you that the gala night is this Friday.” She paused and cast me a down below look. “Don’t forget we’re arriving together.”

I picked up my notepad from the desk.

“I’ll send Marcus the full discrepancy report by end of day, sir.” I said and already moving toward the door.

Xavier wanted to say something but Ivanna shot him one of her deadly looks, and he stopped.

I opened the door and took the corridor back to the elevator with my notepad under my arm. My face looked composed but my mind was in disarray. I don’t even know what I’m feeling anymore.