The New Beginning

Three weeks into her new life, Elena had developed a routine. Clean offices from 8 PM to midnight, sleep in her car until 6 AM, then spend the day at the public library using their internet and bathrooms. She'd found a gym with a cheap membership where she could shower. It wasn't much of a life, but it was hers.

The hardest part was not being able to see Sophia and James. Mark had changed the locks and told the school Elena was "going through a difficult time" and shouldn't be allowed to pick up the children. Her own kids probably thought she'd abandoned them.

But Elena kept going. Every night, she cleaned those offices and told herself this was temporary. She was gathering strength, gathering evidence, gathering the courage to fight back properly.

And every night, she ended up in Arthur Knight's office.

Elena had started paying attention to the papers on his desk. She couldn't help herself; her brain was wired to see patterns in numbers. Arthur Knight was clearly brilliant, but some of his investment strategies had small flaws that could be easily fixed.

After her first week, Elena had started doing something she knew she shouldn't. When she found errors in his calculations, she would very gently correct them. A decimal point moved here, a formula adjusted there. Nothing obvious, nothing that would get her fired if noticed.

But Arthur Knight was noticing.

Elena could tell because he'd started leaving more complex problems on his desk. Financial puzzles that seemed almost designed to test someone's analytical skills. And every morning after Elena "fixed" them, they were gone by the next night, replaced with new challenges.

It became a strange game. Elena would arrive to find investment projections with deliberate errors, or merger analysis with missing variables. She would correct them carefully, making her handwriting as neat as possible, then continue her cleaning.

She told herself Arthur probably thought he had some brilliant financial analyst who came in early. He had no idea his cleaning lady was the one solving his business problems.

Tonight was different. When Elena entered Arthur's office, there was a single sheet of paper in the center of his otherwise empty desk. A complex merger analysis for a tech company acquisition. Elena recognized it immediately; this was the kind of problem that would normally take a team of analysts hours to solve.

It was also incomplete. Key financial data was missing, making it impossible to finish the analysis.

Elena stared at the paper. This wasn't an accidental error or a small correction. This was a test. Someone knew she was doing more than dusting around the papers.

Elena looked around the empty office, her heart pounding. She should just clean and leave. Pretend she never saw the paper. Go back to being invisible.

Instead, she sat down at Arthur Knight's desk and started working.

Elena spent an hour reconstructing the missing data from context clues in the existing information. She built formulas to estimate the unknowns, cross-referenced industry standards, and created a complete financial model. By the time she was done, she'd transformed an impossible analysis into a comprehensive investment recommendation.

She left the completed work in the center of the desk and finished her cleaning quickly. But as she was about to leave, Elena noticed something that made her blood freeze.

In the corner of the original paper, almost hidden, were two small words: "Sterling Tech."

Arthur Knight was analyzing Mark's company.

Elena grabbed the paper and read it more carefully. This wasn't just any merger analysis, this was a detailed breakdown of Sterling Tech's vulnerabilities. Arthur Knight was looking for ways to attack Mark's business.

Elena's hands shook as she read through the numbers. Arthur had identified several of the same problems Elena had noticed over-leveraged investments, suspicious accounting practices, over-inflated patent values. But he was missing key information that Elena could provide. Information that would make his attack devastating instead of just damaging.

Elena stared at the analysis, her mind racing. She could add what she knew about Sterling Tech's real financial situation. She could point out the patents that were built on her stolen work. She could give Arthur Knight the ammunition to destroy Mark completely.

But why was Arthur Knight investigating Mark in the first place?

Elena heard the elevator ding in the hallway. Someone was coming up to the executive floor at 11 PM. Elena quickly put the paper back exactly where she'd found it and grabbed her cleaning cart.

The office door opened just as Elena was emptying the trash can.

"Oh. I didn't realize anyone was still here."

Elena looked up to see a man in his mid-thirties, tall with dark hair and intense blue eyes. He was wearing an expensive suit but had loosened his tie, like he'd been working late. He looked tired but alert, and when his eyes met Elena's, she felt something unexpected; recognition, even though they'd never met.

This had to be Arthur Knight.

"Sorry, sir," Elena said quietly, keeping her eyes down. "I'll be done in just a minute."

"No rush. I just forgot some files."

Arthur walked to his desk, and Elena continued cleaning, hyper-aware of his presence. She could feel him watching her as she worked.

"You do good work," Arthur said suddenly.

Elena's hand froze on the window she was cleaning. "Sir?"

"The office is always perfectly organized when I come in. You're very thorough."

"Thank you, sir."

Arthur picked up the merger analysis Elena had completed. "Tell me, do you ever notice the papers on my desk when you're cleaning?"

Elena's heart stopped. She was caught. She was going to lose the only job she could get, and she'd be back to having nothing.

"I try not to look at confidential documents, sir," Elena said carefully.

"But if you did look, hypothetically, do you think you'd understand them?"

Elena risked glancing at him. Arthur Knight was studying her with curious eyes, like she was a puzzle he was trying to solve.

"I... I used to work with numbers. Before."

"Before what?"

"Before my life fell apart."

Arthur was quiet for a long moment. Elena finished cleaning the window and moved to collect her cart.

"Wait," Arthur said. "What's your name?"

Elena hesitated. If she told him her real name, he might recognize it. Everyone in the business world knew about Mark Sterling's wife having a breakdown.

"Elena," she said finally.

"Elena what?"

Elena met his eyes directly for the first time. "Just Elena."

Arthur nodded slowly. "Just Elena, can you come in early tomorrow night? Say, 7 PM instead of 8?"

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No. You did something very right. I'd like to talk to you about it."

Elena left Knight Industries with her mind spinning. Arthur Knight knew she'd been solving his financial puzzles. More than that, he seemed impressed by it. But he was also investigating Mark's company, which meant he might be an enemy or an ally.

Elena drove to her usual parking spot and settled in for another night in her car. But for the first time in weeks, she wasn't thinking about how far she'd fallen.

She was thinking about Arthur Knight's eyes when he looked at her. Like she was a person worth paying attention to. Like she mattered.

Elena hadn't felt like she mattered in a very long time.

Tomorrow at 7 PM, she'd find out what Arthur Knight really wanted. But tonight, she allowed herself to hope that maybe, just maybe, her luck was about to change.

Even if she had no idea how much.