Chapter Two: The Third Floor

The third floor of Voss Enterprises did not feel like it belonged to the same building as the fortieth.

Down here, the marble gave way to warm oak and exposed brick, the ceilings lower, the noise louder — phones ringing, someone laughing too hard near the espresso machine, a wall of screens running mockups for a skincare campaign Elena recognized from the brief she'd been sent the night before.

It felt almost human. It felt like a place she could survive in, if she didn't think too hard about who signed her paycheck.

"You must be Elena." A woman with cropped silver hair and reading glasses pushed up into it extended a hand before Elena had even set her bag down. "Giulia Ferrero, creative director. I fought for you, by the way — your Lucciano campaign made three people in that interview room actually stop scrolling their phones. Do you know how rare that is?"

"I didn't realize anyone was scrolling," Elena said, and Giulia laughed, sharp and genuine.

"Everyone's scrolling. Come on, I'll get you set up before the ten o'clock."

The desk they gave her sat near a window overlooking a narrow cobblestone street, close enough to the Solene creative pod that she could hear three separate conversations about typography without trying. It was, by any objective measure, a good desk.

A good job. The kind of first day that should have left her giddy with relief instead of scanning every doorway like she expected him to materialize in it.

He didn't. Not once, all morning. Elena told herself that was fine. Expected, even — CEOs didn't linger on the third floor babysitting new hires, and whatever had happened in that conference room yesterday was clearly a private indulgence, not a preview of how things would run day to day.

She almost believed it by lunch.

The Solene brief was, mercifully, absorbing enough to make her forget the building around her for whole stretches at a time. A luxury skincare line trying to reposition itself for a younger, more skeptical market without losing the older clientele who'd built it — exactly the kind of brand-strategy puzzle Elena had spent the last three years teaching herself to love, first through unpaid freelance work squeezed between bartending shifts, then through the agency contracts that had finally, finally started paying real money.

She was three concepts deep into a deck when Giulia leaned over her shoulder.

"These are good. Actually good, not agency-good." A pause. "Voss wants eyes on the deck before it goes to the client. He does that with every new hire's first project — don't take it personally."

Something cold moved through Elena's chest. "He reviews every new hire's first deck personally?"

"God, no." Giulia said it like the idea was faintly ridiculous. "He hasn't looked at a junior deck in two years. I told his EA I'd send it up through the normal chain and she said—" Giulia did an uncanny, clipped impression.

"Mr. Voss would like to see it directly. So. Congratulations, I suppose." She didn't sound entirely pleased about it, and Elena understood why — this wasn't how things were supposed to work, and everyone on this floor was about to notice that it wasn't.

"I don't need special treatment," Elena said, too fast.

"I didn't say you needed it." Giulia's eyes were sharp, assessing, kind but not naive. "I said he asked for it. There's a difference, and I'd bet money you already know that."

Elena said nothing. Giulia, mercifully, let it go.

The summons came at 4:50, twelve minutes before Elena had told herself she could leave without looking desperate to escape. An email from an EA she hadn't met yet — Mr. Voss will review the Solene deck at 5:00, fortieth floor — with no room for negotiation built into the phrasing at all.

She rode the elevator back up with the deck clutched against her chest like armor, rehearsing the version of herself that would walk into his office: composed, competent, entirely unbothered by rooftops or unanswered calls or seven years of silence. She had gotten good at building that version of herself. She'd had to.

His office, when the EA finally waved her through, was nothing like she'd braced for. No trophy wall, no skyline-facing desk built to intimidate. Just clean lines, warm wood, a single window, and Adrian standing at it with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled to the forearm, looking at the deck already open on a tablet in his hand — her deck, sent up before she'd even arrived.

"Sit," he said, without turning around.

"I'm fine standing."

That got his attention. He turned, and something in his expression — amusement, maybe, or the ghost of it — cut through the cold professionalism from yesterday. "Suit yourself."

He set the tablet down between them on the low table and tapped the second slide. "This positioning — 'inherited elegance, chosen boldness' — where did that come from?"

"The brief mentioned Solene's core client is aging out and worried about relevance. I didn't want to alienate them by chasing a younger demo too hard. So instead of repositioning the brand, I repositioned the relationship — women passing the product down, not replacing it." She heard herself talking too fast and made herself slow down. "It tests well with legacy brands. Cartier did something similar in 2019."

He studied her for a long moment, not the deck — her. "You always did that. Find the angle nobody else in the room was looking for."

The comment landed sideways, personal in a way the conversation hadn't earned yet. Elena kept her spine straight. "I don't know what you mean."

"You do." He said it without heat, which somehow made it worse. He closed the tablet and set it aside, and the small, professional distance between them collapsed into something else entirely.

"You wrote half your senior thesis on repositioning family businesses without losing their history. I remember because you made me read a draft on a Tuesday, at your kitchen table, and told me if I fell asleep again you'd never speak to me."

Elena's stomach dropped clean through the floor.

"That was a long time ago," she managed.

"Seven years, three months." He said it like a fact filed away and dusted off exactly for this moment. "I know exactly how long it's been, Elena. I'd assume you do too."

"Adrian—"

"The deck is approved." He cut across whatever she'd been about to say — deflection, probably, some professional non-answer she hadn't finished building yet — and the shift back to business was so abrupt it felt deliberate, a door closing before she could walk through it. "Solene will love it. Send it to the client tomorrow morning."

She stood there, caught between two entirely different conversations happening in the same five feet of air, and understood, with dawning and furious clarity, that he'd done that on purpose. Pulled her in close enough to feel the old current running under everything, then shut it off before she could decide what to do with it.

"Is that all?" she asked, proud of how even it came out.

"For now." He walked past her to open the door himself — old habit, she remembered dimly, he'd always done that, opened doors before she reached for them — and paused close enough that she caught the cedar again, close enough that seven years folded down to nothing at all.

"Welcome to the team, Elena. I have a feeling you're going to make this building very interesting."

She didn't trust herself to answer. She walked out with the deck against her chest and her pulse loud in her ears, and didn't let herself breathe properly until the elevator doors sealed shut between them.

He remembers everything, she thought. He's just choosing when to let me know it.

Outside, her phone buzzed — a text from her brother Marco, a photo of a tuition invoice with a due date circled twice in red — and just like that, the fortieth floor and everything on it collapsed back down to what it had always actually been.

A paycheck. Nothing more. She couldn't afford for it to be anything more.

She just wasn't sure, yet, if Adrian intended to give her the choice.