Chapter 2 - The New Face in the Studio
The following Monday, I walked through the double glass doors of Meridian Commerce at seven in the morning, an hour before the administrative staff arrived. The lobby was designed to impress visitors: polished industrial concrete floors, twenty-foot ceilings, and a brushed-steel installation featuring our logo backlit with warm LED glow. It was a space I had personally negotiated from a bankrupt textile importer four years earlier, cutting the lease rate by thirty percent when everyone said tech-retail was dead.
By eight-thirty, our chief financial officer, Marcus Vance—no relation to me, though we shared the same dry, no-nonsense temperament—stepped into my corner office with a mug of black coffee. He closed the door behind him without asking.
""Word came down from the fifth-floor studio that Ryan canceled the executive review for the Q3 electronics showcase,"" Marcus said, leaning against the window ledge. ""His assistant sent an email at midnight rescheduling it for next Friday. Did something happen in Santa Barbara?""
""The wedding is off,"" I said, looking up from my inventory spreadsheets without blinking.
Marcus stopped midway through lifting his mug. He had known us since the days above the dry cleaner in Long Beach; he had watched Ryan rehearse three-minute speeches twenty times until his teeth stopped chattering with stage fright. ""Are you serious?""
""He called me from the road on Friday afternoon. Said he needed space.""
""Space doesn't send calendar cancellations at midnight,"" Marcus observed quietly. ""Chloe sent that email.""
Chloe Sanders had been hired eight months prior as Ryan’s direct executive assistant. She was twenty-four, with wide brown eyes, a soft, breathless cadence to her voice, and an uncanny habit of anticipating every small physical comfort Ryan demanded during grueling twelve-hour studio sessions. When he wanted green juice with precisely two cubes of ice, it appeared beside his teleprompter. When he complained of a headache under the halogen spots, she would massage his shoulders between takes, murmuring that he worked too hard while the rest of the company sat in air-conditioned offices.
I had ignored the murmurs from the production crew. In modern commerce, star talent required handling, and as long as our gross merchandise volume cleared fifty million, I treated Chloe's excessive attentiveness as an operational expense. Ryan had always liked being pampered; he liked being looked at as if he were a visionary who walked on water. I had known him when he owned three collared shirts and couldn't afford brake pads for his Civic. Chloe only knew the version of Ryan who wore five-thousand-dollar tailored linen and owned three sports cars.
At ten, the studio elevator doors parted, and the hallway fell into an unnatural, nervous quiet. I stepped out of my office to deliver the quarterly fulfillment reports to the control room.
Ryan was walking down the hall, flanked by two members of his creative team. His hair was styled with effortless precision, his designer jacket draped over his arm. But beside him, wearing a cream cashmere cardigan that barely concealed a gentle, undeniable swell at her midsection, walked Chloe. She was holding a leather folder against her chest with both hands, her eyes lowered with an expression of demure, triumphant modesty.
Ryan saw me standing by the glass balustrade. For a fraction of a second, his posture stiffened, the old reflexive guilt flashing across his eyes. Then he straightened his shoulders, pulled on his trademark public smile, and kept walking straight toward his executive suite.
""Natalie,"" he greeted me as he passed, his voice smooth and detached, as if we were distant acquaintances greeting each other in an airport corridor. ""Good to see you're back. Chloe has the revised Q3 talent schedule. We'll touch base after the afternoon production meeting.""
Chloe did not look up, but as she slipped through the double doors behind him, her fingers brushed the curve of her stomach in a gesture so deliberate, so theatrical, that two junior editors by the water dispenser instantly froze in mid-conversation.
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My assistant, Elena, stepped up beside me, her voice trembling with indignation. ""She hasn't worked a full Friday in three months, Natalie. She told the wardrobe department last week that she needs all her set passes upgraded to executive tier because she has personal matters to attend to for Mr. Hayes.""
""Let her have the passes, Elena,"" I said, turning back toward my office with a calm that surprised even myself. ""In fact, pull the complete personnel file for Chloe Sanders from HR. I want her hiring contract, her expense receipts for the last six months, and her company credit card statements on my desk before lunch.""
