Chapter 3 - The Office Earthquake
When Paige stepped out of the private elevator and walked back into the fifth-floor administrative bullpen, the atmosphere was thick with palpable suspense.
All thirty keyboards had stopped clicking once again. Every single head snapped toward her as she emerged from the glass-walled corridor. Sylvia bolted upright from her chair, her eyes wide with a mixture of morbid curiosity and profound disbelief, marching over to intercept Paige before she could even reach her cubicle.
“Well?” Sylvia demanded in a frantic whisper, grabbing Paige’s arm. “Did he fire you? Are you blacklisted? Did Nico escort you out through the loading dock?”
Paige calmly walked over to her desk, picked up her canvas tote bag, and began emptying the half-empty bottle of ibuprofen and her cheap pens back into her desktop organizer. She looked up at Sylvia, who was bracing herself for bad news.
“He didn't fire me,” Paige said evenly.
Sylvia’s jaw dropped. “He didn't? Then what did he do to you up there in the penthouse? Did he scream? Did he threaten you?”
“Actually,” Paige replied, suppressing a slight smile as she remembered Gabriel’s words, “he gave me a twenty percent raise, cleared up my scheduling issues, and told me to take the rest of the day off to sleep.”
The silence that fell over the bullpen this time was even heavier than the one from earlier that afternoon. Several junior accountants nearby dropped their pens. Sylvia stared at Paige as if she had grown a second head, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
“A... a raise?” Sylvia finally choked out. “Mr. Moretti gave you a raise? For calling him honey?”
“Turns out he values efficient dock manifests more than corporate protocol,” Paige said smoothly, sliding her framed photograph of Buster back onto the wooden partition. She grabbed her coat and handbag. “I’ll see you all tomorrow morning. Have a great afternoon.”
As Paige walked toward the elevators, leaving a stunned bullpen of whispering coworkers in her wake, she felt a sensation she hadn't experienced in over six years: control. The crushing weight of Kevin’s debt had vanished into thin air, wiped out by the very syndicate her ex had tried to rob. Her bank account was safe, her job was secure, and for the first time, she wasn't running on three hours of sleep and pure panic.
She took a long, deep breath of the crisp autumn air as she stepped out of the Moretti Logistics tower into the twilight. But as she walked toward the subway station, she couldn't shake the memory of Gabriel Moretti’s intense slate-gray eyes, the cedarwood scent of his cologne, and the strange, electric warmth of his touch when he took the glass from her hand.
Little did Paige know, her accidental slip of the tongue had not gone unnoticed by the higher echelons of the syndicate. And Gabriel Moretti was a man who rarely let go of anything that caught his interest.
The next morning, Paige arrived at work fifteen minutes early, feeling fully rested for the first time in months. The bullpen was unusually quiet. As she sat down at her desk and powered on her computer, her desk phone blinked—not with an outside collection call, but with an internal extension.
She picked up the receiver. “Paige Winslow, administrative assistant.”
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“My office. Now,” Gabriel’s baritone rumbled through the line before disconnecting with a sharp click.
Paige’s heart skipped a beat. She stood up, smoothed down her pencil skirt, and walked briskly toward the private elevator, wondering what new crisis awaited her on the top floor.
