The phone on Eliza's desk shrilled through the quiet office, sharp enough to pierce right through Via's sternum. She flinched. The woman had told her that she was supposed to take calls too, that it was "no big deal."
That was easy for her to say. It was the first time Octavia had been alone with the darned thing, and its blinking light was starting to stare at her like a dare.
Her hand trembled slightly as she lifted the receiver.
"H–hello?"
"Miss Thompson, I need you in my office. Now."
The man's voice was deep and impatient, just one breath from a command. And before she could utter a word, the line went dead.
Her heart plummeted. She wasn't Eliza Thompson. She wasn't even close to Eliza.
Wonderful, she thought. First month and she was already marching herself straight into a misunderstanding with Carter Pierce, a man whose name alone was enough to make half the building stand taller and walk faster. She wiped her palms against her skirt, squaring her shoulders, and forced herself down the room.
Carter's office door was already open when she reached it and he was behind his desk with sleeves rolled up, a folder spread before him like something he planned to dissect.
"Eliza, would you care to explain…"
He cut himself off the moment he looked up. His brows lifted an inch, not enough to be dramatic, but enough that she felt it like a spotlight. "I'm sorry, you are not Eliza."
"I'm not," Via said, offering the smallest, most nervous smile ever known to mankind. Her eyes fell to the folder on his desk and, mortifyingly, recognized the explosion of colorful post-its and her own sloppy handwriting. "But I… might be able to help."
"You're the one Eliza is training," he muttered, more to himself than to her. His gaze lingered on her. Evaluating, curious and, perhaps, mildly irritated by his own curiosity. "Would you know who took the liberty of marking up my contracts?"
"I do." Heat crept up her neck. "I did."
"You scribbled all over my contract." His tone was stern, but his expression was harder to read, controlled but with a faint crease between his brows that suggested he wasn't quite sure yet what box to put her in. "Why?"
"I was told to revise it." She tried to straighten her spine. Fake it, 'till you make it.
"Which usually means orthography," he said.
"I know," she answered quickly. "But if you look right here" She leaned forward, tapping a purple post-it with a shaky finger. "This clause feels too binding. It gives the other company more access than they should have. Their lawyer could argue that it grants them extended entry rights until they decide to revoke the license, which I'm sure they pushed for… but if you reword like this and maybe add a couple of clauses after that, you gain a lot more leverage if they try to overstay. It's a high-profile building. Better investment opportunities will show up in no time, you don't want them camped there for years."
Silence stretched. Octavia instantly regretted opening her mouth. She had done the thing again. Where she gets overexcited and goes too far and speaks too much. Forgets the lane she's supposed to stay in.
When she forced herself to meet Carter's eyes, she found him watching her with a frown. Not angry, not dismissive. Focused. Almost too focused.
"And how come you noticed all of that," he asked slowly, "when an entire legal team didn't?"
"I-it's just…" She shrugged, though the movement was stiff and small. "It's not a bad contract, it's just more concerned with profits than leverage." She begun twisting the silver ring on her thumb "It didn't seem to be written by a lawyer."
His eyes flickered, making her shift the weight from one feet to the other. "I went to business school," he said at last, adjusting his tie with a faint, controlled tug. "Not law."
Her stomach dropped and she released the documents so fast they nearly slid off the desk. He looked at them, just to make sure they hadn't just turned into a squirming animal.
"Of course you did, sir." She replied with something that could almost be a laugh "I'm sorry. I overstepped."
He watched her for a long second. So long she felt like Louis Lane. Absolutely sure there was x-ray vision involved.
"Which department did you say you were from?"
"Marketing." Her voice shrank to almost nothing. Marketing. God, she hated saying it out loud, made her feel like a mismatched puzzle piece shoved into the wrong picture.
"It's Octavia, right?"
"Usually I go by Via," she mumbled, then rushed to add, "but Octavia is fine."
He hummed softly, staring at the mess of post-its with an expression she couldn't read.
Annoyance, yes, but something else underneath. Interest, maybe. Or confusion. A reluctant flicker of respect he didn't seem entirely too pleased to feel.
Finally, he looked up.
"You think you can fix those?"
She blinked. That was not yelling nor firing. That was… trust? No. Delegation? Or maybe just desperation. Or maybe, she thought, he was just sadistic. A long practical joke at her expense.
"We need them signed in three days," he continued. "Can you fix the issues you pointed out by then, Octavia?"
She nodded, awkward and frantic, clutching the folders to her chest before he could second-guess her ability. Or her worth. Three days were tight, but if this was what it took to keep her job, she would make it happen even if she had to inject caffeine straight to her blood steam.
"Good," he said, rising from his chair. She noticed how much of her chin she had to lift to look at his face. "You have two."
"T-two?" She stammered.
He guided her toward the door, polite but firm, as if he already regretted being intrigued by her.
"Of course, sir," she whispered as she stepped out, clutching the folders like a shield.
Behind her, before the door fully closed, she heard him exhaling quietly. Great, she thought, made him mad already.
The door clicked shut behind her with a softness that felt almost mocking, too gentle for the way her heart was pounding. Two days.
Two.
Had he said that to push her? To intimidate her? That seemed like a far too cruel joke to punish her for a few misplaced post-its.
Whatever the reason was, she knew she could not fail.
She hurried back to her desk with trembling urgency, nearly dropping the folders twice as she fumbled through them. By the time she sat, her work area had already dissolved into organized chaos: sticky notes in a rainbow of colors, notebooks flipped open to blank pages, pens uncapped and bleeding ink in quick, frantic scratches across margins and headers.
When Eliza returned from a meeting, Octavia was elbows-deep in legal jargon, rewriting paragraphs with a precision she hadn't used in ages. Her eyes were wide, focused, almost fever bright.
Eliza stopped short. "My goodness, dear… he didn't scare you already, did he?"
Octavia blinked up at her, curls spilling over one eye.
"No," she lied. "He just… needs this soon."
Eliza's brows lifted, skeptical but gentle, though she mercifully let the subject drop.
By the end of the day, the building had emptied itself. Co-workers had packed their bags, slung jackets over their arms, and waved their goodbyes. The refectory closed with the metallic shutter sliding into place, while the hallway lights dimmed automatically, leaving only security strips glowing along the floor.
But Octavia remained at her desk, slouched like some poor shelf trying to hold too many books. Yet her hands continued their relentless tapping. The contract was longer than she remembered, its logic branching into new complications every time she thought she had untangled one.
Fix one clause, and three contradictions appeared. Rephrase a sentence for clarity, and suddenly the annex needed revision.
It felt endless, a hydra made of legal phrasing.
She groaned, pressing the heel of her hand to one eye, like that could make it burn less.
But still, she didn't stop.
At one point, she barely noticed Carter leaving his office, jacket slung over his arm.
But he noticed her. His shadow fell faintly across the glass wall before he stopped, gaze lowering toward her hunched form.
He said nothing.
But he lingered longer than necessary before walking to the elevator. Octavia didn't look up. Her fingers kept typing.