Chapter 2: Saying Yes

I get to the street level and push out into Manhattan in July, the kind of heat that sits on your skin like judgment, and I call my mother.

"I got the job," I tell her.

She screams. It's an actual scream, full and joyful and so relieved that I feel guilty for everything I'm not telling her about how it happened.

"Baby, baby," she says, "I'm so proud of you. Which company?"

"Ashford Ventures," I say.

There's a pause. In that pause, everything my father ever said about whistleblowing and consequences and the cost of doing the right thing sits between us.

"Be careful," my mother says quietly. "Whoever owns that company, they have money, and money changes how people think."

I tell her I will be careful. I tell her it's going to be fine. I tell her the things that people tell each other when they're trying to make something untrue be true, and when we hang up, I stand on the street in the middle of Manhattan and realize that I have just walked into something that I don't understand.

The sun is bright and terrible and I can feel the weight of it on my shoulders. Behind me, the Ashford Ventures building rises up in glass and chrome. I don't look back.

I'm already regretting it. I'm already knowing, in the part of me that still has instinct, that this was the wrong yes.

I'm already wondering what he wants from me.

And I'm already counting the days until Monday.

The office is colder on Monday than it was on Friday.

I'm not sure how that's possible. The temperature is controlled by machines that don't care about my emotional state, and yet somehow the air feels like it's been turned down a notch, like the building itself is pushing back against my presence.

My desk is on the forty-eighth floor, in a pod of four workstations that face toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan. There are three other pods on this floor. The other desk in my pod is empty. One of the other pods has a man with gray streaks in his hair who looked at me when I arrived and then looked away quickly. The third pod is empty except for a nameplate that says RESERVED.

Margaret walked me through orientation yesterday. She showed me the bathroom, the break room, the server access. She showed me where to plug in my badge. She smiled when she did these things, but her smile was thin and her eyes were checking the time.

"You'll get assigned to projects," she said. "Your lead will be Mr. Ashford. He'll send you work via email."

This is Monday morning and I am at my desk at 8:47 AM because Margaret said not to come in early, which made me arrive at 8:47 AM, which feels like a test even though I know it's not supposed to be one.

My work email loads. It's already there. A single message. No subject line. From: damien.ashford@ashfordventures.com.

"Review attached competitive analysis for the three companies we're acquiring this quarter. Identify the three most valuable assets in each company from a talent perspective. You have until close of business. Use the Ashford framework. Check your shared drive for templates."

No greeting. No signature. No thank you in advance. Just the task, like an instruction to a machine that should understand what it's supposed to do without needing any encouragement.

I open the attachment. Forty-seven pages of financial data, employee rosters, organizational charts. I have nine hours.

The Ashford framework isn't in the templates folder. I search for it. Nothing. I search the shared drive. Nothing. I do a careful search of my email history. Nothing.

I stand up to find Margaret. Margaret is supposed to be in IT support, except Margaret seems to be everywhere at once, monitoring systems and watching people and knowing things that she shouldn't know.

I spot her at the coffee station. The coffee is from Seattle, just like Margaret said. It looks like it costs more than a car payment.

"Hi," I say, trying to sound casual about the fact that I'm already failing at my first task. "I got the assignment from Mr. Ashford, but I can't find the Ashford framework template. Can you point me to it?"

Margaret is holding a coffee. She looks at me for a long moment, and in that moment I understand that this might be intentional. This might be a test I'm already losing.

"He didn't mention it?" Margaret says slowly.

"No. Just said to use it."

"You'll have to ask him."

The thing about this suggestion is that it's impossible. Damien Ashford is not someone who likes being asked questions. Damien Ashford is someone who gives instructions and expects them to be followed. Walking into his office to ask for clarification feels like showing up to a battlefield without a weapon.

Except I don't have a choice.

I make my way to the executive floor. The elevator here requires a specific badge access, which is why only certain people can go up. My badge works, which means I've been given clearance. I'm not sure if that's comforting or terrifying.

The executive floor is different from the forty-eighth floor. It's colder, which shouldn't be possible. The walls are a shade of gray that might be called charcoal if you're being poetic and might be called the color of a storm if you're being honest. There are pieces of art on the walls, the kind of abstract things that probably have names and meanings that I don't understand.

His office is at the end of the corridor. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Glass doors. No secretary. No waiting room. Just doors that open onto possibility.

I knock.

"Come in."

I do. The office is vast. His desk is positioned to face the windows, so when I enter, I have to walk around to see him. He's already looking at me, which means he heard the knock and anticipated where I'd be standing. He was ready for me before I was ready for him.

"The Ashford framework," I say, abandoning any attempt at professionalism or courtesy. "I can't find the template."

"No," he says. "You can't."

I wait for him to clarify. He doesn't. He just looks at me with that same measured expression he had on Friday, the one that makes you feel like you're being weighed and measured and found to be slightly lighter than expected.

"It's not in the shared drive," I say carefully.

"It's not."

"So where is it?"

"In your head."

I don't think I heard him correctly. I'm waiting for him to explain, to say something that makes this make sense, but he's already turning back to his monitor. The conversation is over.

I stand there for a moment, trying to figure out if this is actually happening or if I'm having some kind of stress-induced hallucination where a man in a charcoal suit tells me that a framework exists only in my imagination.

"Go," he says, without looking up. "You're losing time."

I go.

Back at my desk, I have eight hours and forty-five minutes and no framework. I do what I always do in situations where I don't have the rules. I make them up. I create a structure based on what I know about talent acquisition and value metrics and the kinds of things that matter to companies. I label it The Ashford Framework because the irony feels like punishment.

The hours slide into each other. I work through lunch even though Margaret said not to. The office empties out around five. By six, I'm alone on the floor except for the gray-haired man who left at five thirty and didn't look at me when he went.

At 6:47 PM, my phone buzzes. An email. From Damien.

"Send me what you have."

It's not done. It's three-quarters done at best. The analysis is solid but incomplete. I send it anyway because he asked for it, and I wait to be told that it's not good enough, that I've failed, that the job I've been here for eight hours is already over.

Twenty minutes pass. Thirty. An hour.

At eight o'clock, another email. No subject. No greeting.

"It's acceptable. Meet me on forty-nine in the morning. 6 AM."

The forty-ninth floor doesn't exist. There is no forty-ninth floor. The building has forty-eight floors and then a roof. I know this because Margaret pointed out the floor plan on my first day.

I'm about to email back with a clarifying question when I realize something. I've been in this office for eight hours and I've done nothing but work. I haven't eaten. I haven't called anyone. I haven't thought about anything except the task in front of me. This is what working for Damien Ashford feels like. This is what the quiet intensity of his leadership tastes like when you're the one being led.

I don't sleep much that night.