The click of the lock sounded louder than it should have.
I turned, back against the door, the city a glittering audience beyond the glass. The leaked image stared at us from the screen like a prophecy we hadn't consented to. My skin prickled with the knowledge that somewhere, people I'd never meet were dragging me into their breakfast conversations.
Adrian didn't move for a moment. Then he breathed out, slow, like resetting the board. "Sit."
I did. The leather chair was too soft; I felt like I was sinking. "This is—"
"Predictable." He didn't raise his voice. "First day. New face. Elevator angle. The internet does the rest."
"I wasn't—" I started, and stopped, because I didn't know what I wanted to defend. My intentions? My proximity? My heart?
He tilted the screen. The comments were a wildfire. Emojis. Screenshots. Threads. A few defended the intern. More didn't.
Is she even legal?HR asleep or just blind?Mentorship optics 😂#RulesOfDesire is WILD
It wasn't the first time the world had turned me into a headline against my will. But this time my name was attached to a face that looked like mine, not just the kind of trouble my father caused.
The door opened a crack. Ethan slipped inside with a tablet, shut it, and leaned on it as if to keep the rest of the building out. "It's across platforms. Twitter, Insta, gossip sites, those finance snark accounts. 'Rule Three' is trending."
Adrian's jaw ticked. "PR?"
"Drafting 'no comment' language. HR wants to issue a mentorship statement. Legal wants to remind you about cameras you already knew existed."
"Investors?"
"A few side-eyes. One text from Rowan in London: 'Careful. The wolves smell blood.'" Ethan hesitated. "There's more."
Adrian's look said say it.
Ethan turned the tablet around. A DM screenshot. A handle I knew too well for having tried to pretend it didn't exist: @CarterMediaWatch. Not official. The kind of account that loved to tally layoffs like sports scores.
Tip: the intern is Daniel Carter's daughter. Conflict of interest much?
The room tilted again.
Adrian's gaze went to me. "Is that account connected to your father?"
"No." My voice was ash. "He hates social media. He thinks it's… beneath him." He used to love being adored by cameras. Before they stopped loving him back.
"Then who knows?" Ethan asked quietly.
I thought of orientation, of lemon blazers and delicate chains. Don't be noticed. Tara's eyes had sparkled when she mentioned the elevator. But accusing another intern without proof wouldn't fix my pounding heart.
Adrian stood, and the room adjusted to his height. "We do nothing publicly," he said. "No denial—denials read like confessions. No comment—comments feed the algorithm. We starve it."
Ethan nodded. "I'll sit on PR. HR will pitch a fit."
"They can pitch," Adrian said. "We'll catch when I say so."
He turned back to me. "Ms. Carter—Ella—look at me."
I did. And the room got very small.
"From this moment, your breathing is my brand. If you panic, you fuel this. If you posture, you fuel this. If you blink at the wrong time, you fuel this. So you'll do exactly as I say, and you'll be fine."
"That's not fair," I whispered.
"Life isn't." A muscle jumped in his temple. Then his voice gentled by a degree I wouldn't have thought possible. "But I'll put a roof over you while it rains."
A vibration on the desk cut between us. Adrian's phone lit up with a name that burned my eyes.
Daniel Carter.
He glanced at me, then at the message. He slid the phone my way like a test.
Daniel Carter:Keep my daughter out of your games, Blackwell. This is war.
I didn't realize my fingers were shaking until the screen blurred. "I didn't tell him I was assigned to you," I said. "I didn't tell anyone."
"I believe you," Adrian said immediately.
The relief hit like heat after cold. He didn't ask me to prove it. He didn't accuse me of being naive. He just believed me and moved forward.
"Which means," he said, handing the phone to Ethan, "someone else did. Find where it leaked."
Ethan nodded, already texting.
Adrian returned to me. "Rule Four."
My throat worked. "There's a fourth?"
"Yes." His eyes held mine in a way that made the rest of the room fall out of focus. "Trust no one but me."
The sentence tangled with the thrum in my veins. Dangerous. Binding. I should have recoiled; instead, something inside me sat up straighter.
"Repeat it," he said.
"I—" It stuck. I swallowed. "Trust no one but you."
"Good." He half-smiled, not pleased so much as satisfied with the geometry of a move. "Now we work."
For an hour, work meant triage. Ethan managed PR like a traffic cop at rush hour. I drafted a short internal note for Corporate Affairs—monitor chatter, flag high-risk narratives, do not engage. Adrian rewrote two lines in nine words, and the result was something that sounded like him: clean, surgical, unafraid.
The gossip accounts kept posting. Tara stopped by the glass wall twice with a look that said curiosity pretending to be concern. She cupped her phone when she thought I wasn't looking. I was looking.
When I finally escaped to the break area for water, Tara materialized, all soft voice and sharp edges. "Hey," she said, "how are you holding up?"
"I'm fine," I said, because that's what you say when you're bleeding in public.
She toyed with her chain. "It's just—some girls don't realize the optics. I'm sure you didn't mean to be alone with him. The camera angle is… cruel."
"Cameras don't make choices," I said.
"True." Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "But they do capture them."
"Like when someone tips off a gossip account about a last name?" I asked, and watched her blink.
"I don't know what you mean." The denial was quick and practiced. "I would never—HR says we should support each other, especially women. We don't want to be the reason you're… reassigned."
"Don't worry," I said lightly. "It would take more than a hashtag to move me."
Her gaze slipped to my phone where #RulesOfDesire was still trending like a storm. "We'll see," she said sweetly, and drifted away.
Back in the office, I found Ethan and Adrian reviewing a slide about a separate deal, as if entire markets hadn't decided my life was entertainment. Adrian didn't look up, but he gestured me closer. "Sit. Breathe."
I sat. I breathed. Work kept me from checking my phone every thirty seconds. Work made the noise duller. Work meant I could be a function rather than a face.
When lunch arrived, I couldn't eat. Adrian didn't try to persuade me, but he set a glass of ginger ale within reach like a truce. "Your father," he said finally, still scanning the slide, "has responded to market pressure by blaming anyone with a pulse. He will try to use you. Don't let him."
"He's still my father," I murmured. Even when the word tastes like rust.
"And I'm still me," Adrian said. "Which is why I won't apologize for doing my job."
"I didn't ask you to."
He glanced up, catching the surprise I hadn't hidden well enough. "Most people do."
"Maybe I'm not most people."
"Maybe you aren't."
Another buzz. Ethan's tablet. He winced. "We have a problem."
"We had many," Adrian said dryly. "Name this one."
"The gossip account just posted a follow-up. Not just the elevator. They have a screenshot from orientation—Ella with the HR manager, timestamped. And a caption: 'Sources confirm FL's identity: Ella Carter, daughter of Carter Media's embattled CEO. Conflict of interest? Or Rules of Desire at Blackwell?'"
The room went very quiet.
My heart didn't so much drop as slide. There was a privacy violation here somewhere, a policy broken, a camera pointed where it shouldn't have been. But none of that mattered in the three seconds it takes for a narrative to calcify.
Adrian stood so suddenly the chair rolled back an inch. His calm didn't crack; it sharpened. "Lock down access to the intern directory," he said. "I want logs from security. Pull the vendor who handles camera data. Whoever touched that footage without authorization loses their contract."
Ethan was already on it.
Adrian turned to me. "You don't leave this floor without me or Ethan. You don't respond to anything. You don't show the world you're rattled."
"I'm not," I said, and heard the lie as my voice tried to be brave.
His gaze flicked to my hands. "Then tell your hands."
I flattened them on my knees. Stop. Stop. Stop.
A chime sounded—calendar invite: Crisis Sync — HR/PR/Legal. Ten minutes. Location: Executive Conference.
Adrian's eyes warmed by one degree. "Walk with me."
We moved through corridors where glass made privacy a rumor. People looked. People always look. Ethan held the door to the conference room. Inside: HR in lemon, PR in navy, Legal in charcoal, three colors of concern.
"Guidance," HR began. "We need to distance Mr. Blackwell from the intern. 'Mentorship only' language—"
"No," Adrian said.
PR tried for a smile. "We can frame it as leadership investing in young talent—"
"No." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "We do not feed this. We do not dignify it. The more you talk, the more they eat."
Legal cleared his throat. "We have a different issue. Orientation images—if the vendor leaked, we need to pursue remedies. Also, if Ms. Carter is related to a target company—"
"Conflict management is my department," Adrian said. "Disclose where necessary, recuse where appropriate. Meanwhile, you will track the leak and make an example."
HR's eyes ping-ponged between us, sticky with subtext. "Given optics, we should consider reassigning Ms. Carter away from the executive floor."
I opened my mouth, braced for humiliation.
"No," Adrian said. "She stays."
HR's brows climbed. "On what grounds?"
"On mine." He let the word hang a beat too long. "She is temporary operations support assigned by the CEO. If that offends your sense of optics, file paperwork. I'll frame the optics."
A spark lit under my ribs, dangerous and stupid and thrilling.
After, as we left the room, Tara was in the hall, pretending to be surprised to bump into us. Her eyes went from Adrian to me, saucer-wide and hungry. "Ms. Carter," she said, syrup-sincere. "If you need anything, I'm here."
"I'll remember," I said. I would. Just not the way she meant.
Back in the office, rain began to needle the glass. The city blurred. For a few minutes, it was just the sound of weather and keys.
Then my phone buzzed—a number I hadn't saved because I never had to. I knew it anyway. I stared at it until the second buzz turned into a third.
Adrian's gaze landed on me. "Answer," he said softly. "Put it on speaker."
"He'll—"
"Trust no one but me."
I swallowed and slid my thumb right.
"Ella," my father's voice came through, a mix of whiskey and desperation. "You need to leave that office. Right now. Do you hear me? Pack your things."
"Dad—"
"Blackwell is a vulture," he snapped. "He wants your face next to his while he guts me. You're a prop in his show."
Adrian didn't flinch. He stood at the window, hands in pockets, a patient storm.
"Dad, I'm safe," I said. "This is my job."
"Your job is to listen to your father." A bitter laugh. "Unless the man signing your stipend has a better claim."
Heat stung behind my eyes. "Don't do that."
"Then walk," he said, softer. "Please. For me."
Silence spread, thin as ice.
When I didn't answer, he exhaled, long and worn. "If you won't leave, at least understand this: he's coming for me. And when he moves, he'll use you to keep the cameras busy while he cuts."
The line clicked dead.
I stood there with the echo in my hands.
Adrian still didn't move. "He's not wrong about one thing," he said finally. "I'm coming." He turned. "But I won't use you."
I opened my mouth to argue—to say you already are—when Ethan barreled in, pale. "Adrian. It just got worse."
"Define," Adrian said.
Ethan put his phone on the desk. A headline blazed from a major finance blog, the kind people in this building pretend not to read while refreshing hourly.
BLACKWELL'S FORBIDDEN GAME: INTERN IDENTIFIED AS HEIRESS TO TARGET COMPANY. MERGER OR MANIPULATION?
Below it, a photo I hadn't known existed—me stepping out of the elevator, eyes lifted, his reflection behind me like a shadow that had chosen me. The caption speculated like speculation were oxygen.
My stomach turned. Heir— If they only knew what was left to inherit.
Adrian's face didn't change. It sharpened. "Ethan," he said, voice like winter, "clear my afternoon."
"Done."
He looked at me. The world narrowed to the space between us. "You're not going home," he said. "You're not facing that alone. You'll stay here and learn how to survive a storm."
"How?" I asked, my voice too thin.
He stepped closer, and the air shifted temperature. "By letting me teach you."
Before I could answer, the intercom crackled again—HR this time, voice tight. "Mr. Blackwell, Legal needs you. The vendor denies the leak. Security says internal credentials pulled the footage."
Internal. My skin went cold.
Adrian's eyes met mine, something unspoken sparking there. "Lock this office behind me," he said, already moving. "Don't open it unless it's me or Ethan."
"Adrian—" I said, before I could stop myself. His name tasted like a decision.
He paused at the door. "Yes, Ella?"
I swallowed. "If it was internal… then who?"
His gaze cut to the glass wall where the hallway reflected back at us like a second stage. Footsteps passed. A flash of blonde hair. A delicate chain that might be a star or an asterisk.
Adrian's mouth curved—wolfish, knowing, not kind. "That," he said, and opened the door, "is what we're about to find out."
The door closed. The lock slid.
I turned back to the screen, to the headline burning hot as a brand, to the rain stitching lines down the city.
My phone buzzed again—unknown number, same preview bubble: I know what you are.A second followed: And I know what he wants.
I stared at the messages, at my name on the blog, at the grainy photo that had made me a story.
Then the knob turned once, softly.
"Ms. Carter?" A voice I recognized purred through the door, sugar-sweet and waiting. "Are you in there? I brought you a coffee."