[Cora’s POV]
I arrive at six-forty on Monday. By Wednesday, I'm beating the security guard. By Friday, the cleaning crew gives me a nod reserved for people who live in the building, and honestly, the distinction is academic at this point.
Blythe hasn't called. The delivered message sits in my phone like a small grey headstone marking the spot where my sister decided silence was louder than anything I deserved to hear. So I work—until my vision doubles and my coffee intake qualifies as a controlled substance.
The Whitmore files are immaculate, the Henderson briefs colour-coded within an inch of their lives. The job is the one variable in my life that still responds to effort, so I give it everything the rest of me can't hold.
"You're here before the building again." Edmund sets a coffee on my desk Thursday morning—black, no sugar, the order I never told him and he apparently memorised anyway. "Should I be concerned or impressed?"
"Impressed. Always go with impressed." I take the cup without looking up from the screen. "The Hargrove draft is in your inbox, and I moved the Whitmore call to three because their finance lead has a conflict at two."
"I didn't ask you to move it." He leans against the doorframe, sleeves already at the forearms though it's barely nine. The coffee's twin steams in his other hand, and his eyebrows do something that isn't quite a challenge but isn't far off.
"You would have in forty minutes. I'm saving us both the trip." My fingers keep moving because stopping means his proximity registers, and proximity has been a problem all week, and I firmly refuse to acknowledge it.
He lingers a beat longer than the conversation warrants, then retreats behind glass. Through the wall I watch him pause over the coffee I didn't ask for either—two people handing each other things they won't confess.
Thursday afternoon, I'm pulling print jobs from the copier when I catch James Ashford watching me from across the floor. Not glancing—watching, arms crossed, head tilted at the angle he uses when he's running calculations he hasn't shared yet.
I hold his gaze for two full seconds before he turns and walks toward Edmund's office, says something I can't hear through the glass. Edmund's pen stops moving. James nods toward his corner office, and Edmund sets the pen down and follows.
The door closes with the deliberate click of a conversation that requires walls. I stand at the copier counting minutes—four, five—while James leans back in his chair and Edmund doesn't sit at all.
When he comes out, his face is rearranged—not upset, curated, every feature placed with intention. He straightens his cuffs without needing to, as if putting himself back together before anyone notices the seams.
"The Hargrove draft is good. No changes needed." He passes my desk a beat faster than normal, eyes already on his office door.
"Edmund." He stops but doesn't turn fully—quarter-profile, the line of his jaw drawn so tight it could cut the air between us. "Everything alright with James?"
"Fine. He wants quarterly projections by Monday." His office door closes behind the word fine, and I add it to the collection—the missing pitch deck, the altered figures, a growing inventory of things in this building that don't add up.
Then my desk phone rings. "This is Patricia Langley, Whitmore Group. I sent Edmund an email three days ago about revised contract terms and I've had precisely zero response."
My stomach drops through the chair. "Mrs Langley, I sincerely apologise—let me pull up the correspondence right now."
"Please do. Seventy-two hours of silence on a time-sensitive revision is not what we agreed to." The line holds, but I have a feeling that at the same time she’s composing a formal complaint.
I search Edmund's inbox, the shared drive, every folder with my fingerprints on it. Nothing from Langley, nothing from Whitmore for three days—impossible, because I audit this inbox before the building has oxygen.
"Edmund will respond within the hour. You have my word." I hang up and open the server settings—the backend Edmund gave me during pitch prep, the system most assistants never touch.
The forwarding rules have been modified. Three days ago, four-seventeen p.m., all Whitmore Group mail rerouted to a subfolder buried three levels deep in the archive. Not deleted—hidden, by someone who knows deletion leaves a louder trail than redirection.
The activity log shows a fourth-floor terminal. Accounts. My throat tightens around a name I don't say out loud, because suspicion without proof is a weapon that backfires on women without degrees.
I screenshot the log and save it to a personal folder—same one holding the edit history from the altered figures and the access record from the night my pitch deck vanished. Three incidents, three timestamps, one floor. The folder is getting heavy.
I fix the redirect and forward Langley's email to Edmund with a note. My hands stay steady only because the shaking has learned to wait until I can afford it.
Seven-fifteen, and the Highgate streetlight does its reliable thing when I ring Edmund's bell without calling ahead. Warning means Blythe has time to build walls, and I'm done being polite on the wrong side of them.
Margaret opens the door in cashmere and reading glasses, tea in hand. "She's gone to bed, Cora. Asked not to be disturbed."
"It's seven-fifteen, Margaret." My bag strap twists tight enough around my fist to bite the skin underneath. "She hasn't gone to bed—she's avoiding me."
"Perhaps." She sips tea with the composure of a woman who raised a CEO and doesn't rattle for civilians. "Either way, she set a boundary, and I'm not in the business of dismantling those."
Three sentences push against my teeth—she's my sister, I raised her, you've known her a week—and I swallow every one because Margaret isn't the enemy and my jaw knows the difference even when the rest of me doesn't. "Will you tell her I came? Just that I was here."
"Of course." Something behind her glasses shifts, barely. "She ate all her dinner tonight, if that helps."
It does and it shouldn't. Someone else cooked it, someone else sat across from her while she ate, and whatever is gnawing through my ribs can stand in line behind the part of me that needs her fed more than it needs to be the one feeding her.
The door closes gently, which turns out to be worse than a slam. I stand on the step counting windows—second floor, first on the left, the light still on because she's not sleeping but drawing in a room I didn't furnish.
My car starts on the second try. Phone face-down on the passenger seat, because one more look at that grey unread message and I'm putting this car through a shopfront.
Halfway down the hill, it buzzes. I pull over so fast the tyres scrape the kerb, my hand already reaching, already hoping.
Not Blythe. Edmund: James wants to discuss your role Monday. Don't worry—I'll handle it.
My fingers go white on the steering wheel. The closed door, the curated face, James watching me across the floor all afternoon like a man who'd already decided something.
And Edmund, texting at half seven on a Friday night, telling me not to worry in a message that does absolutely nothing else. I put the car in gear and drive.