POV Jocelyn

“I can do this. I can fucking do this.”

Day three at Wolfe Tower and I already look like death warmed over in a microwave that’s been broken since 2019.

My reflection in the elevator doors: a woman losing a cage match with corporate America.

My inbox is a digital nightmare: 347 unread emails since yesterday evening. Each one marked with varying degrees of urgency that range from “mildly important” to “the building is literally on fire.”

My eyes are bloodshot from staring at Mr. Wolfe’s cryptic spreadsheets until 2 AM, trying to decode notes that might as well be hieroglyphics.

But here’s the thing keeping me vertical: I’m still here. Still breathing. Still employed. Still getting paid while my daughter fights for her life twenty blocks away.

Patricia doesn’t look up when I stumble past her pristine desk like a caffeine-powered zombie.

“Still here? Thought you’d be gone after Day One.” The words hit like a casual slap designed to look accidental.

“Surprise. Sorry to disappoint, I’m annoyingly hard to kill.”

She finally glances up, lips curling into that familiar sneer that I’m starting to recognize as her default expression. Like she’s perpetually smelling something unpleasant, and that something is me.

“We’ll see.”

Before I can tell her exactly where to shove her attitude, Mr. Wolfe’s door creaks open like a horror movie sound effect.

“Ms. Hartwell.”

Two words. Just two fucking words, and my entire nervous system goes DEFCON 1. My spine snaps straight, shoulders tense, every muscle preparing for fresh hell.

“My calendar’s been misaligned since Singapore. Correct it. Then brief me on the Johnson account. Ten minutes.”

Door slams. I’m staring at expensive wood grain while my brain processes the impossibility.

Ten minutes to fix a calendar that looks like a jigsaw puzzle made of chaos and time zones that shouldn’t exist. Brief him on Johnson—which involves either a merger, hostile takeover, or both simultaneously.

Mind-reading apparently comes standard with my job description.

“Fantastic,” I mutter, speed-walking to my deskю. “Just fucking fantastic.”

By noon, I’m pretty sure my soul has vacated the premises. Probably in the Caribbean drinking fruity cocktails and laughing at my life choices.

Twelve-page report compiled from sources that didn’t exist until I created them? Check.

Lunch meeting cancelled five minutes after confirmation, requiring apology calls to three executives who think I’m clinically insane? Check.

Presentation reorganized for a client that materialized like corporate magic? Double check with existential crisis.

Then comes the executive luncheon. Crown jewel of corporate torture.

I’m balancing espresso shots like I’m defusing a bomb—which, given the collective net worth in this room, I basically am.

Hands shaking from exhaustion, three energy drinks that were definitely a mistake, and constant low-level panic that’s become my baseline emotional state.

A boardroom full of men in suits costing more than my entire existence. They’re discussing quarterly projections with the casual intensity of people planning world domination.

Almost to the conference table when Patricia appears like a corporate ninja.

Her shoulder bumps mine with precision screaming “accident” while being anything but.

“Oops.” The word drips fake innocence.

Tray tilts. Time slows to that special catastrophic slow motion where your brain catalogs every way this could go wrong while being powerless to stop it.

Cups clatter like a ceramic symphony of doom.

Dark coffee arcs through air in perfect trajectory, defying gravity just long enough for me to appreciate its mathematical beauty. Lands squarely down some board member’s ivory blazer that probably costs more than my annual salary.

Silence. The horror-movie kind where everyone dies next.

Every eye swings toward me like I’ve announced I’m carrying a bomb. Then they turn to Mr. Wolfe.

He doesn’t even blink or scowl. Just complete indifference, like I’m furniture that’s fallen over.

“Clean it up.”

Ice-cold voice, not cruel—that requires emotion, just indifferent. Somehow infinitely worse than screaming.

I grab napkins with shaking hands, moving on autopilot while my brain processes complete social annihilation. The board member glaring like I’ve ruined his genetic line. Patricia watching with barely concealed glee.

Mr. Wolfe’s already moved on. Talking Shanghai numbers like nothing happened. Like I don’t exist.

Later, in the elevator, I’m jabbing the close button like it owes me money when a hand shoots through the gap with reflexes suggesting athletic training or really good genetics.

Mr. Wolfe steps in and suddenly the elevator feels coffin-sized.

He’s close enough I can smell cedar and something indefinitely masculine that makes my brain go inappropriately fuzzy.

“Do you always fold under pressure, Ms. Hartwell?”

His voice is quiet. The dangerous kind of quiet that makes smart people very nervous.

“I was multitasking between your four emergencies while trying not to have a complete breakdown,” I snap, because self-preservation isn’t my strength.

He steps closer. Not threatening—something else entirely. Something that makes my pulse spike for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.

“Interesting.”

One word. But the way he says it, looking down at me with those green eyes that seem to see straight through my skull—it’s like he’s cataloging something. Filing away information.

The elevator dings. He steps out like we were discussing the weather instead of… whatever the hell that was.

“Good night, Ms. Hartwell.”

That night, I’m sitting beside Mia’s hospital bed, watching her draw with chunky crayons. She’s focused with that intense concentration only kids achieve, tongue poking out as she perfects her tiger’s stripes.

Then she does something that makes me freeze completely.

She drums her fingers against the bedside table. Three precise taps, pause. Three more taps, like morse code to the universe.

Exactly like Zayden does during meetings when he’s thinking.

“Where did you learn that, baby?”

She looks up, confused by the tension in my voice that I’m failing to hide.

“Learn what, Mama?”

“The finger thing. The tapping.”

Mia shrugs with casual six-year-old indifference, already turning back to her drawing.

“I don’t know. I just do it when I’m thinking hard.”