Chapter 2 The First Lie I Told Him

“So.” The HR woman, Denise, doesn’t look up from her screen. “Denver.”

“Denver,” I say.

“Five years at Whitfield Consulting.” She scrolls. 

“Funny, I called their main line yesterday just to confirm your dates and got a voicemail that hasn’t been updated since 2019.”

Something inside me sinks, but my face stays still. “They downsized hard during the pandemic. Half the staff directory’s probably dead links at this point.”

“Mm.” She types something. Doesn’t ask again. I let out a breath I don’t show her.

Jackson’s assistant appears in the doorway before Denise finishes, a tall woman with a tablet and the kind of smile that’s purely functional.

“Sorry to interrupt. Mr. Ruspoli wants Ms. Brady’s onboarding expedited. He’d like her settled by end of day.”

Denise blinks. “That’s not usually how this works.”

“I don’t make the requests, I just deliver them.” The assistant looks at me for the first time, quick and assessing, like she’s trying to figure out what I did to earn that. “This way.”

I follow her out, heart doing something uncomfortable in my chest. Expedited onboarding isn’t good news. It means eyes on me faster than I planned for.

“Has he done this before?” I ask, keeping my voice light. “Rush someone through onboarding?”

“Never.” She doesn’t slow down. “You must have made an impression in the lobby.”

“We talked for maybe ninety seconds.”

“That’s usually all it takes with him.” She glances back, not unkind, just curious. “He notices things. Good to know now instead of later.”

We reach a cubicle on the compliance floor, nothing special, a desk with a monitor and a stack of onboarding paperwork three inches thick. She sets the tablet down.

“Fill these out. Someone will collect them by three. And Ms. Brady, one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“He asked where you went to school. I didn’t have that in your file.”

My mouth goes dry for half a second. Whitfield Consulting’s fake dates were one thing, buried in a company that barely exists anymore. A school is a real place, with real records, real people who could confirm or deny.

“University of Colorado,” I say. “Boulder.”

“Great, I’ll update it.” She doesn’t write it down in front of me, just taps it into the tablet and walks off, leaving me alone with a stack of forms and a pulse that won’t slow down.

I almost said Denver State. The name was right there, halfway up my throat, a school I made up in my head weeks ago during a different draft of this cover story before I switched details at the last minute. If I’d said it instead of Boulder, and Boulder was the one written in my actual file already, that’s the kind of inconsistency that gets flagged, cross-checked, unraveled.

I sit down. Breathe. Start on the paperwork.

Twenty minutes in, my new supervisor, a soft-spoken man named Aaron, drops by to introduce himself, gives me the standard tour, badge access, break room, the compliance team’s shared drive. Small talk. Easy. My shoulders start to come down from around my ears for the first time since the lobby.

Then his phone chirps. He reads it, and his eyebrows go up.

“Huh,” he says.

“What?”

“Nothing bad. Just unusual.” He turns the phone slightly, like he wants to show me, then thinks better of it and puts it away. “Mr. Ruspoli wants you added to Meridian.”

“What’s Meridian?”

“His personal project team. Six people, maybe seven now with you. It’s the kind of assignment people wait two years for.” He studies me, not unkindly, just baffled. “You’ve been here three hours.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes, obviously.” He laughs, but there’s something careful underneath it, the same look the assistant had. Like everyone in this building has learned that when Jackson Ruspoli does something unusual, it’s worth paying attention to why. “I’ll forward you the details. Congratulations, I guess.”

He walks off, already halfway through composing a text to someone else about it.

I sit very still at my new desk, staring at the half-finished paperwork in front of me.

Meridian isn’t just an assignment. Aaron said six people, seven with me, working directly under Jackson. That’s not distance. That’s the opposite of distance. That’s a man pulling me close enough to watch every move I make, every day, from now on.

He said my file was thin. He asked where I went to school before I’d even settled into a chair. And now, hours later, he’s rewriting protocol to keep me near him.

This isn’t hospitality.

This is a man setting a trap and calling it an invitation, and I don’t know yet if he’s doing it because he suspects exactly who I am, or because some part of him wants me close for reasons that have nothing to do with suspicion at all.

Either answer should scare me.

Only one of them does.

My phone buzzes on the desk. A calendar invite, sent directly from Jackson Ruspoli’s assistant.

Meridian Team Sync. Tomorrow, 8 AM. Mandatory. Jackson Ruspoli will be present.

I stare at it a second too long before a second message comes through underneath it, no subject line, sent from a number I don’t recognize.

Welcome to the building, Natalie.

My hand goes cold around the phone.

Nobody in this building knows that name.