The Boss

Chapter 1

The sleek, silver second hand of the clock on the wall didn’t so much tick as it did slice, carving another silent fragment of time from the day. Leo Moretti watched it, his chin propped on his hand, feeling the low, familiar hum of anxiety that was the background noise of his life at Sterling Corp.

From his cubicle, he had a perfect, albeit partial, view of the corner office. Through the slatted blinds, he could see a sliver of a meticulously organized desk, a single, thriving monstera plant, and the relentless motion of his boss, Victoria Sterling.

She was a vortex of focused energy. Even seated, she seemed to be in motion. Her pen flew across a document, her free hand scrolled through something on her tablet, and her head was cocked, holding her phone to her ear with a sculpted shoulder.

“No, Richard, the projections in Q3 are optimistic, not aspirational. I need the revised numbers on my desk by four. Not four-fifteen. Four.”

Her voice, crisp and clear as shattered glass, carried through the crack in her door. It was a voice that could flay the hide off a senior VP without ever raising a register. Leo both feared and admired it.

His gaze shifted to the cubicle mirroring his own, just a few feet away. Mason Reed. His rival. Mason’s head was down, his fingers a blur on his keyboard. He looked the part of the perfect executive assistant: crisp blue shirt, tasteful tie, hair perfectly parted. He was a machine of quiet, relentless efficiency. Leo, in his slightly-too-tight dark sweater and with a curl of hair that refused to stay in place, felt like a scruffy imposter by comparison.

The promotion hung between them, an unspoken, oppressive cloud. One of them would become Senior Executive Assistant to Victoria Sterling. The other would, presumably, have to keep fetching coffee and pretending they didn’t want to scream. The role came with a significant pay bump, a key to the executive washroom, and, most importantly, a permanent spot in the orbit of Victoria Sterling. Leo wanted it. He needed it. He could practically taste the stale, expensive coffee of that washroom.

His computer chimed. An email from Victoria. The subject line was just a word: “Now.”

He and Mason moved in unison, rising from their chairs like synchronized toys. They met at her door, a brief, silent battle of politeness as each gestured for the other to go first. Mason won with a tight, insincere smile, pushing the door open.

Victoria’s office was a testament to minimalist control. Everything was shades of white, grey, and chrome. The air smelled faintly of lemons and ambition. She didn’t look up as they entered, finishing an note on a legal pad with a violent slash of her pen.

“The Kensington contract,” she said, finally lifting her eyes. They were a striking, frosty blue. “Leo, the digital copies are a mess. File names are inconsistent, and half the supporting documents are in the wrong folders. It looks like a digital landfill.”

Leo’s stomach tightened. “I’ll reorganize them immediately, Victoria.”

“You will.” Her gaze swung to Mason. “Mason, the printed copies for the board. The binding is crooked on two of them. It’s sloppy. I can’t present sloppy.”

Mason’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “I’ll have them redone.”

She leaned back in her Herman Miller chair, which sighed in response. She was, as always, impeccably dressed. A tailored, ice-white blouse that showed off toned arms, and a black pencil skirt that hugged a waist so narrow Leo sometimes wondered if she was photosynthesizing instead of eating. Her chestnut hair was pulled back in a severe, flawless ponytail. She was the picture of disciplined perfection, a pilates-going, green-juice-drinking deity of corporate warfare.

“This deal is worth twelve million dollars,” she said, her voice low and dangerous. “Twelve million. It requires precision. It requires perfection. It does not require me to handhold you through basic administrative competence. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” they said in unison, a pair of chastised schoolboys.

“Good. The revisions will be in your inboxes within the hour. I want the cleaned-up digital package and the perfectly bound physical copies on my desk by the end of the day. Get out.”

They retreated, the door clicking shut behind them. The air in the cubicle farm felt suddenly thick and cheap.

“Digital landfill,” Mason muttered under his breath, sinking into his chair and jabbing the power button on his computer with more force than necessary.

“Well, crooked binding is a capital offense,” Leo shot back, slumping into his own seat. “I heard they send you to corporate guillotine for that.”

Mason didn’t smile. He never did. “Just fix your files, Moretti.”

The next hour was a blur of frantic activity. Leo dove into the digital file structure, cursing his past self for his chaotic naming conventions. ‘Kensington_final_v2_actuallyfinal.pdf’ stared back at him, a monument to his own failure. From the other side of the partition, he heard the precise, angry clicks of Mason’s mouse and the rapid-fire tapping of keys. The sound was accusatory.

Victoria’s door opened and she swept out, her heels clicking a staccato rhythm on the polished concrete floor. “I’m heading to the third floor to wrangle the legal department. Don’t breathe until this is done.”

The silence she left in her wake was heavier than her presence.

By the time one o’clock rolled around, Leo’s head was pounding. The revised documents had arrived, a fresh avalanche of work. He’d skipped breakfast, and a hollow, gnawing feeling had taken up residence in his gut. He glanced at Mason, who was still typing, his posture ramrod straight. Did the man even have a spine? Or was it just a titanium rod?

His stomach growled, loud enough to be heard over the hum of the computers.

Mason’s typing paused for a half-second. “Perhaps you should attend to that,” he said, not looking away from his screen.

“Perhaps you should mind your own business,” Leo snapped, his irritation fueled by hunger.

It was then that he noticed it. A slight tremor in Mason’s hand as he reached for his water bottle. A tightness around his eyes. He was just as stressed, just as hungry. He was just better at hiding it.

Victoria returned just after two, her expression stormy. Legal had been, in her words, “a gaggle of obstructive morons.” She stalked into her office and slammed the door.

The tension ratcheted up another notch. Leo’s hunger was now a sharp, distracting pain. He made a mistake, sending a file to the wrong printer. Mason let out a quiet, exasperated sigh that was somehow worse than a shouted insult.

This was impossible. They were set up to fail. The pressure was too much, the timeline too tight, the standards too inhumanly high. Leo stared at the sliver of Victoria through the blinds. She was pinching the bridge of her nose, a rare display of human frailty. She was hungry too. He’d seen it before. Her sharpest, most vicious critiques always came around two-thirty, when her breakfast of kale and steam had surely worn off.

A thought, fragile and half-formed, flickered in his mind. It wasn’t about the files. It wasn’t about the binding. It was about the engine. And the engine was running on empty.

He looked at Mason, a slave to perfection, and then back at Victoria, a queen under pressure.

And in that moment, Leo Moretti decided to change the fuel.

He stood up abruptly, grabbing his wallet. Mason glanced up, a question in his eyes.

“Where are you going? We’ve got ninety minutes.”

“I’m initiating a strategic morale operation,” Leo said, his voice laced with a confidence he didn’t fully feel. “Hold down the fort.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He walked out, the eyes of the entire office on his back, and headed for the elevator. He didn’t go to the sad little sandwich shop in the lobby. He went around the corner, to the expensive, artisanal bakery he could barely afford.

The bell on the door jingled. The air was warm and smelled of yeast and sugar. He looked at the rows of perfect, glazed, sprinkled, and cream-filled confections. He wasn’t a gambler, but this felt like the highest-stakes bet of his life.

He pointed to a dozen of the most decadent, calorie-packed donuts in the place—a maple-bacon bar, a custard-filled behemoth dusted with powdered sugar, a chocolate-glazed ring that looked like a tractor tire.

“I’ll take the box,” he said, his heart hammering against his ribs. He was either about to save the day, or get fired in a blaze of sugary glory.

Walking back into the office, the white box tied with baker’s twine felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. All eyes were on him again, but this time with curiosity. He ignored them, setting the box down on his desk with a soft thump.

Mason stared at it, then at Leo, his expression one of pure, unadulterated bewilderment. “What is that?”

“Leverage,” Leo said, offering no other explanation.

He took a deep breath, picked up the box, and walked toward the corner office. This was it. The moment of truth. He knocked softly on the door.

“What?” The voice was sharp, impatient.

He pushed the door open. Victoria was glaring at her screen, her posture rigid with stress.

“Victoria, I thought you could use a…” he faltered, searching for the right corporate-friendly word. “…a blood sugar recalibration.”

He opened the box.

The smell of sugar and fried dough wafted into the sterile, lemon-scented air. Victoria’s eyes flickered from her screen to the box. Her gaze landed on the maple-bacon donut. For a long, terrifying second, she said nothing. Leo was sure he’d miscalculated. She was going to tell him to get that garbage out of her office.

Then, something miraculous happened. Her shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. A tiny, almost imperceptible sigh escaped her lips.

“Is that from Buttercup Bakery?” she asked, her voice quieter than before.

“Yes,” Leo said, his throat dry.

She looked from the donut to him, her sharp blue eyes assessing him in a new way. Slowly, as if moving against her own will, she reached out and picked up the maple-bacon donut. She took a small, hesitant bite.

Leo watched. She chewed. She swallowed. And then, a transformation began. The tightness around her eyes softened. A faint hint of color came to her cheeks.

“Oh,” she said, a simple, surprised exhalation. “That’s… incredible.”

She took another, more confident bite. A tiny smear of maple glaze appeared on her lip. She didn’t seem to notice. “Thank you, Leo. This was… thoughtful.”

She looked… pleased. Actually, genuinely pleased.

“My pleasure,” he managed to say, his voice barely a whisper.

“Take one for yourself. And give one to Mason,” she said, already turning back to her screen, but her movements were smoother, less jagged. The storm in her office had momentarily cleared.

Leo backed out, clutching the box, his mind reeling. He floated back to his desk. Mason was staring at him, his earlier bewilderment replaced by stark, calculating curiosity.

“Well?” Mason asked.

Wordlessly, Leo handed him a chocolate-glazed donut. Mason took it, his eyes never leaving Leo’s face.

Leo took a custard-filled one for himself. He bit into it. The sweetness exploded on his tongue, a visceral, immediate pleasure. He looked at the corner office. Victoria was taking another bite, a small, contented smile on her face.

And in that moment, Leo Moretti knew. This wasn’t just about donuts. This was about something far more powerful. He had just discovered the key to Victoria Sterling.

And he had no intention of letting Mason Reed find a copy.