C12 The assistant

Daphne

The email was short and surgical:

> Subject: Please see Mr. Nikolaou in his office at 10:00 AM.

No flourish. No small talk. Just those eight words that felt like a summons to a courtroom.

My hands trembled as I read it for the third time. For a moment I couldn’t tell if the tremor came from caffeine, fear, or the memory of his eyes burning into me from his car the other night. Probably all three.

I forced myself to breathe. One step. One task. That had been my life for the past three years: one small step after another, trying to bury the past under paychecks and spreadsheets. I smoothed my skirt and walked the corridor that led to his office like a woman going to stand in the path of an oncoming storm.

People watched. Of course they watched. He made anywhere near him into a stage, and I—apparently—was tonight’s spectacle.

I walked in to find him already standing, hands in pockets, back to the window as if the city could fortify him better than any argument. He didn’t turn at first. He let the silence stretch, measured, precise, a test he knew I wouldn’t pass with composure.

“Miss Galanis.” His voice was cool. There was no warmth in it; warmth would have been a betrayal. “Close the door.”

My hand felt clumsy on the handle. I did as I was told, the click sounding like a verdict.

“Sit.” He gestured toward the chair opposite his desk. The chair was leather and looked like it had never known softness.

My heartbeat pounded in my throat as I lowered myself into it. Up close, he was more present—the set of his jaw, the slight scar at his lip catching light. He observed me the way a surgeon observes a patient: clinical, assessing, cataloguing weaknesses.

“You received my email,” he said.

“Yes.” My voice was small. I folded my hands in my lap like a child trying to be invisible. “Is there something you need, sir?”

“Do not call me sir.” He let the word hang there, oddly private and then suddenly public, as if a rule had been broken and he’d decided to rewrite it. “Antonio.”

My stomach clenched. The name tasted like memory and salt. I almost apologized—almost told him again that I’d done it to protect him—but the words hardened in me, useless armor that wouldn’t reach him.

He sat on the edge of his desk, one leg crossed over the other, and watched me with an intensity that made the room too small.

“You’ve been here eight months,” he said after a long breath. “You know how this place runs.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I—”

“Good.” He cut me off. “Effective immediately, you will be my Executive Assistant.”

For a fraction of a second nothing processed. Then the room spun and the chair felt like it might drop through the floor.

“You’re kidding.” I laughed because I couldn’t cry. The sound fractured, small and deranged. “You… you can’t be serious. I— I do coffee runs. I file. I make sure the printers work.”

He smiled then, a quick sharpening along his mouth. “Those are useful skills.”

“This is absurd.” I must have sounded ridiculous. Panic clambered up my spine. “There are people—who are more qualified—”

“They’re not you,” he said simply.

My throat closed. “Why me?” The stupidest question, but the one burning at the back of my mind. Why appoint me to a position that put my past and my present in the same room? Why put my chest under his thumb?

His eyes flicked away from mine, toward the skyline for a second that felt like a lifetime. “Because I want you close.”

The words hit me like a fist and I had to grip the arms of the chair to steady myself. Close for what? Protection? Punishment?

“Does this have anything to do with Rhea?” I blurted, the name slipping out like an accusation. “Because she was here—this morning.”

He didn’t answer at first. Instead his fingers tapped an invisible rhythm on the desk. “Rhea is… persistent. She thinks she has claims on me. She will be part of the landscape. You will treat any interaction with her professionally.”

“And if she—” I stopped. My throat was raw. I couldn’t finish the sentence: if she tries to push me out, if she marks him, if—if she knew what I felt.

“If she causes a problem, handle it,” he said flatly. “But do not make it mine. Understand?”

“Yes.” My voice was a husk. I nodded because my body obeyed better than my heart.

He slid a thin stack of papers across his desk toward me—schedules, security codes, a list of contacts. “Your ID has been upgraded. You have access to areas you didn’t before. You will have my calendar. You will also not leave the company for personal reasons without notifying me first.”

My hands hovered over the papers. Each rule felt like another thread in a net.

“One more thing,” he said, and there was a new hardness under his words now. “There are things about this company you will not see. If you come across something you do not understand, you will not investigate. You will tell me. Do you understand?”

I thought of the folder I’d found—Elysian Freight, offshore transfers, names that read like riddles. I thought of the men in suits who never smiled. My brain was already rehearsing the lie I would tell.

“I understand,” I lied.

He stood and walked around his desk, close enough that I could smell the faint trace of cedar and cologne that always seemed to follow him. For an absurd, traitorous second, I wanted to lean forward and bury my face in the crook of his neck and tell him the truth: that I did it to save him; that I would do it again.

Instead I pretended to be indignant. “So this is a promotion, then? Are you… hiring someone better for my old role?”

He looked at me as if the question offended him. “You will not be demoted. You will be elevated. And you will be paid accordingly.” He paused. “My employees are not playthings, Daphne. You will not let other people’s gossip define you.”

That should have felt like a mercy. Instead it felt like an order in a language I barely knew.

I left his office with the papers clutched to my chest, palms damp. The hallway blurred—the fluorescent lights looking too bright, my name echoing in my head. Outside, the floor hummed with new energy; people stopped mid-typing to stare as I walked past. Whispers wrapped around me like a cloak.

Irene was waiting by my desk, a grin bigger than the office gossip warranted. “Tell me that he didn’t just—” She stopped when she saw the stack of documents in my arms and the pale, stunned look on my face. “Oh my God. He actually did.”

“I don’t know if I should—” I started, then laughed because the idea of refusing was comical.

“You’ll be the talk of the year,” she squealed, one hand flying to her mouth. “I always knew you had it in you.”

“No you didn’t,” I muttered, but a fragile ember of something warmed the center of me—fear wrapped in a paper-thin slice of relief. A job. A paycheck. A roof. But now tethered to the man whose life I’d ruptured.

When I reached my desk, people craned to see. Some faces were flat with envy; others glinted with something nastier. The elevator of whispers rose again, and Rhea’s voice floated from somewhere near the executive suite—laughter like glass.

I touched the papers again, feeling the weight settle. I had access now. I had proximity. Every step toward competence would place me closer to his orbit, and closer to whatever he was hiding. It might also place me closer to the thing I had been trying to run from: the man whose hands had once promised me everything and then held nothing at all.

My phone buzzed. A message from Irene: Drinks tonight? You deserve at least one. Also—congratulations?

I stared at it and typed back: Later.

Then I looked up and noticed, across the floor, the glass wall of his office. He stood in the doorway watching me—hands in his pockets, jaw clenched the way it always did when he was thinking. The office was too bright; he was too shadowed. The distance between us was small and crushing.

He raised a hand, not in greeting, but in a small, precise motion that could have been a farewell or a command.

I didn’t know which.

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