Chapter 1My Boss On My Payroll

On my first day at the firm, I accidentally mistook my female director’s contact for my little sister’s.

For three straight months, I sent her cash every few days—two hundred, five hundred, eight hundred bucks a pop.

"Be good, kiddo. Just got paid. Don’t starve yourself."

It wasn’t until I finally checked the profile details that I saw the actual contact card:

Margot Reed. Senior Director of Operations.

By then, I had sent her twelve thousand eight hundred dollars.

* * *

My name is Sean. I’m twenty-six, and today was my first morning at Beacon Media.

The woman from People Ops gave me the standard tour of the floor before stopping outside a sleek, frosted-glass corner office. She lowered her voice to a discreet murmur.

"That’s the director of your department. Margot Reed."

I followed her gaze through the glass.

A woman sat behind an uncluttered walnut desk, sleek dark hair tucked behind one ear, scanning a quarterly report. A solitary cup of black coffee sat beside her laptop. Even with the building’s thermostat humming at a standard sixty-eight degrees, the air behind that glass partition seemed to hover somewhere near freezing.

"How’s her temper?" I asked.

The HR rep looked at me with the kind of pity usually reserved for men about to walk into traffic. "Just... survive," she said, patted my shoulder twice, and walked away.

I settled into my cubicle. Around me, my new teammates were already hammering away at their keyboards in complete, eerie silence—like a room full of highly trained, synchronized sewing machines.

I pulled out my phone, pulled up the internal company directory, and started adding contacts.

This was per the survival guide from Dustin, my college roommate who had been at Beacon for two years and was the sole reason my resume hadn’t ended up in the digital shredder.

"Bro, add everyone in the department on day one," he had drilled into me the night before over cheap beer. "Shows initiative. Especially Reed. You have to add her. Her icon is a silhouette of a black cat. You see the cat, you hit add."

I scrolled through the directory, spotted the tiny black cat icon, and sent the request. Once approved, I didn't bother updating the nickname or saving her full title. I just let it sit there in my recent chats.

At nine that evening, sprawled across the sagging mattress of my cramped studio apartment, I unlocked my phone.

My little sister, Phoebe, had just started her freshman year at an out-of-state college. It was her first semester alone in an unfamiliar city, and my older-brother instincts were in overdrive. I searched for her profile—a black cat thumbnail. She’d gone through a rescue-cat phase recently and swapped her picture to a dark kitten.

I tapped the thread, opened Apple Cash, and sent over five hundred dollars.

"Hey kiddo, you make it back to the dorm okay? Started the new job today. Haven't gotten my first paycheck yet, but take this five hundred first. Don't be cheap with yourself—eat real food."

"Go to bed early. Stop doomscrolling on TikTok."

"Is that comforter thick enough? Weather app says it’s dropping into the thirties out there. If it’s freezing, go buy another blanket. I’ll cover it."

I set the phone face down on my pillow and closed my eyes, a familiar sense of duty settling in my chest. When our dad passed, being the older brother meant making sure my sister never had to swallow her pride or feel the cold edges of the world.

What I didn’t know was that across town, in a high-rise condo, Margot Reed was sitting on an ivory sofa, staring at her screen.

Her phone had chimed with an incoming transfer of five hundred dollars.

Followed by three texts.

The sender’s handle: "Sean_TakesTheL".

Beside the green payment notification sat the line: "Hey kiddo, you make it back to the dorm okay?"

Margot set the phone on the coffee table. She picked up her ceramic mug, took a sip of herbal tea, and set it down.

She picked up the phone again. Read the texts a second time.

"...Is this guy insane?" she muttered to the empty room.

The next morning, I swiped my badge at the turnstiles and headed down the corridor toward my pod. The door to Margot’s office swung open, and she stepped out right in front of me.

In person, she was even more formidable than she appeared through the glass. Her eyes were an impossibly cool, clear grey, sharp enough to cut glass.

My spine locked up on instinct. "Morning, Ms. Reed!"

She paused mid-stride.

She looked at me for two long seconds. Long enough for me to run an internal diagnostic on whether my tie was crooked or if I had blueberry muffin crumbs stuck to my chin.

"Morning," she said. Flat. Monotone.

Then she kept walking.

I let out a ragged breath. Dustin was right. The woman was a walking walk-in freezer.

At noon, sitting in the cafeteria with a tray of food, I fired off another text to "my sister."

"Hey, did you eat lunch? Stop living on instant noodles. College dining hall food might taste like cardboard, but it’s still better than sodium poisoning."

"Company cafeteria actually had braised short ribs today. Honestly almost brought a tear to my eye."

"By the way, didn't you say you needed a winter coat? Once my first real direct deposit lands, we’ll order it."

Status: "Delivered. Read."

No reply.

I didn’t think twice about it. Phoebe had always been a quiet kid, sullen and low-energy. Our communication mostly consisted of her sending "k," "yeah," or "fine." I was used to carrying on monologues.

Meanwhile, up on the twelfth floor, Margot leaned back in her leather executive chair, her thumb poised over her screen.

The messages were definitely hitting her device. She pulled up the sender’s profile. Avatar: a cartoon fish lying flat on a plate. Handle: "Sean_TakesTheL".

His latest public post from last month was a photo of a sparse, poorly lit bedroom with the caption: "New city, new grind. Let’s do this."

Beneath it was a single comment from an account called "Dustin_TheBust": "Six hundred a month for this closet? My golden retriever’s crate has more square footage."

Margot clicked her screen shut, laying the phone face down on the polished wood.

She lifted her espresso, took a sip, her expression carved from stone. But when her assistant, Megan, stepped in with the morning invoices, she noticed something unusual: Director Reed was holding her mug entirely backward, the handle pointed straight toward the wall.

Over the next week, I kept up the routine, sending money to "my sister" every two or three days.

Sometimes two hundred. Sometimes three hundred. The day my pro-rated signing bonus hit, I felt generous and sent eight hundred.

Every transaction came with a brotherly lecture.

"It’s thirty degrees outside today. Did you wear a scarf?"

"Radar says rain up north. Tell me you brought an umbrella."

"Stop pulling all-nighters. Your hair’s gonna fall out. Mine’s already thinning—don’t follow in my footsteps."

It felt completely natural. On the other end, the screen remained mostly silent, broken only by an occasional, solitary reply:

"K."

I smiled at the screen, genuinely proud. Look at her, maturing. Becoming less whiny, more grounded. Good for her.

I had no idea that single "K" had taken Margot Reed three minutes of deliberation at her desk.

She had typed and deleted: "Who the hell are you?"

She had typed and deleted: "I am not your sister."

In the end, she left just the single letter.

Why she didn’t just shut it down—well, she wasn’t telling anyone. But during that week’s all-hands operational review, the number of times her cold grey eyes flicked toward my corner of the table went from zero to four.

Every time her gaze landed on me, I dropped my chin.

I was convinced she was cataloging my flaws to build a termination file. Terrified, I dragged Dustin to the corner deli after work.

"Dustin, I think Reed hates me. She kept staring at me during the status meeting."

Dustin slurped his noodles, squinting at me. "Staring? What kind of look?"

"Like... sub-zero."

"That’s just her face, man. She looks at everyone like they’re an uninvited guest. If she ever smiles at you, that’s when you write your will."

"Why?"

"Because that means you’re already dead, and she’s just admiring the autopsy."

I put my fork down. Suddenly, my pastrami on rye tasted like dust.