Jia sat in stunned disbelief as Atlas and Daniel discussed the terms of her employment, now official, between themselves. Daniel occasionally deferred to her on some select points, giving her a pointed look when he expected a reply, but it was all Jia could do to nod and go along with whatever he suggested.Atlas definitely noticed it all, she thought numbly. She had seen him watching her with that piercing, ice-cold gaze on several occasions. More than several, actually. She was fairly certain he had been glaring at her for more than half the conversation.“If that’s all, that will all be in writing before you leave for the day, Ms. Moon,” Daniel was saying as he rose from his seat, and Jia quickly sprang to her feet with only the slightest of clumsy stumbles to follow suit.She cursed the black stilettos she wore again for their part in nearly making her fall over herself just now, but she didn’t have long to ruminate on the

Jia had taken her lunch exactly at noon as Lydia instructed (though she had been too nervous to eat anything at all, even if she had had the pocket money to spend on a lunch in this too-expensive commercial district). She was just now returning to the office after twenty minutes of wandering the stairwell at the back of the building, ten minutes before she was due back. Lydia, however, didn’t seem surprised by her early return, and instead was visibly pleased.“Oh, good,” the woman said as she pushed in her rolling chair under the desk and scurried to the door on click-clacking stilettos. “Now, don’t do anything while I’m gone. I’ll be back as soon as I can, and if Mr. Grayson needs anything done, do not do it. Let him know I’ll handle it since you can’t do anything yet.”Jia stepped to the side and held the door open for Lydia to pass through. “Okay,” she agreed. “Enjoy your lunch.”She took no of

 Jia spent the next minute attempting to discreetly catch Anthony’s eye so that she could properly greet him, but he appeared almost desperately adamant to avoid just such a thing. Finally, she gave up and turned her head to face forward, opting to stare at a particularly colorful abstract painting hanging on the opposite wall. She had never been an artist nor schooled in its intricacies, but she was fairly certain it was supposed to look like a trumpet.Oh, this was killing her. She closed her eyes and tried to quash the boredom and agitation growing inside her now that she had nothing to do but wait. She checked the time on her phone for the seventh time and closed it again with a soundless sigh. Lydia wouldn’t return to the office for another ten minutes and some change; she hoped the woman wouldn’t summarily lose her mind at finding them gone.But that was the least of her worries. Once Jia explained to her that she had reminded Atla

 The goodbye was only temporary, so it was a quick affair: a brief handshake between everyone, a promise to meet again tomorrow, and then Mr. Burhock’s and Anthony’s subsequent disappearance into a waiting vehicle in front of the building. Jia gave them a final wave before the luxury sedan disappeared down the street, and then Lydia tapped her on the shoulder, urging her to follow. Atlas had already begun heading back inside.“Lydia,” he said just as they discreetly caught up to him with hurried but careful steps to avoid the tell-tale clatter of stiletto heels on the ground.“Yes, sir?”Lydia squeezed in through the revolving glass door just in time behind Atlas, leaving Jia behind to helplessly wait for the next enclosure to come sliding around. She didn’t even get a chance to overhear what it was that Atlas had to say, and she fervently hoped that missing his next words wouldn’t be her undoing. She hurried into the ad

It didn’t take long for Jia to swear off riding in a car ever again, at least when it came to riding shotgun. Idling in the backseat where she couldn’t see most of the road was fine, but sitting in the front and feeling the dangerous proximity of every single other two-ton machine on the road made her feel sick to her stomach.She closed her eyes every time the car in front of them suddenly pressed their brakes, and wondered if her fate was to die of an unfortunate rear-ending after everything she had been through in her life. And every time Atlas changed lanes, she held her breath, waiting for the inevitable fatal collision with some other unwitting driver.But the worst were the massive tractor trailers that occasionally trundled along beside them like deceptively docile T-rexes. Jia stared out the darkened window at a white sheet of studded steel just above the gigantic tires that could crush Atlas’s sleek Lamborghini into scrap metal. She wonder