Chapter 2 — The Girl Who Stole Nothing (1)

The coffee run took forty minutes.

This was not because the coffee shop was far. The coffee shop was across the street — a hole-in-the-wall place that Vanessa had called “the only acceptable espresso in a three-block radius,” which was rich, because Vanessa had never once bought her own coffee in her life.

No, the coffee run took forty minutes because I had to wait for seventeen drinks: twelve lattes with specific temperature requirements, three flat whites with specific milk preferences, one macchiato with “extra caramel, but not too much, and no, I will know,” and Vanessa’s personal cup — a ceramic monstrosity with her initials on it, V.W., which she’d handed me with the expression of a queen handing a peasant her crown.

“Don’t spill it,” she said.

I didn’t spill it.

I considered spilling it. I had, in fact, a very detailed fantasy involving the V.W. cup, the marble lobby, and the specific sound it would make shattering. But I didn’t spill it, because I was Ellie Carter, intern, and Ellie Carter did not spill coffee on her first day.

Instead, I carried all seventeen drinks back across the street like a particularly well-trained pack mule, dodging a cab, a skateboarder, and a pigeon that seemed personally offended by my existence.

“I’m just a temp,” I muttered to the pigeon. “I’m just a temp.”

The pigeon was unmoved.

Back on twelve, I distributed the lattes with the precision of a weapons dealer, accepted the flat whites’ silent judgment, and delivered Vanessa’s V.W. cup to her desk with both hands, like an offering.

“Finally,” she said, taking it without looking at me. “You know, in some cultures, interns are supposed to bow.”

“In some cultures, they’re also sacrificed to volcanoes,” I said pleasantly.

She blinked. Something flickered in her eyes — surprise, maybe, at finding teeth in the intern. Then she smiled that knife-smile again.

“Cute. You’ll learn, sweetheart. Some of us are born to shine. The rest fetch coffee.”

I kept my smile. “Noted.”

Her phone buzzed. She read the message, and her entire posture changed — shoulders back, chin up, a predator scenting promotion.

“The new owner is here,” she said, standing. “The Marsh representative. This is a big day for the floor, and I need you to stay out of the way.” She pointed at the supply closet. “There’s a box of unopened toner cartridges in there. Organize them by expiration date.”

“The toner cartridges have expiration dates?”

“Organize them,” she said sweetly, “by expiration date.”

She walked off toward the elevator, heels clicking like a countdown.

I stood in the middle of the open-plan floor, holding a lanyard and a grudge, and watched her go.

And then I did what I always did, when the world reminded me that being Ellie Carter meant being the girl who fetches coffee: I put my head down, walked to the supply closet, and started organizing toner cartridges by expiration date.

Because I could have won that conversation. I could have opened my mouth and told her exactly who I was, and watched her face do the slow, horrible math of every insult she’d ever thrown at me.

But that was the thing about hiding — you only got to do it once. And when I finally stopped hiding, I wanted it to mean something.

I wanted it to be my choice.

The supply closet was dark, cold, and smelled like toner and regret.

I was halfway through a box of magenta cartridges when the door opened behind me.

“You know,” said a low, amused voice, “in my day, we didn’t have expiration dates on toner. We just had toner. And we were grateful.”

I turned.

The man from the elevator — gray hoodie, cargo pants, headphones around his neck — was leaning against the doorframe, holding a screwdriver like a scepter.

“Nico,” he said, offering the name like a handshake. “IT.”

“Ellie,” I said. “Temporary.”

“I know.” He said it in a way that made my skin prickle — like he knew more than I’d told him, like he’d been waiting for me to say my name just so he could hear it again.

I cleared my throat. “The toner cartridges have expiration dates.”

“So I hear.” He stepped into the closet, and the space suddenly felt very small. “You know, most interns would have quit by now. The coffee run, the clipboard, the supply closet — that’s hazing, not mentorship.”

“I know.”

“And you’re still here.”

“I’m stubborn.”

“Stubborn,” he repeated, tasting the word the same way he’d tasted “elevators.” “That’s a good word. That’s a word that built empires.”

“Or destroyed them.”

His eyes — dark, patient, old — met mine. “Both, usually.”

There was a beat of silence. The toner cartridges glowed faintly in the fluorescent light. I was suddenly, acutely aware of three things: that we were alone in a supply closet, that he was close enough that I could smell him — something clean and old, like rain on stone — and that my heart was doing that thing again, the racing thing, the thing it had done in the elevator.