"You want to fight the CEO?" I grin, feeling the familiar thrill of impending battle. This is the Little Manager I know. The one who never retreats, never surrenders, never accepts defeat. "I will break down his door."
"We're not breaking down anything." She pulls out her phone, water-damaged and flickering. She taps at it with increasing frustration until it finally loads. "We're going to walk in there with data, logic, and a compelling business case."
"And if that doesn't work?" I ask, already imagining the satisfying crack of wood splintering under my shoulder. "If he refuses? If all your data and logic and whatever fancy spreadsheet magic you're about to deploy just bounces right off him?"
She doesn't even glance at me, still fixated on her phone, still tapping away with the grim determination of someone trying to resurrect a drowned device. But when she finally speaks, her voice is perfectly measured, perfectly controlled, the voice of someone who has already calculated every possible outcome and is merely allowing me to catch up to her thinking.
"Then," she says, the faintest hint of something almost like amusement crossing her sharp features, "you have my explicit permission to break down his door."
We walk back to the building. I carry her briefcase because she's limping from the run, though she'd never admit it. Thesecurity guard at the front desk does a double-take when he sees us. Soaking wet, disheveled, Orla's blouse still buttoned wrong.
"Ms. Peace? I thought you left for the day."
"Emergency meeting with the CEO." She doesn't break stride, marching past him toward the elevators with the confidence of someone who has never been told no and wouldn't accept it if she had been. "Please don't disturb us."
The elevator ride up is silent. Orla taps her fingers against her thigh, a nervous tell she probably doesn't realize she has. I want to grab her hand, still the anxious rhythm, but she's already shifting into battle mode. I recognize the look. She's running calculations, building arguments, preparing for war.
The top floor is empty. Everyone else went home hours ago. Only the CEO's light is still on, because men like him never leave. They live in their offices, sustained by power and expensive scotch.
Orla doesn't knock. She never knocks. She walks straight through that mahogany door like she owns the building, which, in her meticulously organized mind, she probably does own a percentage of through some byzantine investment strategy I couldn't possibly comprehend. The hinges barely have time to creak before she's already three steps into the office, her wet stilettos leaving small puddles on the expensive Persian rug.
The CEO looks up from his computer, startled. His fingers freeze mid-keystroke. For a moment, he's caught off-guard, which is a rare and delicious thing to witness. Then the startlement shifts into something harder—annoyance, the kind that comes from being interrupted by someone he clearly views as beneath his time. His jaw tightens. His eyes narrow behind his designer glasses.
Then he sees us. Really sees us. The water still dripping from our clothes. Orla's blouse buttoned haphazardly, the collar askew. My hair standing at odd angles. The general impressionof two people who have recently been engaged in something decidedly not work-related.
His confusion is almost comical. The color drains slightly from his face as his brain scrambles to process what he's seeing, what it might mean, what conclusions he should or shouldn't be drawing.
"Ms. Peace,” he says with that careful, measured tone of someone navigating suddenly uncertain territory. "I thought we concluded our discussion."
"We didn't conclude anything." She plants her hands on his massive mahogany desk, leaning forward with an intensity that would make lesser men flinch. "You issued an ultimatum. I'm here to present a counterproposal."
"There is no counterproposal. Fraternization policy is clear."
"Then change the policy." Her voice is sharp, precise, cutting through his objection like a surgical blade. Every word is measured, every syllable designed for maximum impact. No wasted breath. No unnecessary softness. This is Orla at her most dangerous, and I'm so attracted to her I can barely think straight.
The CEO leans back in his chair. "On what grounds?"
"On the grounds that productivity is up two hundred percent since Thraka started." She straightens, crossing her arms. "The sales team is terrified of disappointing him. The conflict resolution department has closed more cases in three months than the previous team managed in two years. Employee satisfaction is the highest it's been since the company went public."
"Employee satisfaction is high because people are afraid."
"Fear is an excellent motivator." She doesn't flinch. "You hired Thraka for diversity. You wanted an orc in the C-suite to make the company look progressive. But what you got was actual results. Measurable, quantifiable, bottom-line results."
I watch her work. This is her arena, not mine. The boardroom is her battlefield, and she's a general commanding troops. I'm just the weapon she's decided to wield.
The CEO steeples his fingers. "Even if what you're saying is true, it doesn't change the fraternization issue."
"Then create a new department." She pulls out her phone, swipes through despite the cracked screen. "Aggressive Negotiations. A specialized division that handles high-stakes conflict resolution using unconventional methods. Thraka leads it. I oversee it from Operations. Different departments, different reporting structures. No fraternization conflict."
"That's not how organizational hierarchy works."
"Make it work." She leans forward again, and I see the desperation she's trying to hide beneath the professional veneer. "You want innovation? You want disruption? This is it. Stop trying to fit us into boxes that were designed for people who don't deliver results."
The CEO looks at me. I've been silent this whole time, letting Orla negotiate because she's better at this than I am. But now he wants my input.
"You actually want to stay?" he asks. "You resigned twenty minutes ago."
"I resigned because I thought there was no other option." I step forward, stopping just behind Orla. Close enough that she can feel my presence, my support. "But if you're willing to create a position where I can do what I do best, without bureaucratic nonsense getting in the way, then yes. I want to stay."
