He chuckles, amused, and the corners of his mouth tug toward a smile that somehow makes my chest both tighten and loosen at once. He watches me, amusement softened into something like attentive curiosity. “Let me show you around,” he suggests, voice low, as if the offer is both casual and considered.
I fold my arms, a reflexive barricade. “I don’t need that. I have the blueprint. I will figure things out,” I say, because that’s the voice I most reliably trust: precise, independent, unbothered.
I want to be a professional who can walk into a project and take ownership, not some novice who needs hand-holding from the man who probably throws money at problems and watches them fall into neat solutions.
“I don’t think I was asking, Ishika.” He states and I don’t like the way my name rolls so smoothly off his mouth.
“And why the sudden interest?” I ask, because my voice needs a weapon. “Are you secretly meddlesome, or do you actually care?”
“Maybe both,” he says with the hint of a smile. “Or maybe I prefer everything at Evergreen to be done right.”
He tilts his head, studying my face. “Also,” he adds after a beat as if remembering himself, “it’s your first day. We don’t usually sit back and watch our new people sink. We try to make them comfortable so they can do the work. It’s efficient.”
The statement is that careful blend of corporate-speak and genuine logic that makes me want to argue and simultaneously accept. There’s no syrupy sentiment here. He doesn’t pretend hisgestures are purely altruistic. He frames them as mechanisms to make the business better. Practical, efficient, slightly patronizing. I hate that I respect it.
“Do you really believe warmth and comfort are operational efficiencies?” I ask, because I want to poke the soft spot I saw in him in the conference room—the desire to make his office feel human.
He chuckles softly, a sound that could be taken as an outright dismissal if you weren’t tuned to the notes underneath. “I believe people work better in spaces that don’t make them feel like they’re under a microscope,” he says. “And I believe in not being a walking stereotype of a CEO. We’re trying something different here.”
I look down at my shoes to hide the way my fingers tingle. He talks about people like they’re part of an ecosystem, not parts on a balance sheet. It’s oddly comforting to hear a CEO talk about humanity without the usual corporate veneer.
“Besides,” he says, stepping aside to let me pass, “I don’t think you need much help.”
His tone is casual, but the way he says it cuts through my defenses. There’s a compliment tucked into the words, honest and direct, and for a second I feel seen in a way that doesn’t require me to perform.
I march past him, head high, blueprint folder hugging my ribs like armor. “Yeah, I know,” I say, which is both a dismissal and a declaration. I don’t want anyone’s pity. I don’t want someone else’s help to mask my work.
He follows at a polite distance, hands in his pockets—a signal that he means to be present but not smothering. “If you needquestions answered, contractors navigated, or a coffee that is actually drinkable,” he says, the ghost of a teasing smile on his mouth, “I am available.”
“Thanks,” I say, dry and practical. Inside, something warbles—annoyance, maybe. The idea that a man like him would assume his resources are the default answer to problems irks me. It implies people are a system to be toggled for comfort. It implies I am a resource too—a resource he can wave at to fix a problem.
I take a step forward and the site opens into full commotion—voices, drills, the slam of metal, the aroma of fresh-cut timber. “I will handle it from here,” I state, my voice firm so he knows there’s no room for his opinions.
He smiles and gives me a single nod. Then he turns and walks away, and I let the work swallow me again, satisfied that I’ve survived the morning and managed, somehow, to keep my pulse functional and my dignity more or less intact.
CHAPTER 8
ARYAN
I sit at my desk with the laptop open, the stock ticker crawls across the bottom of the screen like an impatient caterpillar, green here, red there, a string of numbers that somehow tell the whole office how stable the day will feel. I’m watching the market like a man watching the tide, half because I like the ritual and half because it keeps me from thinking about other things.
My phone buzzes on the desk and I answer with a practiced, “This is Aryan,” the CEO voice sliding into place because some part of the world still likes a formal greeting. It’s a client—Mrs. Mehra, a long-time investor, brittle in the voice and precise in the concerns. She rattles off quarter projections, asks about diversification, wonders if we’ve considered a safer bond mix given the overnight volatility.
I listen, nod at my laptop like a good listener even though she can’t see me, make quick notes, reassure her like a man who knows what he’s doing, and promise a clear follow-up by lunch. The call ends with a polite thank-you and the soft click of a world that stays predictable when you keep your head in numbers.
For a second, eyes on the charts again, I am back in that calm rhythm. Then I look up, because habit makes me do strange things—I check the window not from vanity but because thebuilding I bought has the best view in the city. I like seeing how the office settles, how people move inside it, who claims which seat, where lights go on first. It’s a bad habit of ownership, I admit it. I watch things. I notice things.
My window faces the new wing. The glass is clear this morning, and I can see into the area that will eventually be the design hub.
And there she is.
She is bent over a large piece of paper, sketching with frantic focus. The pen moves with fierce certainty—lines confident, small annotations tucked in the margins. Every now and then she taps the pen against her lips like she’s testing a thought, and the motion is almost exactly the kind of thing I enjoy watching: small rituals that tell a person’s pace and their way of thinking. She has spread a few reference photos on the table beside her and some fabric swatches fall in a neat, messy pile. It’s the sort of controlled chaos I respect.
Then my gaze drops to the little mound of wrappers beside her water bottle. Snickers wrappers. Four, maybe five, crumpled and tossed like badges of a secret lunchtime war. My eyebrows twitch. Hungry? Using candy as lunch? I frown not because I judge, but because it looks unfair. She’s working hard; I can see the concentration in the set of her jaw. She looks like someone who would rather let her stomach gnaw than stop working. It’s the kind of stubbornness that feels like a personal insult to comfort.
I intercom Ajay. He answers on the second ring, there’s a little rustle of paper and the usual “Sir?” in his voice that always sounds like he’s mildly surprised to be needed.
“Ajay,” I say. “Send Ms. Vyas something to eat. Whatever’s available. Not the usual dry sandwich—get her something decent.”
