Let Life Surprise You

07. Exes

When Mr. Knight said I would get an unforgettable experience working on the executive floor, he meant it.

The real shit began the next day. Meeting after meeting, never-ending phone calls and email correspondence, problems with the departments that didn't follow through with the deadlines, issues with vendors who provided meals and beverages for the meetings, and the list kept adding up. It was like a Deja Vu. Only, it was worse.

After our last encounter, Mr. Knight and I haven't had a chance to have another social chat. He was either burying his face in his computer screen, grunting and growling at someone on the phone, or stuck in back-to-back appointments. When I wasn't in the meeting room to take minutes, we communicated through phone or email. And that was good because his presence was still too intimidating for me; hell, it's still menacing now.

On top of that, something inside my head keeps reminding me that I'm not yet off the hook. He knows about the ghost chili incident, but he hasn't used it against me. The suspense is killing me. I should have apologized in the first place.

Days go by faster than the speed of light, and now I've been doing the executive assistant job for almost two weeks. Did Max mention the temporary position was only for a week? A week my ass.

Mr. Knight interviewed five candidates who had been through Human Resource screening, but none of them gets hired. Only heaven knows the reason. He simply doesn't want to pull down the bar a little bit and give the best candidate a shot. Maybe he forgets that there is a support system called training where employees can upgrade their skills. Also, I still don't get why he doesn't want to have a female assistant. It would have made the Human Resources job ten times easier to find Alex's replacement.

The waiting makes me anxious because I don't know how much longer I can keep up with this temporary task. This isn't the job for me. I should have been on the fourth floor by now.

"You know, I'm surprised that Mr. Knight chose a female temporary assistant," chirps Tanya who is now having breakfast with me in the pantry. We rarely do this because of the workload that sometimes leaves us no choice but to eat at our table.

I raise my eyebrow while scooping my almost-empty blueberry yogurt with a spoon. "How so? Is he a gynophobia?"

"What phobia?"

"Fear of women."

"Oh!" Tanya laughs at my reply. "No! hell, no."

I chug down the rest of my yogurt by tipping the cup over my mouth. "Then why doesn't he want to have a female assistant?"

"Um, not sure." Tanya bites her lower lip while her eyes twinkle; the look a girl has when she's so close to spilling juicy gossip.

"Too bad. I've been so curious about it." I purse my lips while counting inwardly.

One... two... three.

"Rumor has it that he got involved with a female secretary who happened to be an assistant of the previous CEO, Mr. D. Knight. Things got messy because apparently, this girl was also seeing her CEO secretly. At. The. Same. Time! Then the war began. There was even an office fight between the two because of the girl. But," Tanya shrugs, contrasting her enthusiasm in cooking up the story, "we never know what actually happened. No one really witnessed the fight."

"Wait, Mr. D. Knight is Mr. Ashton Knight's father?"

"No." Tanya shakes her head. "He is the big brother, Dickson Knight. As you see, Knight Corporation used to be a family business until it went public seven years ago. So, when this company joined the Remington group, Mr. D. Knight was the CEO, replacing their sick father. But it didn't go well. He wasn't capable of leading a company with a different level of demands and pressure. One day he messed up, big time, and he was forced to step down."