Violet's POV
"Are you here for the interview, or something else?"
Those words brought me crashing back down to earth, and I felt the blush climb straight up my neck. God, what would they think of me? This was my last real shot at a good job and I could not afford to mess it up. I'd done intense research on this company - Vhagar House. One of the biggest names in advertising in the entire country, luxury brands mostly, the kind of firm my old company couldn't have gotten a meeting with, let alone a seat at the table.
This was the best opportunity out of everything I'd applied for, and probably the least attainable, especially with two rejections already sitting on my confidence like dead weight.
The grey-eyed one cleared his throat and told me to take a seat.
I moved toward the chair, except I wasn't really looking at the chair - I was looking at him, at the lazy curve of his mouth, and I sat down without checking my aim properly, caught only half the seat, and went straight down onto the floor.
Oh God. Oh God. Not today. Please.
The humiliation was so unbearable I genuinely, sincerely hoped the floor would open up and take me with it.
It did not. So I gathered whatever dignity I had left, stood, and apologized - repeatedly, tripping over the words - silently begging whatever deity was on duty that they wouldn't just ask me to leave.
By the time I sat down properly, I finally worked up the nerve to look at them again. All three had stopped whatever composed, professional thing they'd been doing and leaned back in their chairs, watching me now. Unhurried. Amused, maybe. It did nothing for my pulse.
I apologized once more. They asked, with far too much patience, if I was finished.
"Yes," I said, cheeks burning.
They sat up, businesslike again.
"You're here to interview for the role of executive assistant," the first one said. Not really a question.
"Yes," I confirmed.
"Tell us about yourself," he continued. "What was your job like at your previous firm?"
I told them everything - my role as a brand manager, my responsibilities, the accounts I'd handled. I tried to sound competent. I tried very hard not to think about how sexily intense the grey-eyed one looked, or the way the dark-eyed one's attention never seemed to leave my face, like he was reading something written just beneath my skin.
The grey-eyed one raised an eyebrow. "Why step down from that level to take on this role?"
"What happened with your previous job?" the third added - blue eyes, steady, unreadable.
I gave them the answer I'd prepared. "I resigned. Due to personal reasons."
"What personal reasons?" Blue eyes again, quieter this time, like he actually expected a real answer.
"It's probably her personal life," the grey-eyed one cut in smoothly, a small shake of his head. "We shouldn't push."
All three nodded, and I exhaled slowly, grateful, though something about the way they'd deferred to each other struck me as strange.
"Do you understand what the role entails?" Grey eyes asked. "Can you meet the demands?"
The dark-eyed one leaned forward slightly, forearms on the table, and something about the shift in his posture made the air in the room feel thinner. "A brand manager's job and an executive assistant's job are not the same," he said. "You'll need to be available. Constantly. Ready to travel, to sit in on meetings, to be present at events, wherever and whenever we require it."
We. Not the company. Not the office. I filed that away too, even as I nodded and told them I was hardworking, adaptable, more than capable of meeting the demands of the role.
The whole time, underneath the interview answers I was giving on autopilot, a quieter, far less professional part of my brain was doing its own thing entirely. It noted the way the dark-eyed one's sleeves were rolled to the forearm, like he had somewhere better to be and hadn't quite decided to go yet. It noted the way grey eyes smiled at nothing in particular, like he found the whole world a little bit funny and me funnier still, and how that smile did something warm and unhelpful low in my stomach. And it noted, more than either of the other two, the way blue eyes simply watched - no smile, no facial expression, just a steady, patient attention that made me feel, absurdly, like the most interesting thing in the building.
I kept trying to figure out which one of them was actually in charge. I looked between them, searching for some hierarchy, some tell. I found nothing. They spoke like men who'd never needed to establish rank because it had simply always been understood.
They asked a few more questions - logistics, availability, whether I had any scheduling conflicts - and I answered each one properly, professionally, doing my absolute best not to let my eyes drift to any one of them for too long.
By the time it ended, I left the room lighter than I'd walked in. Not because I thought I'd gotten it. Just because, for the first time in three tries, it had actually felt like an interview. They'd asked me things. They'd looked at me like I was a real candidate and not a formality to get through before lunch.
If they could just overlook the chair incident. And if they didn't call Fabian to check my resignation story too closely. I might actually stand a chance.
That night I stayed over at Maddy's, curled up on her sofa with a blanket and a mug of tea, and told her everything - the first two interviews, the silence, the strange discomfort on those interviewers' faces, and then Vhagar House. The chair. The three men.
"Wait." Maddy sat up straighter. "Three?"
"Three," I confirmed, and then, because I couldn't help myself, "Maddy, they were… I can't even describe it. It wasn't fair. It should be illegal to interview someone with faces like that in the room."
Maddy laughed so hard she nearly spilled her tea. "What happened to the other two rejecting you outright being easier?"
"This is worse," I admitted. "This is so much worse. I fell out of a chair in front of them and somehow that's not even the most embarrassing part of my week."
We talked it through - what went wrong with the first two interviews, which neither of us could figure out, and what might've gone right with the third.
"I could get it," I said, half to myself, half to her, staring at the ceiling with the dreaminess of someone letting herself hope for exactly one evening. "Vhagar House, Maddy. Do you have any idea what that would mean?"
"I can picture it," Maddy said, and she sounded like she meant it. "You in a blazer, clipboard in hand, ordering three grown men around like you were born to it."
I groaned into the blanket, happy and terrified in equal measure, and then my face fell. "I just wish I hadn't fallen out of the chair."
"Don't dwell on it." Maddy nudged my foot with hers. "Honestly? That's probably the thing that made you memorable. Out of everyone else who walked in and sat down like a normal, boring human being - they're not going to forget you."
I wanted to believe her. I let myself believe her, just for the night, and fell asleep in her guest room feeling steadier than I had in days.
Thursday came and went with nothing. I told myself it was too soon to expect anything, that companies like that didn't move fast, that silence didn't mean rejection.
Friday came and went too, and by the evening I'd stopped telling myself anything reassuring at all. I was sure, by then, with the bone-deep certainty of someone bracing for disappointment early so it would hurt less later, that it wasn't happening.
"You need to stop refreshing your email every four minutes," Maddy told me over the phone Friday night. "It's not going to speed anything up."
"I'm not refreshing it every four minutes."
"You refreshed it while you were saying that sentence. I heard the little swipe."
I had, in fact, refreshed it while saying that sentence.
"Patience," she said. "Give it the weekend."
"I don't have patience, Maddy, I have anxiety and a mildly concerning amount of free time." I was already pulling up two other job listings on my laptop, halfway convinced I should just start over, apply somewhere realistic, somewhere that wouldn't require three terrifyingly attractive men to decide my fate.
And then, Saturday afternoon - completely out of nowhere, on a day companies had no business sending anything at all - my phone chimed.
I stared at the notification for what felt like years before I let myself open it.
Ms. Summers, thank you for attending the interview at Vhagar House.
We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected for the position of Executive Assistant to the CEO.
Kindly report to Vhagar House on Monday at 9:00 a.m. for your first day and onboarding.
We look forward to having you join our team.
Human Resources
Vhagar House
I read it over and over again to make sure it was real.
Then I screamed loud enough that Sly nearly toppled off the windowsill, and somewhere below me, I was fairly sure, Maddy heard it straight through the floor.