Glass Ceiling, Silk Ropes

The lobby of Sterling & Co. was designed to make people feel small.

Sophie Vance understood this the moment she stepped through the revolving doors, her thrifted blazer suddenly feeling like a costume, her carefully assembled “professional” outfit revealing itself for what it was: a twenty-two-year-old playing dress-up in a world that could smell desperation like blood in the water.

Forty-foot ceilings. White marble floors so polished she could see her own reflection—and wished she couldn’t. Chrome fixtures that caught the morning light and threw it back in sharp, accusatory angles. The reception desk alone probably cost more than her student loan debt, which was saying something, because her student loan debt could buy a reasonably nice house in most parts of the country.

You belong here, she told herself, clutching her portfolio case to her chest. You earned this.

The portfolio case had a coffee stain on it. She’d noticed it on the subway and spent the entire ride trying to angle her body so no one would see, as if the other commuters on the 6 train cared about her shame.

She was twenty minutes early. She was always twenty minutes early. Her therapist called it “anxiety masquerading as conscientiousness,” which felt like an unnecessarily harsh way to describe showing up on time.

The elevator doors began to close.

She was too far away. She knew she was too far away. But her legs made the decision before her brain could catch up, and suddenly she was half-jogging across the marble floor, her bag bouncing against her hip, her carefully arranged hair already escaping its clip.

“Hold the—”

A hand shot out and stopped the doors.

Long fingers. An emerald ring the size of a small planet. Nails painted a red so dark it was almost black.

The doors slid back open, and Sophie stumbled inside, breathless and already composing the apology that would define her first impression.

“Thank you so much, I’m so sorry, I just—”

She looked up.

The apology died in her throat.

The woman standing in the elevator was the most intimidating human being Sophie had ever seen.

She was tall—taller than Sophie, and Sophie wasn’t short—with the kind of posture that suggested a childhood of either ballet or emotional repression. Probably both. Her suit was dove gray, tailored so precisely it looked like it had been sewn directly onto her body. Her hair was pale blonde, almost silver, pulled back in a bun so immaculate it seemed to defy the laws of physics. Her cheekbones could cut glass. Her eyes were ice blue—not the warm ice of a winter sky, but the cold ice of something that had never been alive.

She was looking at Sophie the way a surgeon might look at a tumor.

The woman’s gaze moved down Sophie’s body. Not quickly. Not politely. A slow, deliberate inventory that took in the thrifted blazer, the cream blouse, the scuffed shoes.

The woman’s eyes lingered on the portfolio case.

On the stain.

“First day,” the woman said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.” Sophie’s voice came out smaller than she’d intended. “I’m starting in the creative department. As an intern.”

“You’ll want to fix that,” the woman said, her gaze flicking to the portfolio case. “Before you meet HR.”

The elevator began to rise.

Sophie should have said something. But her mouth had gone dry, and her skin had gone hot, and something was happening in her body that she didn’t entirely understand.

She was being looked at. Not checked out—that she was used to. This was different. This was being seen. Every flaw catalogued. Every inadequacy noted. The woman’s eyes were taking her apart piece by piece, and Sophie felt—

Stripped bare.

The phrase surfaced from somewhere deep in her subconscious, and with it came a flush of heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment.

The elevator chimed. Fortieth floor. The top.

The woman stepped forward. Then paused. Turned back.

“A word of advice,” she said. “This building runs cold. You’ll want a proper jacket.”

Before Sophie could respond, she was gone. The doors closed. The elevator began its descent.

Sophie stood alone in the humming metal box, her heart pounding, her skin flushed.

She had no idea what she was getting herself into.

But some part of her—some reckless, hungry, deeply buried part—couldn’t wait to find out.