Assistant to the CEO

Chapter One: The New Boss

I hadn't been this nervous to go to work in years. I's had this job for nearly three years now and I knew how to do it blind folded, strapped to a chair, and a gun against my head. In fact, I was really good at my job, well, much better than thought I would be considering my low experience in it when I first got it. See, getting a job in New York was not easy, especially one that was going to help me pay for college. So I applied to at least thirty jobs and got an interview for at least half of them but they all turned me down because they believed I was under-qualified, and I probably was, but to be qualified I needed someone to give me a chance, and I didn't think anyone would. That was until I met Henry Watson.

Henry Watson was the CEO of Watson International, a finance company, and a pretty successful one too, which is why it was so unbelievable that he hired me as his assistant, well one of his assistants. He already had an assistant, Karen, who had been working with him for twenty-five years, but now she needed some time off, so he needed another assistant to fill in those days, which was perfect for me, because it didn't interfere with college, but he was also more than  she wasn't there,and I was happy to cater around that. In fact, he was so nice he didn't care it took me a while to learn the job or that I might be late because a class ran overtime. Henry Watson turned out to be the nicest person in the world and I couldn't believe how lucky I was to get this job.

It was like in an instant though, I lost all my luck, and everything changed. After two and a half years of working there I got a call from Karen, and it was some of the worst news I had ever gotten. She told me that Henry had died. They put it down to a heart attack, and she said the paramedics couldn't revive him. It was awful. I looked up to Henry, he looked after me like a father, and he was just gone so suddenly, and he was only sixty-five.

It was painful to realise I could never talk to that man ever again, hear him give me some life wisdom, or hear him tell me a dad-joke, and he was good at them. It got worse though, when I realised that his death had affected his company. That man lived for his company, he built it from the ground up, cared for it, cherished it, and because his death had been so sudden, the company went into free-fall.

For a few weeks, it was bad. No one really knew how to stop the company losing money, with the stock prices falling and no one willing to sell to them without a CEO, one had to be appointed. Whilst most of his staff attended his funeral the topic of who would take over came up often, but the day after the funeral things changed- and someone was appointed the new CEO. That someone also happened to be my new boss.

"Why the hell do I only have one black heel?"

I yelled out from my bedroom, walking out, holding one of my black high heel pumps while I searched for the other. I felt like I had to be on time today, I wanted to make a good impression with my new boss, and now, it wasn't looking so good.

"What are you talking about, Rory?" my roommate yelled back from the kitchen. "You have like ten pairs of black heels, you're going to have to be a little more specific."

I groaned a little and walked into the kitchen where Ava, my roommate, was sitting on one of the stools near the kitchen bench, eating her breakfast. She, like me, was getting ready for work and was half dressed at this point. She had pulled her long blonde hair back into a bun, and put her make up on to cover her fading freckles and highlight her tan and blue eyes, and wore a tight tank top that showed of her body, but she still had to put her work shirt on.

I held up my heel to show her which ones I meant and her eyes immediately turned from mine. Ava was often the reason my clothes when missing because she borrowed them all the time. See, we had quite a different wardrobe. My job required me to wear smart, business like clothes. Like pencil skirts, and blouses, and pencil dresses, and jackets, and heels. Whereas Ava worked as a cleaner in hotels, so she had a set uniform, and therefore she liked to wear some of my clothes out. It was convenient we were the same size too.