Sadie looked down at her shoes. The hardened ketchup from yesterday was still stuck to the rubber sole.
"I'm not wearing a skirt," Sadie muttered.
Beatrice's dry laugh echoed through the cavernous office. "Pants are perfectly acceptable. Be here at 8:00 tomorrow morning. Ask for security badge access at the front desk. And Sadie?"
Sadie paused, her hand hovering near her side. "Yeah?"
"Don't let them intimidate you. The people in this building are terrified of losing what they have. You already know how to survive with nothing. That makes you the most dangerous person in the room."
The transition wasn't a montage set to upbeat music; it was a jarring, abrasive collision of two different planets.
Sadie didn't use the clothing allowance to buy silk blouses or designer labels. She went to a mid-tier department store on a Tuesday night and bought three pairs of black slacks, five stiff button-down shirts in varying shades of gray, and a pair of black leather boots that were aggressively ugly but structurally sound. She looked less like an executive assistant and more like a plainclothes detective who hadn't slept in three days.
The Hayes Global building rejected her like a transplanted organ.
On her first day, the security guard in the lobby—a man whose suit fit better than Sadie's new clothes—stared at her ID badge with open suspicion. The elevator ride up to the penthouse made her ears pop and her stomach churn. The penthouse reception area was manned by two women named Jessica and Lauren, who both smelled of expensive floral perfume and spoke in hushed, reverent whispers. They looked at Sadie's boots, then at her face, and immediately categorized her as a threat.
"Ms. Hayes doesn't have you on her schedule," Jessica said smoothly, tapping a manicured nail against an iPad.
"Ms. Hayes hired me yesterday," Sadie said, leaning on the sleek mahogany reception desk. She didn't whisper. "I'm going in."
Before Jessica could protest, Sadie bypassed the desk and pushed through the heavy glass doors to Beatrice's inner sanctum. Beatrice was sitting behind a massive desk dictating something to a small recording device. She looked up, took in Sadie's rigid, defensive posture and the aggressively utilitarian outfit.
"You look like a bouncer," Beatrice noted.