I wake up to the chorus of ‘Gangnam Style’ blasting out of my phone.

Ripping the covers off my chest, I lunge towards my bedside table and stab at the touch screen. The music cuts off and I sigh in relief.

I read somewhere that starting your morning off with a concrete accomplishment, like making your bed or emptying your dishwasher, can help you be more productive throughout the rest of the day. I decided that nothing would make me feel more accomplished than ridding my surroundings of the most irritating music known to mankind, so for the past several months I’ve been waking up to the sound of Psy. It’s been surprisingly effective.

I head to the bathroom and step into the shower, already naked. One of the perks of living alone is that clothing is never a necessity. I do just about everything naked these days: sleeping, cooking, internet browsing. Occasionally I’ll be sitting on my couch, scarfing down a bowl of pasta in nothing but a pair of socks, and realize what a pitiful image of singlehood I make, but really, who would ever choose to wear pants when given the option not to?

The pressure from the showerhead beats down on my neck, unknotting the muscles, and I realize how tense I am already. I take in a deep breath and slowly let it out. Considering the fact that I’ve known this day was coming since I was old enough to have cohesive thoughts, I should be less stressed out about it.

Towelling off and stopping to stare at myself in the mirror, I consider shaving off the slight stubble I’ve accumulated over the past few days. Keeping it there will piss off my dad. I open my drawer and get out the razor.

My suit is already hanging from my closet door, and as I pull on the grey shirt and black jacket, I feel like a snail crawling into a shell. By the time I’m fully dressed, Naked-Pasta-Eating Jordan is tucked away under eight hundred dollars of Italian wool, and Jordan Knox, son of Emerson Knox and heir to the Knox Company legacy, is staring back at me in the mirror.

I decide to take the bus over to 19^th street today, which will definitely set my dad off if he finds out. There’s a brand new luxury BMW sitting in my building’s parking lot, courtesy of my father, that fits with the image he’d like me to embody. I actually prefer taking public transport to looking like a trust fund jackass, swaddled in enough cash to protect me from the harsh realities of life.

Which I am. The Knox family might not be the private-jet-owning, sprawling-mansion-in-the-countryside kind of wealthy, but we are the private-driver-hiring, million-dollar-condo-in-the-heart-of-the-city type.

Yes, I realize what a privileged asshole I sound like when I make that kind of a comparison.

We’re also wealthy enough that I was pretty much expected from birth to have an illustrious Ivy League career, and spent my entire childhood and adolescence being prepped for it. I earned my MBA from Penn State over a year ago, and today, the day I start working at my father’s company, should have happened soon after that.

Except it didn’t.

I push those thoughts away. Despite everything that happened during the past year, all the things that went on with my mom, I’m here, standing on the concrete steps outside the Knox Security building, about to face the first day of what has always been destined to be the rest of my life.

Cue the dramatic music and impending thunderbolts.

I adjust the tie around my neck that suddenly feels like it’s strangling me, and step inside the familiar lobby. This may be my first day working here, but it’s far from my first time in the office. After spending all my high school summers being forced to sit in on meetings and watch my father do his job, I associate the inside of this building with nervous fidgeting and longing glances out the window.

A woman in an apron is pushing a cart over to the elevators and I head in that direction. I notice it seems a bit heavy for her, and wonder if it would be chauvinistic or polite to offer to help. Then one of the drawers on the side of the cart falls open, and before I can shout a warning, a few dozen spoons spill out onto the floor. I hold back the urge to laugh when I see her wincing at the racket.

She drops to all fours and starts gathering up any spoons within reach. I pick up one that’s landed near my foot and head over to help her. Hoping to avoid embarrassing her any more, I attempt a joke and ask, “Is this yours?”

She looks up at me and gasps, and when I get a good look at her face it’s all I can do not to gasp too.

She’s gorgeous.

She’s the kind of gorgeous that hits you like a stun gun, all milk and honey skin with huge, inky blue eyes as round and crazy-inducing as a full moon. I’m suddenly hyper aware of the fact that she’s on her knees in front of me with her mouth hanging open in a perfect ‘O’.

For a moment we both stand there, staring, my outstretched arm holding the spoon between us like some sort of bizarre Renaissance tableau. Then she blinks those inkwell eyes of hers and looks away.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, getting to her feet. I think she’s going to slink away in embarrassment, but instead she lifts her head up to face me, and there’s a small smile on her lips that has me feeling like I’ve been hit by round two of the stun gun. “How’d you know?” she asks.

I give her a questioning stare.

“That it was mine.” Her eyes drop to the spoon still clutched in my fist.

“Ah,” I answer, “lucky guess.”

Her smile widens as she takes the spoon out of my hand.

It’s not the only thing that’s getting out of hand. My imagination is having a field day and is not checking in with me for permission. My eyes have already travelled the length of her body. It shouldn’t be possible for her to be so attractive in the outfit she’s wearing. Who makes grandma loafers look sexy? And that apron. I’m suddenly picturing her in nothing but that apron.

“Going up?” she asks, after tucking the spoons away and pressing the elevator button.

Oh yes. Things are going up.

I take a minute to adjust the situation while she’s turned away, and search for an alternative answer to the one my brain just supplied.

Humour. Wit. Charm. These are things that I must have somewhere.

“Actually I’m headed to the basement,” I tell her. “I’ve got some plumbing to fix. I’m the new janitor.”

She runs her eyes up and down my suit and smirks. I hope it’s at my poor excuse for a joke, and not at the very obvious area I’ve moved my briefcase to cover.

“Well, I’m the CEO. Nice to meet you, Mister Janitor.”

I let out a laugh. The elevator arrives and she wheels her cart in. I follow and press the button for my floor as I step inside.

She eyes the button I’ve pressed. “So you’re not the janitor? Well, I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m not really the CEO.”

“Could have fooled me,” I reply, my eyes glued to the doors as we start moving upwards.

The small space is filled with the smell of coffee beans and icing sugar. We spend the next few floors of the ride in silence. I glance at her out of the corner of my eye. She’s staring straight ahead as well. The inside of the elevator feels like an oven and I’m glad we have the cart between us, because I don’t know if I could handle being any closer to her.

The elevator dings at the floor just below mine and she starts to wheel her way out. I reach to hold the door open before it can slam shut as she works the cart over the ridge between the elevator and the hallway. She turns and flashes me one more smile before the doors slide closed.

Holy. Shit.

I sink back against the wall of the elevator and let out a breath. My head’s filled with that heavy, warm feeling you get after downing a shot, the one that comes right after the burn.

The elevator comes to a stop at the next floor. I shake my head, trying to snap out of the haze. Then the doors open and I’m faced with the equivalent of a slap across the face, punch to the gut, and bucket of ice water being dumped over my head.

My father is striding towards me, and he doesn’t look impressed.

Emerson Knox’s mouth is set in its usual grim and determined line, the hair combed back severely from his face only serving to emphasize his hawk-like features. A dozen or so cronies in colourless suits follow in his wake, trying to get his attention long enough for him to answer a question or sign an outstretched document. He ignores them all, his laser-straight stare focused on me.

“Jordan,” he barks as I step out of the elevator, “nice of you to join us at...9:36.” He rolls up his sleeve to examine a solid gold watch with a face the size of a tennis ball.

I nod in response. “Just going to get set up in my office before the ten o’clock meeting,” I add, trying to sidle away before he has the chance to say anything else.

“8:36 would have been a good time to set up your office, Jordan,” he calls, not even looking at me anymore as he gets in the elevator, his followers elbowing each other out of the way as they try to climb in after him.

I walk through the aisle between a few rows of cubicles, where more greyscale employees are bent over computer screens and telephones. Several frosted glass office doors line the back of the room. A small brass plaque on the wall next to mine reads ‘Mr. Jordan Knox, Junior Manager of Finance.’

I close the office door behind me before sinking into the leather desk chair, chucking my briefcase onto the floor and dropping my head into my hands. The office is small, just a chair and a heavy wooden desk set up opposite a filing cabinet and a few narrow shelves.

Given my status as a recent grad with no experience besides a few brief internships, I shouldn’t even have an office at all. My father has been citing my performance at Penn State and strong references from my internships as the official reasons for starting me off as a junior executive, but I might as well be walking around this place with a sign that reads, ‘I am the product of nepotism.’

I set up my laptop, browsing through my new corporate inbox in the few minutes left before the meeting, then grab my briefcase before making my way back over to the elevator. A few other employees get in with me, and I receive some nods of acknowledgement. Most of the people working here would have seen me as a child. I wonder how the ones who’ll now have to answer to me as a superior feel about that.

The boardroom is already filled with a dozen or so people, busy piling up small ceramic plates at the elaborately arranged catering table. My dad is making today’s meeting into a bit of an affair. It’s my official introduction to all the heads of the company, which is highly unnecessary for someone in my position, but my father does like to show off any shiny new achievement of his.

I bypass the catering. I’m about to take a seat at the meeting table when I see her.

She’s facing away from me, working a mini espresso machine that’s been set up on a small stand, but I know it’s her. Even from the back she draws my eyes like a magnet, her strawberry blonde hair pinned up so that a hint of smooth white skin shows above the neck of her blouse. Just that inch of skin alone has my mind spinning with a kaleidoscope of possibilities.

I wrench my gaze away and sit down at the meeting table, turning my back to her. This is not the time or place to get tongue tied over a girl.

As I’m sitting with my hands clenched around the edge of the table, fighting off the urge to turn around, a hand thumps my back, hard, and a silver-haired man drops into the chair next to me.

“Jordan, Jordan, Jordan,” he says loudly, slapping my back again with each repetition of my name.

“Morning, Ludo.”

The man lets out a smoker’s laugh and pounds me on the back a few more times, making my spinal cord feel like it’s being slammed into my chest. “That’s right, son. Better not call me uncle around here.”

Ludo, or as I was raised to refer to him, Uncle Ludo, is my dad’s most trusted employee, and has been working for the company since before my dad took it over from my grandfather. He smokes about a pack a day and always smells like a mix of nicotine and pastrami. He’s also head of the finance department I now work for.

He leans towards me and drops his voice to a conspiratorial level. “Did you get a load of that coffee girl?” He glances over his shoulder towards the catering table and lets out a low whistle. “The girl they usually send is something to look at, but this one. That’s a piece of work I wouldn’t mind taking back to my office.”

He straightens up and gives a raspy chuckle, once more subjecting my back to a round of pounding abuse.

“I don’t even drink the pansy shit they pour out of that machine. I just ordered a drink to get the chance to talk to her. And look at her. The jugs on that thing...”

I work to keep the cringe off my face as I tune out the rest of what Ludo says. I don’t know what disgusts me more: the fact that Ludo just said the word ‘jugs’ or that he used it to describe the girl from the lobby.

My father’s entrance saves me from having to give Ludo an answer. The room goes quiet as he takes his seat at the head of the table and launches into a description of the company’s recent achievements. His voice dips and curls around the words of the speech like a calligraphy brush, and I have to admit that there’s a reason he’s run the company so successfully all these years; when he talks, people listen.

Unless a stunningly beautiful woman happens to be in the room.

She appears at Ludo’s shoulder with his ‘pansy shit’ drink, then leans down to carefully place the latte on the table, while Ludo probably eyes her ‘jugs.’ I don’t actually see him do it because I can’t stop staring at every detail of her face, at the curve of her cheek and the swoop of her eyelashes.

She straightens up and her eyes shift towards me. They flit to the side when she finds me staring and then come back to meet me gaze, dancing around like wayward butterflies.

Dancing around like wayward butterflies? What the fuck? Who am I?

“...Jordan Knox, our new junior manager of finance. Jordan is a recent and distinguished graduate of the MBA program at Penn State’s Wharton School of Business, and has gained a reputation for himself completing several internships in major companies across the country. Jordan, as many of you know, is also my son. He was raised the Knox way and has a promising career ahead of him here at Knox Security. I’d like to invite him to say a few words.”

My throat goes dry as everyone turns towards me.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, I’m standing in the centre of my father’s office as he sits behind his desk, cool eyes focused on me. The words coming out of his mouth hit me like falling icicles, hard and sharp.

“...and if you think I’m going to let you make a fool of me and this company, you are sorely mistaken. You know the terms of your being here, and what’s expected of you. My department heads are already questioning whether or not you deserve your position. I did not spend twenty-five years and tens of thousands of my own income for you to stand with your mouth flapping like a fish when I ask you to complete the simple task of introducing yourself.”

My fists are balled at my sides. “Yes, sir,” I answer through clenched teeth. My entire body is screaming at me to shout back, to defend myself, to hurl a paperweight across the room, to just do something, but my eyes stay glued to the floor.

“Now get out of my office and go do your job.”

I turn and leave, willing myself to have the guts to slam the door. Instead, I pull it closed behind me, letting go of the knob so slowly that it doesn’t even make a click.

Back in my own office, I slump into my chair and listen to the blood pounding in my ears. A chill runs through me. As a child, my nanny always told me that meant someone was walking over your grave.

I’m walking over my own grave, I think to myself. This office, this whole building, feels like the inside of a coffin.

Then something shifts under my desk, right next to my feet.

“What the fu—”