“It’s going to be an amazing role for whoever lands it,” Kat the agency girl said as she sipped her coffee and twirled on her chair. “It only came in yesterday and I sent it out to you as soon as I saw it.”

“Well, I’m more than interested,” Amanda said as she wiggled her foot nervously. She had been sitting in the office for almost half an hour, and she still felt as if she knew nothing about the job and where she would potentially be working.

“I said I would only put forth our best candidates,” Kat grinned as she held her pen to her lip and bit the end mischievously. “And it just so happens, that out of the two profiles and resumes I sent over, the client wants to meet with you.”

Amanda felt her heart jump a little in her chest and she sat forward with a wide smile.

“Really?” she beamed. “Well, that’s great news!”

“It sure is,” Kat smiled as she twirled her chair again. “I knew, if we held out, the right role would come along for you.”

“So, where is it? And when?” Amanda was already prepping in her head what she would wear if she went along to the interview and how she would style her hair. The job sounded so interesting; she had no idea who she was going to be meeting with, but she could tell that it wasn’t going to be with someone who didn’t have a good idea of what they wanted in life. If they had already looked through profiles of potential candidates and had come back with a decision immediately then they were obviously on the ball.

“Well,” Kat said as she sucked in a huge lungful of air. “They need to see you today. In fact,” she turned to look over her shoulder and glanced at the clock on the wall. “They said around noon… is that doable?”

Amanda felt her face drop and her head spin. It was already eleven, that meant that she wasn’t going to have but barely any time to prepare any kind of opening statement, never mind choose an outfit, touch up her make-up and restyle her hair.

“You’ll be fine,” Kat said as she got to her feet and came around to the front of the desk. She sat on the edge of it in front of Amanda and looked down at her warmly. “This guy, he’s not very conventional.”

Amanda looked down at what she was wearing, and although it wasn’t scruffy, it wasn’t exactly what she would have thought was ideal for an interview. She was wearing skinny jeans and heels, with a statement necklace and a navy, fitted jacket.

“I’m wearing jeans,” she said with a grimace. “I can’t just go over there looking like this.”

“Trust me,” Kat said with a wry smile. “This is perfect.”

She held out her hand and pulled Amanda up to her feet and gave her the once over. “In fact, I would say you’ve nailed it. That’s why I didn’t prep you for a potential meeting over the phone. This guy, he isn’t going to want a PA who is overly corporate. The ad may sound serious, but I get the feeling he is just going to need someone he can trust, work well alongside, and not feel as if they are a suit following him around. Know what I mean?”

Amanda tried to take it all in and she nodded but also wasn’t sure she fully understood. The ad really had been serious, but maybe he hadn’t written it… maybe another assistant… a “suit” as Kat had put it, had done it for him instead.

“Just inject a bit of fun, and be yourself,” Kat said as she walked toward the door. “Here’s the information. I hope it goes well, and call me after you get done, okay?”

She slipped a blank sheet of paper with a letterhead on it at the top into her hand and closed the door on her before Amanda had the chance to ask any other questions. She stood there stunned, almost unable to believe that it had all happened so fast, but also excited that she was about to go and meet with someone who could potentially hire her.

She looked down at the letterhead and at the name in bold across the top.

NEWPORT.

She shrugged her shoulders, tried to memorize the address, and then headed toward the elevator. With the lack of time, she was going to have to fork out for a cab and tell them to step on it. The office was outside the city and she was going to be up against it.

“Nothing like a bit of last minute pressure to get the blood flowing,” she mused as she stepped out of the front of the agency and raised her hand to hail a taxi.

And there really wasn’t, but it was a great feeling, and one she had missed.

She was back in the game.

 

On the outskirts of the city, the big and brash offices began to melt away to smaller ones, and then into docklands, so for that reason, it was a surprise when the cab pulled up outside of what could only be described as a renovated warehouse and the driver tapped the meter.

Amanda looked up and tried to take it all in. They were on the banks of the river and, at first glance, it looked old and decrepit, but when she looked again, she could tell that is had all been recently changed. The windows were all bright and gleaming and not one of them were broken, there was no scaffolding, the bricks looked recently power washed, and down at the base of the building there were landscapers and people buzzing around making the whole place look sparkling and new.

“What is this place?” she asked as she rummaged around in her purse to look for her money.

“This place?” the cab driver snorted with laughter. “If you don’t know why you’re here then I’d probably turn and run.”

She swallowed hard and furrowed her brow.

“What do you mean?”

The driver looked at her in the mirror and raised his eyebrows.

“The Newports…” was all he offered. “Well, I heard that son of theirs bought this place. He has big plans for this side of the river now apparently.”

  Amanda was no closer to having a single clue of what he was talking about, but she smiled nervously and passed him some cash through the gap in the plastic partition.

“Thank you,” she said as she opened the door and stepped out into the cool breeze. The day had been warm and sticky, but now that she was down by the river the wind was bouncing off the water and cooling her down. She stepped closer to the warehouse and looked up at the sheer size of it. It was like something out of a movie. A completely different kind of building from another time.

She began to walk past the workmen and the landscapers and made her way toward what looked like the front door. When she reached it, the buzzer system was clearly new, but it only had one button on it.

She held her breath and then she pressed it. The moment before it was answered felt like a lifetime, but finally, on the other end of the line, a girl’s voice came scratching out.

“Hello?” she said from far, far away.

“Hi,” Amanda said as she stepped closer to the intercom to make sure she could be heard. “Umm, this is Amanda, I’ve been sent here from an agency about an assistant’s position.”

The girl stayed silent for a moment and then she replied.

“Of course,” she said warmly. “The elevator is directly ahead of you, once you’ve passed the sculpture, you need to come up to floor ten.”

The intercom clicked off and a buzzer sounded loudly in front of her. Amanda reached forward and opened the door, and then she stepped inside and gasped at what was opening out in front of her.

From the outside, the warehouse still looked as if it needed some TLC, but from the inside, it was a completely different story. The floors were marble and the walls were exposed, original brick. There were big, lush green plants in every corner, and artwork adorned the walls, as well as there being a huge, modern sculpture right in the center of the atrium. She walked around it slowly, trying to get her head around how vast and large the first floor was, and it appeared that it wasn’t even the half of it. The building was insanely big. It was old, and it had character, and it had obviously had a lot of money spent on it.

There wasn’t a single person down there, and as she walked along, with her heart in her mouth, to try and find the elevators, she couldn’t help but notice the security cameras buzzing on the wall and following her every move.

She pressed the button on the elevator and closed her eyes to stop herself from getting nervous. How had she gotten herself into this situation? Suddenly, the excitement of the unknown didn’t seem like such a good idea after all.

The elevator tinged and the doors opened. She stepped inside and looked at the panel where the buttons were located and she furrowed her brow when she realized that there was only one, and that was indeed number ten.

She pressed it and bit her lip and tried not to think too much about what she was there for. She had always been a nervous wreck when it came to interviews, but this time, she had managed to hold it together before she had seen the sheer scale of the building and the project that the owner had clearly undertaken. It was intimidating on a whole other level.

She rolled out her shoulders and took a deep breath.

“Come on,” she coached herself. “You’re doing this for your independence, and for the girls. You don’t need to be nervous.”

She could see her reflection in the dull steel of the elevator walls and she smiled to herself and instantly began to calm down. She had to get things in perspective. She wasn’t walking to her doom, she was simply taking the next step forward in her future and her career.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened slowly. As she edged forward and out of them, she was greeted by another vast and brightly lit hallway, more exposed brick and overhead beams, glossy flooring, and right at the end, as far as she could see, a girl sitting at a lone desk, chatting on the phone and typing furiously into a computer.

She waited for a moment before she began to walk toward her, and she tried to take it all in. There was no one else there, the entire building was silent as if it was empty, and she looked up and down the walls, expecting to see some other doorways leading to other parts of the warehouse, but there was nothing.

The closer she got to the girl, the more she could see that what she thought was the end of the room was, in fact, a mirrored wall, with two big double mirrored doors in the center so they were almost hidden, disguised by their own camouflage.

“Hi,” Amanda said as she approached the desk.

The girl sitting there clicked off her call and eyeballed her. She had a very straight and very clipped black bob, her lips were ruby red, and her eyes were ice blue. She looked fierce and menacing as if she could easily eat Amanda alive.

She shifted uncomfortably on the spot and tried not to blush. The girl was giving her the once over, and she narrowed her eyes before she smiled sweetly. Almost too sweetly.

“Mr. Newport won’t be long,” she said silkily. “Please, take a seat.”

She raised her hand and moved it as if to display the back of the room. Amanda was sure she hadn’t seen a seat when she had walked toward the desk, but there, as if by magic, when she turned around, was one, all on its own and next to a big, potted rubber plant.

She sat down on it and tried not to stare at the girl behind the desk. This whole situation was so strange and unnerving, it was as if she were walking into a top secret lair of a spy. She shivered. What was she getting herself into?

Within a few moments, she was aware of the sound of one of the cameras moving again. It was leaving where it had been viewing the girl and the desk and was turning slowly toward Amanda and where she was sitting uncomfortably in the middle of nowhere on a strange chair.

She tried not to shift and look nervous, and she also tried not to look at the camera and make herself feel like even more of a crazy woman.

A couple of seconds later, the phone on the girl’s desk trilled and she answered it via a headset and the click of a button.

“Of course,” her voice pierced through the deadly silence of the hallway. “I will send her now.”

She clicked off the line and her eyes flicked up to settle on Amanda.

“He’s ready for you,” she said.

Amanda got to her feet and smoothed down her jacket. She looked from one side of the room to the next, unsure of where exactly she was expected to go.

The girl smiled and reached for something on her desk, and within a split second, the doors were suddenly opening all along the back wall. She raised her hand and pointed toward them and waited for Amanda to make the first move.

As she edged closer to the doors, she stopped and looked back. The girl hadn’t taken her eyes off her, and it was then she nodded slowly and spoke again.

“Walk down to the very end,” she said.

And then the doors began to close again, and Amanda was on the other side of them and in another hallway with only more cameras for company.

She reached up and ran her hands through her hair.

This was fucking crazy.

But now, she was more than intrigued to see what kind of rich lunatic had set up this kind of place in the middle of a derelict set of warehouses.

She walked slowly toward the end of the hallway, and her heels clipped noisily along the marble floor. As she approached the end of the hallway, she began to be able to see the outline of another door in another mirrored wall, and as she stepped closer, it slowly began to open.

She slowed her pace and hung back a little, but it was then that it opened widely, a man stepped through them.

His eyes flicked up to meet hers and in that moment, she was stunned. It was just him and her looking at each other as if the world had stopped turning.

She felt her mouth sag open a little, and he cocked his head to the side and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

He looked younger than she had expected. For some reason, she had envisioned an eccentric old man who was looking for one last crack of the whip on an insane project that he would never even see reach completion. But instead, the man in front of her could have been no older than forty-three, he was tanned and handsome, his eyes were a crystal blue that made her spine tingle, and he had a smattering of stubble across his chin and cheeks which she could already feel grating over her. He wasn’t wearing a suit, or a cravat, or anything over the top like she had been expecting. He was simply wearing a pair of low slung jeans and a black t-shirt, which was tight in all the right places and exposed his heaving muscles and aggressive tattoos that were working their way down his arms.

She swallowed and tried to open her mouth, but not a single sound would escape.

He smiled, and the whole world seemed brighter.

“Amanda?” he asked gruffly as he took a step forward and held out his hand. “I’m Russell Newport.”

He slid his palm against hers and gripped it tightly.

And in that moment, she already knew, her whole world was about to change.