Episode 3

Chapter 3: Day One

The lobby of Cross Industries was designed to make you feel small.

Forty-foot ceilings and marble floors polished to a mirror finish. Behind the reception desk, the company logo floated in brushed steel.

He walked in at 7:52 AM wearing a dress shirt he'd bought at a discount store on Canal Street. Forty dollars. Same price as the one Jessica had watched him put on three nights ago, except this one was dry. He carried a messenger bag with a legal pad, two pens, and a peanut butter sandwich he'd made at five in the morning because he didn't know if interns got lunch.

The security guard checked his name on a tablet. "Ethan Cross. Marketing intern, Vanguard Tech. Thirty-second floor." He handed over a badge with Ethan's photo on it — taken from his application, passport-sized, unsmiling. No title. No department. Just a name and a barcode.

The elevator was glass-walled and silent. Ethan watched the floors tick upward — each one a department, a division, a piece of the empire his father had built while looking for him. The thought still felt foreign, like wearing someone else's coat.

The thirty-second floor opened onto a bullpen of glass-walled offices and open workstations. Vanguard Tech. A countdown clock on the wall read "V1 LAUNCH — 47 DAYS."

A woman in HR handed him a packet. Benefits he'd never had. A 401(k) he didn't understand. A corporate card he was told to use "only for approved business expenses." He signed everything and was walked to his desk — a cubicle in the back corner, half the size of the ones around it, with a monitor, a keyboard, and a sticky note that read: *Welcome! — HR.*

His cubicle neighbor was already there.

Derek was a third-year analyst who looked like he'd been poured into his Ralph Lauren button-down. Early thirties, gym-built, with a smile that showed too many teeth. He shook Ethan's hand and held it a beat too long — a dominance tell as old as primates.

"New intern, huh? I'll show you how things work around here." He dropped a stack of manila folders on Ethan's desk. "These need to be filed by department code. Color-coded tabs. I need them by lunch."

Ethan looked at the folders. They were Derek's filing, not his.

"Sure," Ethan said.

"Great." Derek leaned against the cubicle wall, arms crossed. "One more thing. Interns don't talk in meetings unless they're asked a direct question. That's not official policy — that's my policy. We clear?"

"Crystal."

Derek grinned like he'd just house-trained a dog and walked away.

Ethan didn't file the folders. He set them aside and opened his laptop. He had forty-seven days to learn what Vanguard Tech was actually doing, and he wasn't going to spend them alphabetizing another man's paperwork.

At ten o'clock, orientation.

Forty new hires in a glass-walled conference room. Ethan sat in the back row. The VP of Product Strategy walked in, and the room straightened.

Serena Aldridge was twenty-six and looked like she intimidated people for a living. Black hair pulled back tight. Charcoal blazer with no wrinkles. Heels that clicked on the floor with the precision of a metronome. She carried a single folder — no laptop, no tablet — and she didn't smile.

"Welcome to Vanguard Tech. I'm Serena Aldridge, VP of Product Strategy. I'll keep this short because your time is valuable, and so is mine."

She spoke for twelve minutes. No filler, no jokes, no corporate cheerfulness. She laid out what Vanguard Tech was building, why it mattered, and what she expected from every person in the room. Her eyes moved across the rows like searchlights. When they passed over Ethan, they didn't stop. He was invisible. An intern in the back row wearing a forty-dollar shirt.

After orientation, the bullpen swallowed him. Phones ringing, keyboards clacking, the low hum of ambition working itself to death. Ethan was crossing the floor toward his cubicle when someone collided with him.

Hot coffee hit his sleeve. He felt the burn through the fabric.

"Oh my God. Oh no. I'm so sorry — I didn't see you — I was looking at my phone and—"

The woman was his age, maybe a year younger. Brown hair, no makeup, wide eyes going wider with mortification. She was holding the remains of a latte and looking at Ethan's sleeve like she'd just murdered it.

"It's fine," Ethan said.

"It is absolutely not fine. That's coffee on your — is that your only — hold on." She was already moving. She grabbed his arm like they'd known each other for years and pulled him toward the lobby. "There's a gift shop downstairs. They sell dress shirts. Overpriced, but they exist. I'm buying."

"You don't have to—"

"I definitely have to. I spilled a grande oat milk latte on a person I've never met on his first day. This is a moral obligation."

Five minutes later, he had a new shirt — blue, from the lobby gift shop, fifty-two dollars, and she'd paid for it before he could reach his wallet.

"Claire Ashworth," she said, extending her hand. "Design department. First week."

"Ethan. Marketing intern. Also first week."

"Well, Ethan Marketing Intern, I owe you lunch too. That shirt was basically an assault." She smiled — a real smile, not a performance. "I always make too much sandwich. It's a genuine problem I have."

He found himself smiling back. It was the first time he'd smiled since the restaurant.

The rest of the day was a blur of onboarding modules and IT setup. Derek ignored him until five o'clock, when he reappeared at Ethan's cubicle.

"Did you finish that filing?"

"Not yet."

Derek's jaw tightened. "Not yet?"

"I'll get to it." Ethan's voice was even. Agreeable. The kind of tone that sounded cooperative and meant nothing.

Derek stared at him for three seconds too long, then walked away. Ethan watched him go and filed the interaction away in a mental folder marked *later*.

At six-thirty, he texted Miles Tucker.

Miles had been his roommate sophomore and junior year — six-one, built like a point guard, with a mouth that worked faster than his judgment and a design portfolio that shut everyone up when it mattered. He'd been at Cross Industries for six months, working in the design division two floors down.

They met at a bar in Hell's Kitchen. Dark wood, sticky countertop, Knicks on the TV above the register.

"So let me get this straight." Miles set down his beer. "You are working. At your father's company. As an intern. An unpaid intern?"

"Paid. Barely."

"At your father's company. Your father's eighty-two-billion-dollar company. As a marketing intern in a cubicle."

"It's not that small of a cubicle."

"Bro." Miles leaned back. "That's either the smartest or dumbest thing I've ever heard. And I once bet three hundred dollars on a preseason Jets game."

Ethan took a drink. "I need to know if I belong there. Not because of a name."

Miles studied him. The joking dropped for a moment. Underneath the wisecracks was a person who'd known Ethan through two years of cafeteria dinners and all-night study sessions, who'd watched him work harder than anyone in their class and never explain why.

"Alright," Miles said. "But when you inevitably reveal yourself as the prince of Midtown and fire everyone who was mean to you, I want a corner office."

"You'll get a cubicle."

"I already have a cubicle. At least make it bigger."

They stayed for another hour. Miles caught him up on the office — the politics, the personalities, the VP who never smiled. "Serena Aldridge," Miles said. "Ice queen. Brilliant. Don't cross her."

"Too late. She barely looked at me."

"She barely looks at anyone. That's kind of her thing."

Ethan walked home at nine-thirty. The city was warm and loud around him. He passed the Cross Industries building on Fifty-Third — the one Richard had built twenty years ago, the one with the name on the side that he'd walked past a thousand times without knowing it was his.

He stopped. Looked up at it. His surname carved into the stone above the entrance.

He put his hands in his pockets and kept walking.

Behind him, on the thirty-second floor, Serena Aldridge sat alone in her office. The orientation roster was open on her screen. She scrolled through the new hires until she found one name.

*Ethan Cross.*

His academic record was outstanding — honors thesis on emerging market pricing strategy, full scholarship, top of his class. His employment history was empty. No internships. No family connections. No LinkedIn profile. Nothing.

She made a note in the margin of his file: *Follow up.*

Then she closed the laptop, turned off the lights, and went home.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***