The Manhattan Spark offices occupied the third floor of an old Midtown building that perpetually smelled of stale coffee and recycled paper. The symphony of constant chaos was composed of ringing phones, aggressive keyboard clatter, and editors' shouts. For Mia, her legs still rubbery from the endless walk from the Upper East Side, the noise felt like a sledgehammer to her skull.
Every eye tracked her as she moved past the rows of editorial desks. A few held false sympathy, most held knowing smirks. They all knew. Failure meant termination.
Vincent Rossi didn't see her enter. He stood in front of the whiteboard in his glass-walled office, writing names in red marker. Lockwood and Thorne were circled with vicious slashes. His phone was wedged between his shoulder and ear.
"No, I don't care about his schedule! If he's having lunch at that restaurant, I want a picture of the person feeding him his salad! Got it?" He slammed the phone down without a goodbye.
His eyes, black and sharp like a hawk's, locked onto Mia. He didn't speak, just pointed a forefinger at her, then at the floor in front of him.
Mia stepped into the chilly office. She placed her clutch on the cluttered reception desk, littered with sticky notes and old gossip printouts, and walked through to the inner room. The temperature felt ten degrees colder.
"Close it!" he ordered before she could sit.
The newsroom sounds faded to a muffled drone. Rossi swiveled the whiteboard so she could only see its blank back. He then sank into his worn leather chair, steepled his fingers, and stared at her.
"Twenty-seven minutes ago," he began, his voice deceptively calm and dangerous, "Page Six posted a blur. One paragraph. They have confirmation Thorne was there, and that he was alone."
He lifted a sheet of paper from his desk. It was a printout of the posting. "They have a source. That was enough for them."
Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, he held up another printout. A gossip column from that morning's paper. There, at the very bottom, was a three-sentence blurb. "This," Rossi said, tossing the paper towards her. It landed on the floor between them. "This is what you brought me. This is garbage."
"Vincent, I …"
"He made you, didn't he?" Rossi cut her off mercilessly. "He knew who you were. What did he say?"
Mia swallowed. "He said I should take pictures of people who want to be remembered. He prefers to be forgotten."
Rossi let out a short, humorless sound resembling a laugh. "And you deleted the photos for him."
"I didn't have a choice. He threatened to call security."
"And you thought that would be the end of the world? Getting kicked out of a party?" Rossi barked, standing now. "You let yourself be intimidated, Carter. He controlled you. And what you brought back is a soundbite and a long face."
"He knew my cover was fake," she said, trying to defend herself. "He said he owns vineyards in Bordeaux and there's no Thierry family."
"Of course he knew!" Rossi roared. "You think a man like that doesn't do his due diligence? You're a pest to him, Carter! Just a pest, and you let yourself get sprayed."
Mia stood there, her face burning with a mixture of shame and anger. She wanted to scream that she had tried. That Luke Thorne wasn't like other targets. There was something different, more dangerous, about him. But she knew Rossi wouldn't care. All he cared about were clicks and circulation.
Rossi took a long, theatrical breath. "You know the rule. Three strikes. This is your second failure this month. You have one chance left. One. And the next assignment won't be anything as glamorous as a gala. You'll be trailing some rehabbing celebrity or something equally pathetic. Now get out."
Mia turned and left, feeling her colleagues' stares prickling her back all the way out. The failure felt final, a locked door.
She wandered aimlessly around Midtown, the failure and Rossi's scolding still hot in her ears. Suddenly, across the bustling street, a familiar logo caught her eye. A sleek, modern logo of two interlocking "T"s emblazoned above the entrance of a glass-and-granite skyscraper. Thorne Enterprises.
Her body froze amidst the foot traffic. The fortress. This was where he ruled. Without truly thinking, her feet began to move, carrying her across the street, drawing closer to the building not as a journalist, but as an observer, exactly as Thorne had accused her of being.
She stood across the street, hiding behind a newsstand, and watched. Luxury cars pulled up under the canopy. Men and women in impeccable suits and leather portfolios streamed in and out. Everything was efficient, orderly, controlled. A perfect reflection of its owner.
Then, she saw it!
A long, unobtrusive black limousine stopped at a side entrance to the building, a more private door. A driver emerged and opened the passenger door. And from within, Luke Thorne stepped out.
He looked different in the daylight, on his own turf. Still in the same perfectly cut suit, but his stride was quicker, more direct. His face was forward, his jawline tight. He wasn't alone. A woman with a severe blond bun, clutching a tablet, met him, speaking rapidly as they walked toward the door together.
That wasn't what made Mia's breath catch. What transfixed her was the other man who emerged from the same car a few seconds after Thorne. He was older, with neatly combed silver hair and the bearing of a retired athlete. He wore an expensive but conservative suit. He was in no rush. He surveyed the surroundings calmly, his pale eyes sweeping the area with a professional wariness before he followed Thorne into the building.
Mia recognized that face. She had seen it in old articles during her research last night. Alex Finch. A fixer, a high-priced crisis consultant known in certain circles as a "cleaner" for the very wealthy and the very troubled. His name had surfaced in a few major legal cases that suddenly fizzled, in scandals that vanished before hitting the front page.
Why would Luke Thorne, who claimed to want to be forgotten, need a fixer at his immediate side at the office on an ordinary workday?
Thorne's wariness at the party, his cruel warning, his clean message, it all suddenly looked different. It wasn't just a disdain for the media. It was protocol. It was security.
What Thorne was hiding wasn't just his privacy. It was something tangible, something potentially dangerous, that required a man like Alex Finch on retainer.
Rossi's last message echoed again, "One chance left."
Mia looked at the towering, imposing building, then at the newsstand in front of her. The local tabloid's front page blared a headline about a movie star's affair.
A crazy, dangerous, nearly impossible plan began to form in her mind. She was no longer just a pest. She was now an observer who had identified the real target. Not a photo, but the reason behind all the walls. And she had just glimpsed one of the wall's guards.
If she was going to be fired for chasing the wrong gossip, maybe she should chase the real truth instead. Whatever the risk.
She pulled out her phone and opened the camera. Not to take a picture, but to zoom in, to get a closer look at the calm, dangerous face of Alex Finch as he disappeared behind the glass doors.
Luke Thorne thought he had chased off a nuisance. He didn't know that the nuisance was now standing outside his fortress, and for the first time, she could clearly see the shape of its defenses, and every fortress, no matter how strong, had a weak point.