My name is Megan Locke. I'm the least interesting EA in the C-suite at Sentier Group.
I have a secret.
I can hear what people are thinking.
And my boss, Adrian Shaw, is the only walking icebox the company has ever produced.
He's cold. He doesn't talk. The senior VPs hold their breath when they brief him.
Then comes the anniversary gala, and someone shoves me, and I go down sideways into his chest.
His hand finds my waist. His face stays board-meeting blank.
His thoughts detonate against my ear.
Soft.
Hold tighter — will she go redder.
I lock up where I stand.
Then he tilts his head down, mild as a calendar reminder.
"Megan. Steady."
But the next thought rolls in slow, almost lazy.
I know you can hear me, little liar.
I look up at him.
The corner of his mouth moves. Barely.
"Don't leave me tonight."
And underneath that, the thing he's actually buried —
They're coming for you.
I was sixteen the first time I heard a stranger's mind.
I'd just woken up in a hospital on the Saw Mill Parkway side of the river. The ICU smelled like antiseptic and lily air-freshener. My parents were dead and the room was wall-to-wall family I barely recognized.
Aunt Lorraine was holding my hand. She was sobbing — real, snotty, public sobbing.
"Megan, sweetheart, thank God. Thank God you're here, you scared us half to death."
Her thumb stroked the back of my hand.
In her head, perfectly calm, like she was reading a grocery list:
Both parents — that has to be at least a million-four. Need to find out who the executor is before some lawyer lawyers it up.
I had a fever of 103. I still pulled my hand out of hers.
After that I learned to play deaf.
Whatever people said with their mouths, that was what I answered. The ugly stuff underneath — the calculations, the resentments, the petty grift — I trained myself to let it slide off like rain off a window.
I took the Sentier Group EA job because the pay was good and the office was a Q-train ride from my Long Island City studio.
Adrian Shaw, the CEO, was the quietest person I'd ever stood near.
He'd walk into the boardroom and a dozen senior people would be screaming inside their skulls.
The deck's a disaster.
Why isn't he frowning yet, oh god, why isn't he frowning.
If my wife sees that text from last night I am dead.
And Adrian: nothing. Static-zero. Dead air between FM stations.
A locked recording booth, soundproofed from the outside.
I loved being his EA. I could think.
And then came the gala.
The Head of Sales — a man named Whitlock with a wine glass already empty — stumbled into me near the photo line, and a full pour of cabernet went down my front. My heel went sideways. I felt the floor coming.
A hand caught my waist.
Adrian pulled me back upright like he was correcting a tilted picture frame.
His cologne came down over me — something cold, the wrong side of pine.
His thoughts came down with it.
Her waist is this small?
Don't look again.
If you keep looking she'll spook.
My brain shorts out.
The whole atrium is staring.
Whitlock is bowing and apologizing, oily, profuse.
"Ms. Locke, my god, I'm so sorry, I didn't see you —"
In his head he is laughing.
Perfect spot. No camera covers that pillar. Get her upstairs in twenty minutes.
The skin between my shoulder blades goes cold.
I try to step back. Adrian's hand doesn't move.
He bends down. Voice low enough for only me.
"Who told you to leave my side?"
His thought comes in right behind it, pressed up against my ear.
Don't be scared, Megan.
I've got him.
He walks me into the executive lounge off the 47th-floor terrace. The door clicks shut behind us.
I retreat to the far end of the couch. Six feet of carpet between us. Minimum.
"Mr. Shaw. Thank you for that."
He stands at the door, working a cufflink open with two fingers.
"Your blouse is soaked."
I look down.
White silk, gone red, plastered to my ribs. A wet spot is pooling at my waistband. I look like the cold open of a true-crime show.
I open my mouth to ask where the ladies' room is. Before I get the sentence out, he's pulled a black tuxedo jacket off a coat hanger near the bar and is holding it out to me.
"Wear this."
I take it.
His thought arrives like an aside.
Too big. She'll look like she's playing dress-up.
Want to see.
My hand jumps. The jacket nearly hits the floor.
A thin, almost-amused crease at the corner of his eye.
"Something wrong?"
I clamp my teeth. "No."
He leans against the doorframe. Watches me.
His mouth says, mild as ever: "That cabernet was tampered with."
His head says something else entirely.
Her ears are pink.
If I keep teasing, will she puff up.
I snap my eyes up to glare at him.
Adrian goes still for two full seconds.
Then his thought lands, brighter, almost a laugh.
Confirmed. She can hear me.
I freeze in place.
He takes one step in.
"Megan."
I take a step back.
He stops. Doesn't push it. Pulls his phone from his inside pocket and slides it across the bar to me.
The screen is queued to a hallway camera. Whitlock, in the staff corridor by the kitchen, tipping a small paper packet into a glass of red. Then handing it off to a server.
That glass had a place card under it.
Mine.
The sweat at the small of my back goes cold.
I keep my voice level. "If you have video of him, why hasn't he been arrested already?"
He doesn't answer.
His thought does.
Until tonight, no chain of custody.
And until tonight, I didn't know they'd picked you.
There's a rap on the door. Three soft knocks, considerate.
A woman's voice, vanilla and warm.
"Adrian? It's me. I had Bergdorf send over a backup gown for Megan — figured she could use it."
Vivienne Locke-Caron. The board chair's niece. Page Six's anointed future Mrs. Shaw.
Out in the hallway, behind the warmth, she is smiling private daggers.
Pinhole's in the bodice piping. You're cooked, sweetheart.
My hand tightens on the jacket.
Adrian glances at me.
"You heard her?"
I don't answer.
He's already at the door. He cracks it open about a foot.
Vivienne is standing in the corridor with a champagne-colored gown across her arms like a sleeping baby. Couture-stitched, garment bag pushed back to display.
She gives me her gala smile.
"Adrian, the poor thing can't go back out like that. I had Bergdorf courier this. Same size — I checked with HR."
Then her eyes hit Adrian's jacket draped over my shoulders. The smile freezes for half a beat.
In her head, the screech is unfiltered.
Cheap bitch is wearing his jacket.
Adrian takes the gown.
"Thanks."
Her face brightens.
"Let me help her change."
Get inside, lock the door, take the photo. Send it to Charles before midnight.
I'm about to refuse her when Adrian shifts his weight, fills the doorway with his shoulder, blocks her line of sight to me.
"Not necessary."
The blood drops out of her face.
"But —"
"I'll handle it personally."
I look at him. So does Vivienne.
Her head goes briefly white. Then it explodes into a static rush.
What. Personally? He's going to dress her? Adrian doesn't touch women, the man hasn't dated since 2020, what is —
I open my mouth to clarify.
He closes the door faster than I can.
The lock clicks.
He walks the gown directly to the trash can by the bar and drops it in.
I stare. "You're not going to check it?"
"No."
He picks up a letter opener from the credenza, fishes the gown back out one-handed, and slits the bodice piping in one stroke.
A black bead the size of a Tic Tac falls into his palm.
My throat dries out.
"How did you know?"
He's looking at me. Not the camera.
"Educated guess."
But underneath:
If she knew I've been pulling Locke-Caron's files for three months, would she be afraid of me?
I realize, for the first time, that Adrian's mind isn't blank.
It's just locked from the outside. Sealed shut, by him, on purpose. And tonight he's cracked the door — for me — like he's leaving a key on the table.
I look at him.
"You said you knew I could hear you."
He doesn't deny it.
"Yes."
"Since when?"
He keeps his eyes on me. Face composed.
His thought comes out hoarser than his voice.
Your first morning.
You stood in the back corner of the elevator. Nobody was talking. You covered your ears.
And I thought: get her somewhere quiet.