Today I’m looking for none of that, but I steal the chocolate anyway. I finish the whole bar before I find what I need. A phone number. I dial out on Asher’s office phone and lean back in his chair like I run this place.

“Hello?”

“Morgan! Hi, it’s Olivia.”

* * *

Ana calls me to her office just in time for lunch, which consists of garlic noodles and hot dogs with questionable amounts of mustard. I don’t complain about free food, so I scrape the mustard off with a napkin and enjoy the fine cuisine of the 52nd Street hot dog stand. We eat an assortment of honey-roasted nuts for dessert.

“I let Billie know that you’ll be working on the final arrangements for the gala with her,” Ana says, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin. “I also told Asher that he would be without an intern for a week and he reacted exactly how you would imagine he would.”

“Like a petulant child?”

Ana smiles. “He’s… unique.”

“I prefer difficult,” I laugh. “Demanding. Hard to please. But I don’t necessarily think those are bad things. He’s good at what he does and he expects the people that work for him to have those same standards. I can respect that.”

“He’s certainly nothing like his father.”

“Which is a miracle in and of itself.”

Ana leans forward and smiles at me from across her desk. And in that moment, she’s not my boss or my colleague or a publicist. She’s a mother. And suddenly, I feel like I’ve just been caught sneaking in at two in the morning reeking of booze and teenage regret. It’s a look I don’t take for granted.

“Are you seeing him?”

“I… would never do anything to jeopardize my place in this company. I take my work and my future career very seriously.”

“Olivia, I see the work you do. You don’t need to defend yourself to me,” she says. “I know workplace things happen. And I see the way he looks at you, so I don’t know why I’m saying this, but I’m a mother first and foremost and I just want it to be known that I don’t tolerate abuse of power. And if you ever feel like you’re in a situation like that, I trust that you would come to me. I do a very good job of destroying men who think they’re untouchable. It’s probably my favorite pastime.”

I read the papers after Willa’s personal pictures surfaced. Ana Loveridge-Herrera is not a woman anyone wants to cross. Not as a publicist. Definitely not as a mother. She murdered an entire family’s reputation with a few choice words. She deserves a statue. And a nice, long vacation.

“Thank you for looking out for me,” I tell her.

“It’s what I’m here for.”