He chuckled and went back to his computer.

Aria opened the report.

If Ethan Ashford wanted to know whether she could think, she'd give him an answer he couldn't brush off just because she'd been hired yesterday.

She didn't read it front to back. She worked through the summary, the financial projections, the legal notes, the market analysis, and the risk section, flagging anything that mattered.

When a number looked off, she checked it against the source documents. When two departments disagreed, she compared their assumptions.

By four, her coffee had gone cold. By five, the executive floor had cleared out. By six, Aria was still at her desk, hair falling loose around her face, one hand under her chin, the other on the keyboard.

She was not going to let him make her look incompetent. Not after everything it took to get here.

At 6:31, she finally sat back. The original report was down to twelve pages. She read it once. Then again. She cut the repeats, checked the numbers one last time, and printed it.

At 6:52 she stood, shoulders aching, and carried it toward Ethan's office.

She knocked once.

"Come in."

Ethan sat behind his desk, jacket still buttoned despite the long day, sleeves neat at the wrists, eyes on his laptop.

She set the report in front of him. "Your report."

His eyes moved to it. "How many pages?"

"Twelve."

His face didn't move. "I asked for a summary."

"Yes."

He opened it. Aria stood there while he turned page after page, unhurried, giving nothing away.

She watched his face for a reaction. Nothing. She hated that. With most people she could read whether they were pleased or annoyed. Ethan Ashford seemed to have opted out of facial expressions entirely.

He paused at the financial projections, tapped one figure with a finger, kept reading. Then he closed the report.

"You included the regulatory risk."

"Yes."

"It wasn't flagged in the original file."

"It was buried in the legal notes."

His eyes came up. "And you decided it mattered."

"I did."

A short silence. Aria wasn't sure if she'd passed a test or started a new problem.

Ethan tapped his pen once against the desk. "Why?"

"Because if the regulation changes, so does the projected return. I thought you should know that before you made a call based only on the numbers."

His jaw shifted. He looked at the report again, then shut it.

"Tomorrow, cut it to six pages."

Her eyebrows went up. "Six?"

"Is that a problem?"

"No." She paused. "Though losing half the report means losing some context."

"Then decide what matters."

His tone was flat, almost bored. She stared at him for a second. He actually expected her to make that call herself.

Fine. She could do that.

"I'll have it ready in the morning."

He gave a small nod and went back to his laptop. Probably a sign to tell her the conversation was over.

She'd taken two steps toward the door when his voice stopped her.

"Ms. Bennett. Remove the third section."

"The market comparison?"

"Yes."

"It explains why our growth beats the industry average."

"I read it."

"Then why cut it?"

He finally looked up. "Because I don't need twelve pages to understand a decision."

She almost pointed out that if he already understood it, he could've written the summary himself. Instead she swallowed it.

"Understood."

"And restore the original font."

Her hand froze on the door handle. Of course. She glanced back. "Of course, Mr. Ashford."

She walked out before her face could give her away. Once the door shut, she let out a breath and looked down at the report.

"Six pages," she muttered. Then, glancing at the door, "Original font." She shook her head. "He's impossible."

The senior manager across the floor looked up. "Still think you'll get used to him?"

She gave him a tired smile. "No. I think I'm going to become a better person just to survive him."

He laughed. She sat down, rubbed her forehead, and checked the clock. 7:14 p.m. Everyone else had gone home. She was still here and something told her Ethan wasn't done testing her yet.

Inside his office, Ethan picked the twelve-page report back up and turned to the regulatory risk page. He looked at it for a while. Then he called down to reschedule his nine o'clock to ten, hung up, and kept reading — no smile, no sign he was impressed, just turning pages.

Outside, Aria packed up, with no idea that the impossible boss she'd already written off had noticed a lot more about her work than he let on.

And tomorrow, he planned to see if she could do it again.

***

By the middle of her first week, Aria had a system for surviving Ethan Ashford. It wasn't a good system. Mostly it involved coffee, patience, and accepting that whatever she considered "a reasonable amount of work" meant nothing to her boss.

She came in early. She had everything ready before he asked. She learned which meetings he hated, which reports he wanted printed, which he wanted on his tablet, and the exact order he liked his morning briefing. She figured that if she understood his routine, the job would get easier.

By Thursday, she knew better.

She stood by her desk at 7:42 a.m. staring at the schedule she'd rebuilt the night before. Eleven meetings. Three calls. Two presentations. Lunch with investors. A board meeting. And somehow he'd also found time to review four department reports.

She stared at it, then at his closed door, and shook her head. "This isn't a schedule. This is a hostage situation."

The door opened. Ethan stepped out in his usual dark suit, folder under one arm.

"Ms. Bennett."

"Good morning."

He dropped the folder on her desk. "Need this reviewed before nine."

She checked the clock. "It's seven forty-three."

"Yes."

"Any reason it has to be before nine?"

"I have a meeting at nine."

"That gives me seventy-seven minutes."

He looked at her like she'd just commented on the weather. "I know." He walked off.

She looked at the folder, then at his door. "Of course you know."

She opened it and got to work.

The first thing Aria learned was that Ethan didn't believe in empty space. Fifteen free minutes on his calendar, he filled them. Thirty minutes, filled. A whole free hour, and somehow another department got a meeting invite from his assistant.

She tried building a breathing room. He removed it. She moved a meeting. He moved it back. She trimmed a discussion from an hour to forty minutes. He added another meeting right after.

Eventually she stopped trying to make gaps and just made sure he had time to walk from one room to the next without sprinting. That felt like a win.

Then there were the documents. Ethan reviewed everything — not just what needed his sign-off. Contracts, budgets, marketing plans, operations updates, legal files, even things already cleared by senior executives.

One afternoon, Aria noticed a stack of reports on Ethan's desk. She picked up the top file, more out of curiosity than anything else.

"Is this from Operations?"

He didn't look up. "Yes."

She glanced at the first page. "I thought the Operations Director handled these."

"They do."

There was a brief silence.

"Then you review them yourself?"

He finally looked up at her. "I like to understand what's happening in every department."

Aria nodded quickly. "Right."

She placed the file back where she'd found it. It wasn't her place to question how he chose to run the company. She had been working with him for barely long enough to understand his schedule, let alone his decisions.

Still, as she returned to her desk, she couldn't help noticing something. Ethan didn't simply oversee things. He handled them, personally.

Reports from department directors. Documents that should have been handled several levels below him. Decisions other people were supposed to make.

He seemed determined to know everything himself. Maybe it wasn't that he didn't trust his employees. Maybe he simply didn't trust anything to be done unless he had looked at it personally.

***

On Wednesday morning, a senior executive stopped by Ethan's office with a folder.

"You've been reviewing these yourself again."

Ethan kept reading. "I wanted to make sure there weren't any errors."

"We have an entire department for that."

"I know."

The executive sighed. "You don't have to do everything yourself."

Ethan's eyes lifted from the page. "I didn't say I did."

"You don't have to say it."

Aria kept her attention on the documents in her hands, pretending not to listen.

Ethan closed the folder. "Thank you for your concern."

The man hesitated for a moment before nodding and leaving. Once the door closed, silence settled over the office again.

Aria glanced toward Ethan. She probably shouldn't say anything. She was still new. She was still learning how he worked, what decisions were hers to make, and what boundaries she wasn't supposed to cross.

But the words slipped out anyway. "You really review all of those yourself?"

Ethan looked at her. "Most of them."

She nodded slowly. "I see."

She didn't add anything else. There wasn't much she could say. He was the CEO, and she was his new assistant. If he wanted to review every report that crossed his desk, that was his decision.

Still, she couldn't help noticing the schedule in front of her."You have three meetings in the next two hours."

"I know."

"And six more after lunch."

"I'm aware."

Aria hesitated..She looked at the untouched coffee beside his laptop, then at the time on the clock.

"And you haven't had breakfast."

His jaw tightened slightly. "I'll eat later."

She almost reminded him that he'd said the same thing yesterday. Instead, she simply nodded. "Right."

He returned to his laptop.

Aria picked up the next folder from her desk, but her eyes lingered on him for a moment. He worked as though stopping wasn't an option. As though everything could fall apart the second he stopped paying attention.

She wondered what had made him that way.

Then she caught herself. It wasn't her business. She had known him for one week. She barely knew anything about him. She turned back to her work.

A few minutes later, Ethan looked up. "Anything else?"

She shook her head. "No, sir."

She took two steps toward the door before stopping. She glanced back at him. He was already reading another report.

The words came before she could reconsider them. "You're... quite difficult to work with, Mr. Ashford."

His eyebrow lifted.

Aria immediately regretted saying it. "I mean—" She straightened. "Your workload. It's difficult to keep up with."

There was silence for a few seconds..Then Ethan simply said, "I see."

Aria nodded quickly. "Good morning, Mr. Ashford." She left before she could make things worse.

Behind the closed door, Ethan stared at the doorway for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, the corner of his mouth lifted.

***

By the end of the week, Aria had learned that Ethan Ashford didn't understand the concept of moderation. If something could be done today, he wanted it done today. If someone else could handle a task, he somehow found a reason to handle it himself. And if his schedule was already packed to the minute, he'd simply find room for one more thing.

On Friday evening, Aria cleared the last item from his calendar and leaned back in her chair with a satisfied smile.

Finally, everything was under control. She had barely enjoyed the feeling for three seconds when Ethan's office door opened.

He stepped out with another folder in his hand.

Aria's smile vanished. "Don't."

Ethan stopped. His eyebrows drew together slightly. "Don't what?"

She pointed at the folder with narrowed eyes. "Whatever that is—don't."

He glanced down at the folder as though he'd forgotten he was holding it. "This needs to be ready for Monday."

Aria slowly pushed herself upright. "It's Friday evening."

"Of course."

"And you just finished your last meeting."

"Seems so."

She stared at him. "You have nothing else scheduled today."

“That's correct."

Her expression tightened. "So why are you giving me work now?"

Ethan looked at her with complete calm. "Because work continues on Monday."

Aria's mouth fell open. For a moment, she genuinely had no response.

Ethan simply turned around and walked back into his office.

She watched him disappear behind the door. Then she lowered her forehead onto her desk with a muffled groan."This man is going to be the death of me."

It was nearly ten when Aria finally packed up. The floor had been empty for hours. The lights had been switched off in most of the offices, leaving only the dim emergency lighting along the corridor. There were no footsteps, no ringing phones, no voices drifting from conference rooms.

At last, she grabbed her bag and headed toward the elevator. Then she noticed the light. A thin line of warm light spilled beneath Ethan's office door.

Aria slowed. She frowned and checked her phone. 10:07 p.m.

Surely he had gone home.Maybe someone from security had forgotten to switch off the light.

She walked back toward his office. The door was slightly open. Aria stopped beside it and glanced through the narrow gap. Her expression changed.

Ethan was still at his desk. His jacket had been removed and hung over the back of his chair. His tie was loosened around his neck, the top button of his shirt undone. Several files were spread across the desk, alongside his laptop and a half-finished cup of coffee.

The blue light from the screen illuminated the tired lines around his eyes..He was still working. Long after everyone else had gone home.

Aria remained by the doorway, her hand tightening around the strap of her bag..All week, she'd thought of him as impossible, demanding, and relentless. A man who apparently believed weekends were a scheduling inconvenience.

But standing there now, watching him turn another page with tired eyes and rub briefly at the back of his neck before returning to his laptop, she felt something else. He didn't look like a demanding CEO now. He looked exhausted like someone who had forgotten that work was supposed to have an ending.

Aria hesitated. Her annoyance faded completely. For the first time that week, she wondered if Ethan actually knew how to stop.