The CEO Above My Desk (Mckenzie Shinabery) novel Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Rowan

89

The security feed glows against the dark of my penthouse, the city stretched out beyond the windows like something already conquered. I rewind the footage with a flick of my finger, watching the timestamp roll backward until it lands just after midnight.

There.

Avery.

She moves through the employee kitchen like someone who’s never learned that machines don’t respond to panic. She presses buttons too hard. Too fast. Opens drawers she doesn’t need. Tries to force the coffee pot into doing what she wants instead of reading the instructions taped right above it.

I lean back slightly, arms crossed.

She pours water where it doesn’t belong. Grounds spill. She swears-loud, dramatic, useless. When the pot sputters and dies, she freezes like it betrayed her personally.

Water floods the counter. Spreads to the floor.

She stares at it.

Does nothing.

I fast-forward.

She wipes at the mess with a single paper towel, gives up, and leaves. No call to maintenance. No message to anyone competent. Just abandonment and the assumption that someone else will fix it.

Of course.

I tap the screen again and switch feeds.

The printer room is next.

She loads paper incorrectly. Slams the tray shut. Jabs at the screen. Hits print again. And again. And again.

The machine whirs obediently.

She smiles, relieved.

I skip forward.

Paper everywhere. Schedules stacked and spilling. The printer blinking red, out of paper again.

Avery stares at it like it’s mocking her.

Then she leaves.

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No call. No explanation.

I exhale slowly through my nose.

Interesting.

I fast-forward again.

Early morning.

Earlier than necessary.

Violet Pierce enters the frame.

No hesitation. No surprise. Just immediate assessment. She surveys the damage like it’s expected. Like she planned for it.

She rolls up her sleeves.

Cleans.

Methodical. Efficient. She unplugs the machine before touching water. Dries the counter. Mops the floor. Disposes of the grounds. Resets the coffee maker like she’s done it a hundred times.

Which she probably has.

She moves to the printer next.

Checks the tray.

Loads paper properly.

Watches the output.

Stops the flood of schedules before it gets worse. Recycles the excess without annoyance. Keeps one.

Just one.

She scans it.

Frowns.

I slow the footage.

She notices the removed meeting. Checks the system. Sees I removed it myself.

No reaction.

She updates the schedule without question. Reprints it once. Clean.

Then she makes the coffee.

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Correctly

She sets everything on the counter. Sits down. Puts on her headset. Answers a call like nothing happened

Like chaos doesn’t exist unless she allows it to.

I pause the feed.

Where was Avery?

I rewind. Check timestamps.

No call to me. No voicemail. No appearance at my penthouse. Which means she stayed at her own apartment, slept through the mess she made, and assumed-correctly-that Violet would handle it.

I tap the screen harder than necessary.

“Fuck it,” I mutter.

I don’t need Avery to function. I need her to stop being a liability.

I check the time.

“How long?”

“Almost a month,” Camille says. “He was helping pay for their mother’s rehab. When he disappeared, the bills stopped getting paid.”

I lean back slightly. “Rehab.”

“Yes,” she says. “Their mother’s been there for a while. Insurance doesn’t cover all of it.”

“And Violet is covering the rest,” I infer.

Camille nods. “By herself.”

I file that away.

“There’s more,” she adds.

“I assumed.”

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But when personal chaos bleeds into my building, it becomes my problem.

And Violet Pierce just became something I need to monitor more closely.

Not because she failed.

Because she didn’t.

And people who endure that much pressure without breaking eventually do one of two things-

They shatter.

Or they harden.

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The CEO Above My Desk