Page 79 of His Good Girl

I stared at it for a full second.

Then I laughed so abruptly that Mark-or-Matt looked over with concern.

“Sorry,” I said, sitting down. “Allergies.”

By three o’clock, I had passed the cybersecurity test with one hundred percent, which felt less like achievement and more like proof that I could identify a phishing email designed by someone’s uncle. Benjamin appeared two minutes after the score populated, as if summoned by compliance.

“Well?” he asked.

I turned my laptop toward him.

He inspected the score. “Acceptable.”

“Perfect, actually.”

“Perfect is a dangerous word. It encourages personality collapse.”

“Are you proud of me, Ben?”

He looked pained. “Do not make this personal.”

I grinned despite myself. Something had shifted between us during the day. We weren’t friends, exactly. Benjamin did not seem like a man who entered friendship without background checks and a signed indemnity, but the open hostility had begun to change into something more enjoyable.

A few hours later, Dana gave me a stack of old internal project summaries and asked me to rewrite one paragraph from each in ‘human language.’ I did. She read them in silence, red pen in hand. By the third paragraph, she made a small sound.

I braced myself.

“This is clear,” she said.

“Is that bad?”

“No. It’s suspicious.”

“Thank you?”

She marked one sentence. “You’re too soft here. Don’t apologize for the information. State it.”

I nodded and took the page back.

Benjamin, passing behind her, said, “Look at that. Becoming useful before sunset.”

Dana did not look up. “Don’t praise her. She’ll get dewy-eyed.”

“I will not,” I defended.

Dana looked at me, her expression flat.

I reconsidered. “Probably not.”

By the end of the day, my brain felt packed with passwords, acronyms, policies, faces, warnings, and the constant hum of the Hartwell crisis moving around me without ever touching me directly. Callum did not return to his office while I could see him. Once, I heard his voice from the far conference room, loud through half-open glass: “They can imply whatever they like. We answer with documentation.” My whole body tuned toward the sound before I could stop it.

Benjamin, standing beside my desk, said without looking up from his tablet, “Pavlovian.”

“I’m allowed to recognize voices.”

“Certainly. Some people also recognize the dinner bell.”

I glared at him.