Page 7 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

Margot

I've been awake since four.

For the last hour and forty-five minutes, I've stared at the ceiling while my brain works its way through everything I need to do today, then moves on to next week for variety.

My phone buzzes against the nightstand again. I reach for it and squint at the screen. Fourteen notifications. Two texts from Mom, one from my younger sister, Bree, and three emails from my boss, Richard. The rest are reminders I set for myself, because apparently I can't be trusted to remember the seventeen things already keeping me awake.

At 5:45, my alarm finally goes off. I turn it off before the second chime and give myself thirty seconds before I have to get out of bed.

I shower without turning on the overhead light because it feels unnecessarily hostile before six in the morning. Coffee goes straight into a travel mug, foundation and mascara take four minutes, and my hair gets twisted into a clip while I'm checking the first of Richard's emails. By the time I leave the apartment, I'm dressed, caffeinated, and carrying a granola bar I eat at the first red light.

Breakfast.

Technically.

Richard is already in his office when I reach my desk at 7:15. His wife is out of town, which usually means he gets here obscenely early, gets bored, and starts finding things for me to do.

"Margie." He appears in his doorway with a coffee from the place on Fifth, the one that charges sixteen dollars for something involving oat milk and gold dust. "Did you get Linda's anniversary thing sorted?"

"It's Margot." I set my bag under my desk and pull up the confirmation. "And yes. Sorrentino's, Saturday at seven. I asked for the table she liked last time, and they have her shellfish allergy on the reservation."

"Perfect. I knew you'd handle it." He takes another sip of his coffee, then starts back toward his office before turning around. "Oh, and can you grab my dry cleaning before three? I need the gray suit for tomorrow."

His dry cleaner is fifteen minutes in the opposite direction from the office. My lunch break is already spoken for because the quarterly deck needs another round of revisions before Friday's meeting, despite the fact that Richard presented the last version as his own work and received several compliments on it.

"Sure."

"Lifesaver."

I add the dry cleaning to my list.

The rest of the morning disappears beneath calendar changes, expense reports, emails Richard forwards to me with nothing but Thoughts?, and two hours spent fixing slides he'll approve after looking at them for thirty seconds. At noon, I heat up some leftover pasta and bring it back to my desk. An email comes in before I manage the first bite, then another, and by the time I get back to it, the pasta is cold.

Richard's two o'clock cancels. At two-ten, he walks past my desk with his golf clubs.

"Taking a late lunch," he says.

I already know. Marc from the third floor sent him a calendar invitation titled Client Development, clearly unaware that assistants can read.

"Have fun."

He points at me with his car keys. "Don't work too hard, Margie." The name makes my blood boil every damn time. I've corrected him enough that forgetting stopped being an excuse a long time ago.

At 3:35, I save the quarterly deck, grab my bag, and drive across town to collect his dry cleaning. The gray suit is waiting under his name. I carry it back through the lobby, hang it carefully on his office door, and sit down at my desk at 4:02 with eight unread emails waiting for me.

At 4:08, Richard drops a bound report in front of my keyboard.

I look at it, then at him.

It's at least fifty pages. Red pen covers most of them, and there are enough Post-it notes sticking out from the sides to give the report a fringe.

"Marc needs those revisions in before the Friday meeting," Richard says. "Can you get them entered by tomorrow morning?"

For one brief, beautiful moment, I consider pointing out that tomorrow morning is in approximately seventeen hours.

Instead, I pull the report closer. "What time does he need it?"

"Nine should be fine." Richard gives my shoulder a squeeze as he passes. "You're the best, Margie."