Chapter Text
At the core of it, Oscar is terrified of Ingrid, and no matter how quietly efficient she is, it’s never going to work.
Ingrid Baumann is a very competent secretary: organized, impeccable, with beautiful handwriting. She knows every board member and their ex-wives, has worked with six CEOs, and Oscar has always clocked that subtle look in her eyes that says he’s not going to make it through the year. She is also, by any reasonable metric, a million years old.
That’s not her fault, obviously.
When Oscar first walked into his new office three months ago, Ingrid had looked at him the way one looks at a lost puppy—like he might have wandered onto the executive floor by mistake. Which, to be fair to her, wasn’t entirely wrong. Oscar is far too young for the role, closer in age to her sons than to his predecessors, who were usually the same species of ageing industry executive: bellies, greying hair, and a voice practiced in sounding inevitable.
It’s not that Ingrid is being mean to Oscar. She simply operates on a different system, and it is infuriating. She refuses to acknowledge the mere idea of Slack. She believes phone calls and face-to-face conversations are vastly superior, and she conducts her work accordingly, with a patience that feels actively hostile to speed. Nothing is late. Everything just takes forever.
Ingrid knows everything about Auremont—this old car manufacturer with too much history for its own good. She remembers what happened in 1994, 1998 and 2005, why things are the way they are, who made which decision and who paid for it later. Context, to her, is sacred. Unfortunately, the Middle Eastern investors who now hold majority stakes did not hire Oscar for context. They hired him because he was young, technical, and expected to move faster than the past ever did.
They hired him because he’s very, very competent.
But you don't see that competence from the amount of time Oscar spends rehearsing his lines this morning. It is, in hindsight, deeply embarrassing. He practices it in front of the bathroom mirror until the words lose all meaning, then writes it down on a small piece of paper he folds and refolds until the edges soften. He carries it with him to work like a talisman, fingers closing around it every time his confidence falters. By the time he finds himself pacing outside his own office, quietly convincing himself that this is something CEOs are meant to be able to do, he already feels faintly ridiculous.
When he finally asks Ingrid to come in, she enters with the calm inevitability of someone who has seen this moment arrive many times before.
Oscar’s office is all floor-to-ceiling glass and mid-century modern restraint, a look he has quietly loathed since day one but accepted with the same resignation he applies to most inherited decisions. Ingrid takes it in with a brief glance before turning her attention back to him, posture perfect, expression unreadable. There is something in her eyes that suggests she already knows what this conversation is about—and does not approve.
Oscar clears his throat. Once. Then again.
He tells her that her work has been invaluable. That he owes her more than he can properly articulate. That Auremont would not function as it does without her. The words come out stiff at first, then faster, as if momentum might carry him through. He tells her he believes she deserves a promotion.
She looks at him the same way she did three months ago, when he first walked into this office and she assessed him like a variable with an unproven lifespan.
Oscar grips the edge of his desk.
“A promotion,” Ingrid repeats, carefully. “That is interesting.”
“Yes,” Oscar says quickly. “A new role. More strategic. Less—” he hesitates, “—operational.”
Ingrid tilts her head. “You are removing me from your calendar.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that.”
“But that is what it is.”
“No,” Oscar says, then stops himself. “Not exactly. You’d be a special advisor. Direct line to me. Board-level visibility. More flexibility.”
Ingrid’s eyebrow lifts.
“Flexibility,” she says, her German accent sharpening just enough to draw blood. “You want me not to come to work anymore.”
“That’s not—”
“So I stay home,” she continues pleasantly. “I water my plants. I wait for you to remember how things function. And then, when something collapses, you call me.”
Oscar opens his mouth. Closes it.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” he says, less certain now.
“It sounds very much like what you are saying.”
She folds her hands. She is perfectly calm like she has all the time in the world.
Oscar feels, distantly, like he is being walked backward into a corner he did not intend to stand in.
“You’d still be involved,” he says. “Just not—constantly. You wouldn’t have to be here every day.”
“Because I am tired?” Ingrid asks mildly.
“No.”
“Because I am slow?”
“No.”
“Because I am old.”
Oscar winces. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you are thinking it.”
He isn’t. He is thinking about Slack notifications piling up unanswered. About decisions waiting hours when they need minutes. About conversations that stretch into careful, historical context when the market has already moved on.
“Ingrid,” he says, steadying himself, “you are incredible at what you do. But the way you work—”
“—has worked,” she cuts in smoothly, “for longer than you have been alive.”
“Yes,” Oscar says. “And it’s why the company survived. But surviving isn’t the same as moving.”
There it is. The line he hadn’t practiced.
Ingrid studies him now, properly.
“You think I am the problem,” she says.
“No,” Oscar says immediately. “I think the interface is wrong.”
Her mouth tightens. “You have learned new words.”
“I’ve learned urgency,” he replies, surprising himself with how firm it sounds. “The investors didn’t bring me in to preserve rhythm. They brought me in to change it.”
“And you think I cannot change,” Ingrid says.
“I think you shouldn’t have to,” Oscar says, softer. “You’ve carried this place for decades. I’m not asking you to run faster. I’m asking you to help me choose where we don’t run at all.”
She considers this.
“And who will sit outside your door,” she asks, “when I do not?”
Oscar exhales. This is the real question.
“I’m going to ask HR to find someone,” he says. “Someone closer to my frequency.”
Ingrid smiles then. Small and sharp.
“You will regret this,” she says, not unkindly.
“Probably,” Oscar admits. “But not for the reason you think.”
She nods once, as if filing it away.
“Very well,” Ingrid says. “Special advisor.”
She turns to leave, then pauses.
“For the record,” she adds, without looking at him, “I think you will last longer than the others.”
Oscar blinks. “I will?”
“Yes,” she says. “Because you are afraid.”
—
It’s not as if Oscar is a bumbling idiot the investors plucked at random and asked to save a corporation that was very publicly inching toward failure every quarter. Nobody hires a CEO on a whim, not when the numbers are this bad and the brand is this old. The people who signed off on him had one look at his record and decided—carefully, deliberately—that he was someone they could put in the room and not regret later.
Oscar is credible. Credible enough to be present when the buyout was finalized, when the room filled with men who did not agree with one another but did agree on one thing: the last CEO had to go, and the next one could not be another familiar name with familiar instincts. When the discussion stalled—when the sheikhs and the remaining European shareholders circled the same arguments without resolution—Oscar was already there, translating between priorities without inflaming them. He spoke in timelines and trade-offs, not promises. That mattered.
He had the experience for it. A solid track record that suggested he understood scale: how to run operations measured in billions, how to make decisions that affected thousands of employees without pretending those decisions were clean. He had already proven that he could be trusted with something large and complicated, something with a brand recognition so embedded that most people associated it with a childhood memory of their father’s inexplicable obsession. That kind of weight didn’t intimidate him. He treated it like a system—fragile, interdependent, salvageable if handled correctly.
He was also, crucially, agreeable. He doesn't have the kind of loud charisma that inspires people in the traditional sense, but he's tolerable to everyone in the room. Shareholders didn’t hate him. Board members didn’t feel threatened by him. Governments didn’t flinch when his name came up.
He had opinions—clear ones, shaped by his age and experience—about where Auremont needed to go if it wanted to survive the modern automotive industry, about how culture and vision had to change alongside technology. But he didn’t present those ideas as ultimatums. He presented them as inevitabilities.
Which is why, when Oscar said he needed someone "closer to his frequency", it should have been obvious what he meant.
It wasn’t about age. It wasn’t about aesthetics or comfort or rebellion. It was about speed, about operating in the same temporal reality. Oscar thought in compressed cycles, in overlapping decisions, in messages that couldn’t wait for the dignity of a phone call. He needed someone who could absorb information at the same rate he did, who understood that moving quickly was no longer a personality trait but a survival requirement.
Closer to his frequency meant someone who didn’t need translation between urgency and action.
Oscar does not, at first, understand how difficult that is to find.
It has been weeks since he told Ingrid he was looking for someone new, and every morning she is still there, seated at the same desk outside his office, posture immaculate, expression carefully neutral in a way that reads unmistakably smug. She doesn’t say I told you so. She doesn’t need to. Her continued presence is commentary enough.
HR, for their part, has done everything correctly. They have brought him candidates with immaculate qualifications and glowing recommendations, people who pass every assessment thrown at them and clear vetting processes so thorough they feel faintly absurd for a role that, on paper, involves managing a calendar. By the end of it all, they sit these candidates down in front of Oscar—and Oscar just… doesn’t feel it.
There is nothing wrong with them. That’s the problem.
This is the fifth person HR has brought up to his floor after sorting through hundreds, possibly thousands, of CVs. Oscar notices the strain in his HR chief now, the polite frustration of someone who believes resources are being misallocated. At one point, carefully, the man suggests that perhaps the expectations are too high for a personal assistant.
“It’s not that kind of role,” Oscar says, for what feels like the hundredth time.
The HR chief tries again. “This one is different. Closer to your age.”
Oscar rolls his eyes before he can stop himself. He does not bother correcting him. He does not explain—again—that age is not the variable. That youth without alignment is still just noise.
He checks his watch.
“I’ve got thirty minutes,” Oscar says. “Then I’m leaving for the factory.”
That, at least, lands. Meetings are cut short. Papers are gathered. Ingrid watches the exchange from her desk with the faintest hint of satisfaction, as if to say good luck.
The candidate is already waiting in one of the smaller meeting rooms down the corridor. Oscar walks there alone, jacket still on, mind split between production schedules and the increasingly uncomfortable thought that Ingrid might be right—that this is harder than he assumed.
When he opens the door, the guy stands up a beat too fast.
There’s a moment of indecision, visible and endearing: should he stay put, step forward, wait to be acknowledged? He chooses the worst possible option and extends his hand halfway across the table.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m Lando Norris.”
Oscar should be offended by the handshake. He isn’t. He’s distracted by the eyes—an impossible color somewhere between grey, green, and blue—and by the fact that Lando looks like he’s already recalculating the mistake in real time.
They shake anyway.
Lando studies him for half a second, head tilting, and then says, with complete sincerity, “It’s an honor to finally meet you, Mr Auremont.”
“Oh, I’m not—”
“I’m kidding,” Lando grins. “I know that’s not your last name. The real Mr Auremont’s been dead for decades. Sold the company fifty years ago, if I remember right.”
Oscar blinks. Then, against his better judgment, he almost laughs.
“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the chair opposite him.
Lando does, immediately, like he’s relieved to be given something unambiguous to do.
Up close, the differences sharpen. He’s younger than most of the candidates. He’s a man, which is unusual enough to register—not unwelcome, just unexpected. Oscar clocks the thought and moves on. This is not the time to interrogate his own biases.
“So,” Oscar says, folding his hands on the table, “how did you hear about the role?”
Lando doesn’t answer immediately. He considers the question, eyes flicking briefly toward the glass wall, the corridor beyond it, the desk Ingrid still occupies.
“Honestly?” he says. “It didn’t sound like a normal PA job.”
Oscar lifts an eyebrow.
“It sounded,” Lando continues, “like you were looking for someone to run interference. Someone who could absorb noise so you don’t have to. Someone who understands that your calendar isn’t about time management, it’s about damage control.”
Oscar should probably ask him to elaborate on that. Prove he's not just guessing. Instead he's watching the way Lando's mouth shapes the word damage, and he's forgotten what question he was supposed to ask next.
Lando keeps going, momentum building. He talks about the surprise of Oscar’s hiring, about the pressure that comes with being the compromise candidate, about the tension between heritage and speed, about how nothing slows an organization like forcing urgency through people who don’t feel it. He doesn’t flatter. He doesn’t posture. He speaks like someone who has been paying attention.
Then he looks Oscar straight in the eye and says, “I think I’m the best person for this job.”
At this point Lando could probably say anything.
Oscar is aware, distantly, that he should be interrogating credentials, redirecting the conversation, maintaining professional distance. Instead, he finds himself watching the way Lando’s mouth curves when he’s confident, the way his hands move when he explains something, the way the room feels—lighter, somehow, less resistant.
Transfixed is not a word Oscar would normally apply to himself.
And yet.
He clears his throat. “You’ve got twenty-five minutes left,” he says, tone carefully neutral. “Convince me.”
Lando smiles.
“Oh, that’s plenty. Where would you like me to start?” Lando asks. “Qualifications, or… vibe.”
Oscar snorts despite himself. “Qualifications.”
“Right.” Lando straightens, just a little. “I've got a dual degree in computer science and psychology from King’s College London. I worked for a mobility startup in Silicon Valley right after—hypergrowth phase, then it imploded more or less overnight.”
Oscar waits.
“I know that sounds bad,” Lando says easily, “but it was actually great training. Scaling too fast, managing crisis in real time, watching how bad decisions compound when nobody wants to say no. You learn a lot when the building’s on fire.”
“Mm,” Oscar says. “And after that?”
“I worked with a few executives directly. Carlos Sainz. Daniel Ricciardo.”
That gets a reaction.
Oscar tilts his head. “That’s… impressive.” A beat. “I know them.”
“I assumed you might,” Lando says, unbothered. “You’re welcome to call them.”
Oscar hums, thinking. He can already feel which reference he would and wouldn’t use. Carlos is efficient, brilliant, exhausting—he respects him, doesn’t like him enough to invite commentary. Daniel, on the other hand… well. Daniel is Australian. That alone carries a certain bias.
“But,” Oscar says, folding his hands, “they’re not in this industry. Cars, yes. This industry, no. How much do you actually know about automotive manufacturing?”
Lando grins like he’s been waiting for the question.
“I know enough that people have been writing Auremont’s obituary for the last twenty years,” he says. “And yet it’s still here.”
Oscar’s mouth tightens. “That’s not a good thing.”
“It’s not a bad thing either.”
Oscar looks at him then. He’s starting to see the shape of Lando’s thinking—the way he reframes pressure into momentum, failure into narrative. It’s not stupidity. It’s… orientation.
“I see,” Oscar says slowly. “You’re a sunshine-and-rainbows person.”
Lando pouts, considering this seriously, like he’s turning the phrase over in his head.
“No,” he says finally. “I don’t think that’s right.”
“Oh?”
“You don’t understand,” Lando says, leaning forward now, animated. “The fact that people keep writing obituaries is the story. It means they’re watching. It means they care enough to check whether the company’s dead yet. That’s the longest-running will-they-won’t-they romance in corporate history.”
Oscar blinks.
“Our job,” Lando continues, voice bright but precise, “isn’t to declare it healthy. It’s to make the next chapter so compelling nobody dares stop reading.”
“No,” Oscar says immediately. “No, no, no. That’s my job.”
Lando freezes.
“If you’re getting this role,” Oscar continues, calm but firm, “your job is to manage my calendar. To make sure I’m where I need to be, when I need to be there, and that I’m not wasting time I don’t have. Because my job is to make the company healthy. To stop the bleeding. Stabilize it. If we’re lucky, maybe resurrect it enough that it can actually move forward.”
He exhales. “Narrative is not in the brief.”
Lando nods slowly. “Sure,” he says. “And you’re doing that.”
Oscar scoffs. “You don’t know that. I’ve barely managed to get anything done in the past few months.”
“That’s not true.”
“You have no idea what’s happening in here.”
“Okay,” Lando says easily, holding up a hand. “Obviously I don’t. I don’t know the details. I don’t know the meetings, or the politics, or whatever nightmares live on your spreadsheets.”
Oscar waits.
“But,” Lando continues, quieter now, “I do know groundwork when I see it. And that’s what you’ve been doing. Clearing space. Slowing things down where they need slowing, speeding up where they’ve been stuck. You don’t start with miracles. You start with foundations.”
Oscar stares at him.
At the almost childish openness of his face, the curls refusing to behave, the posture that somehow manages to be relaxed without tipping into disrespect. Lando doesn’t look like someone angling for approval.
“Ah, I get it now,” Oscar says slowly, “You’re a glass-half-full kind of person.”
Lando considers this. “I like it better than ‘sunshine-and-rainbows.’”
“That’s not what I asked,” Oscar says mildly. “Is that instinct, or faith? Because there’s a difference.”
Lando’s eyes flicker.
“I don’t think it works if it’s blind,” he says. “You have to see something holding first. Otherwise you’re just… pessimistic for sport. And what’s the point of that? You don’t win by assuming you’ve already lost.”
Oscar watches him closely. The way he says win is so casual and unembarrassed, like competition is a given.
“Hm,” he says. “So you assume things are working until proven otherwise.”
“I assume,” Lando says, smiling, “that if something’s still standing after decades of people declaring it dead, then yeah. Something’s working. You don’t have to like it. You just have to figure out why.”
Oscar leans back. “I’m more of a "there is water in the glass" person.”
Lando smiles, like that makes perfect sense.
“Good,” he says. “Then my job is to make sure it doesn’t leak. I’ll make sure nobody tips it over.”
Oscar smiles back—then catches himself. The smile feels unprofessional, unwarranted. This is a job interview. He’s looking for an assistant. He’s desperate for one, yes, but not that desperate.
He clears his throat, checks his watch, and is faintly startled to see that fifteen minutes have already gone. He resets.
“All right,” Oscar says, forcing his tone back into neutral territory. “When you worked for Daniel and Carlos, what was the biggest challenge? And how did you tackle it?”
It sounds like a proper interview question. Measured. Professional. Oscar feels a brief, self-satisfied sense that he’s regained control of the room.
Lando doesn’t answer immediately.
He considers the question, thoughtful rather than performative, bringing a hand up to his chin. His fingers tap once, twice, against his jaw as he thinks, and Oscar has the absurd, intrusive thought that this is not information he needs to retain.
“They’re very different people,” Lando says finally.
Oscar nods, once.
“With Carlos,” Lando continues, “everything’s very… precise. Meticulous. You spend a lot of time anticipating what he wants before he actually says it.”
He gestures as he speaks, hands spreading slightly, easy and fluid.
“He’s a smooth operator,” Lando adds, like he’s repeating something he’s heard a hundred times. “Which mostly means rhythm matters. Momentum. The job is making sure nothing interrupts it. No surprises. No friction. If something breaks the flow, you’ve already failed.”
Oscar watches the way Lando explains it—how naturally the structure comes to him. His hands move again, expressive without being distracting.
They’re big, Oscar notices with a faint, detached horror. Broad palms. Strong fingers. No rings.
“And Daniel?” Oscar prompts, because he should.
Lando smiles, quick and fond.
“Complete opposite,” he says. “Just… abundance. Energy everywhere. Ideas constantly. Half of them brilliant. Half of them happening all at once.”
He laughs under his breath, shaking his head.
“The challenge there isn’t anticipation,” Lando says. “It’s direction. You don’t want to shut it down, because that’s where the good stuff comes from. But you also can’t let it spiral. So the job becomes making the what ifs and could wes turn into something you can actually act on.”
He makes a small funneling motion with his hands, like he’s gathering loose threads together.
“Same skillset,” Lando says lightly. “Just… applied very differently.”
Oscar exhales slowly, realizing a beat too late that he’s been holding his breath.
“I need someone who can work in a fast-paced environment,” he says, deliberately neutral. “And I don’t mean that as corporate jargon. I mean I need someone who can actually move quickly.”
Lando’s mouth quirks. “Oh, I’m fast,” he says easily. “Don’t worry.”
Oscar's face does something—not disapproval. Something sharper. Like he's just heard something he shouldn't have and doesn't know what to do with it.
Lando catches it and grins. “No, seriously,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “If there’s one thing about me that’s true, it’s that I’m quick. In… everything.” He shrugs, unapologetic. “It’s probably what I’m best at.”
Oscar holds his gaze a fraction longer than necessary, then looks down at his own hands on the table, consciously stilling them.
“I think I get what you’re dealing with,” Lando continues, his tone shifting—still light, but steadier now, as if following Oscar’s lead back to safer ground. “And it’s not competitors. Or tech. Or even money, really.”
Oscar’s attention snaps back.
“When a company gets this big,” Lando says, “the real fight is culture. Momentum. You’re not pushing against the market—you’re pulling against gravity.”
Oscar doesn’t interrupt.
“I worked with Carlos in 2019 and 2020,” Lando goes on. “Then Daniel in 2021 and 2022. Different people, different teams—but same problem. Everything’s heavy. Every decision takes longer than it should. You spend half your energy just trying to move things an inch.”
Oscar nods once.
“I’m not running a startup,” he says. “I’m not here to throw around words like agile and lean every ten seconds and pretend that fixes anything.” His voice firms. “I’ve got men in their fifties and sixties who are terrified of failure. I’ve got factories where thousands of lives depend on this company not getting it wrong.”
Lando listens. Really listens. No grin now.
“Yeah,” Lando says quietly. “That’s what I mean.”
"That means pressure," Oscar says. "Real pressure. This isn’t a nine-to-five role. I come in early, I stay up late. I've got conference calls with Americans, with the Chinese—partners, suppliers, vendors scattered across time zones that don’t care about sleep."
"Are you actually up for that?"
Lando doesn’t look intimidated. If anything, he looks faintly amused.
“I’ve always thought work-life balance is a bit overrated,” he says.
Oscar scoffs. “There’s also a lot of travel. And not the fun kind.” He ticks it off without looking at him. “Airports. Meeting rooms. Airports again. Sometimes three countries in four days. You’d be responsible for making sure it all runs smoothly so I don’t have to know what’s happening on that end at all. So I can focus on my job.”
Lando nods, unbothered. Grounded.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s sort of the bare minimum.”
Lando shifts then—subtle, but unmistakable. He leans forward, forearms resting on the table, the easy humor falling away like it was something he’d only put on temporarily.
“Look,” he says, quieter now. “I know this isn’t some average, boring job.” His mouth quirks. “Which is exactly why I wanted it.”
Oscar doesn’t interrupt. He finds that he can’t.
“I have zero interest in a boring life,” Lando continues. “And you’d be surprised how good I am at making someone else’s life not just… tolerable.” A pause, deliberate. “But—if you let me—more exciting.”
Oscar stops breathing.
His mind, traitorous and precise, begins cataloguing disasters instead: the clean arc of Lando’s eyebrow as he speaks; the way his hair is a chaotic mess that somehow looks intentional; the faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose that Oscar is certain hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“I’ve done this before,” Lando says, steady. “With Carlos. With Daniel. Completely different people.”
He gestures between them, small and contained.
“The trick is realizing you can’t support people the same way. What worked for Carlos never worked for Daniel. What worked for Daniel would’ve driven Carlos insane. You have to become a kind of… personality mirror.”
He glances up, eyes sharp and bright.
“And I’m very good at it.”
Oscar’s breath comes back in shallow increments, like his body has decided oxygen is optional.
“You’re not Carlos,” Lando says. “You’re not Daniel.”
His head tilts, just a fraction, like he’s adjusting focus.
“You’re a third thing.”
Something in Oscar’s chest stutters. He is suddenly acutely aware of the room: the hum of the lights, the glass walls, the distance between them that feels entirely too small.
His breath slows to a faint, careful tide.
He thinks, dimly, that this is what a system overload must feel like. Too many inputs arriving at once, none of them willing to be deprioritized. The grey-green eyes, the confident mouth, the word exciting, the terrifying, perfect competence—a third thing.
A shrill, internal alarm finally penetrates the static. The factory. He checks on his phone from the table. The screen lights up, and the time—10:42 AM—hits him like a physical blow.
The factory tour starts at eleven. It’s a thirty-minute drive in good traffic, which this is not. He is supposed to be walking the line with the foreman, reviewing the new efficiency metrics. Two dozen senior engineers are blocking out their morning for this. His credibility, which he has so carefully built on timelines and trade-offs, is evaporating second by second.
Panic, clean and professional, lances through the haze of attraction.
"Shit," he says, the word escaping before he can stop it.
He’s on his feet before his mind fully commands it, the chair scraping harshly against the floor.
"Right. I have to go. Now."
Lando blinks, visibly thrown by the violent shift in energy. "Oh. Okay. Did I—"
"No," Oscar cuts in, already grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair. He’s moving on autopilot, a CEO-shaped missile locking onto its next coordinates. "You're fine. This was—" Catastrophic. Revelatory. A problem. "—productive. I'm late."
He’s at the door, hand on the handle.
"For the factory," he adds, though no one asked. He can’t stop talking. "I'm late for the factory."
He doesn’t wait for a reply. He pulls the door open and is in the corridor, walking too fast, his polished shoes clicking a rapid, frantic rhythm against the marble. He is fleeing the scene of his own unprofessionalism.
"Okay!" Lando’s voice, bright and bewildered, chases him down the hall. "Good luck!"
Oscar doesn't turn. He can't. If he looks back, he might do something truly irrevocable, like go back in and ask for Lando’s personal number.
Ingrid appears in the doorway—of course she does—with a look that suggests she knows exactly what just happened.
"The candidate?" she asks mildly.
"Fine," Oscar says.
"You are leaving for the factory."
"Yes."
"You look unwell."
Oscar ignores this. He grabs his laptop, his briefcase, tries to look like a person who has their life together.
"I’m going to hire him," he says.
Ingrid's eyebrow lifts. "You are certain?"
"Yes."
"You did not check his references."
"I will," Oscar lies.
Ingrid studies him for a long, excruciating moment.
"Very well," she says. "I will inform HR."
Oscar leaves. He gets in the car. He stares out the window at the city passing by and tries not to think about grey-green eyes and the word exciting and the fact that he just hired someone based on a thirty-minute conversation and a catastrophic lapse in judgment.
This is fine. This is a normal thing that CEOs do.
He's going to regret this. Probably starting Monday.