Chapter 5 5

Allison stepped out of the elevator and onto the forty-eighth floor of the Lee Group headquarters.

She was wearing her sharp black Tom Ford suit. Her heels clicked against the polished hardwood floors.

The atmosphere here was suffocating.

The air was thick with tension. The relentless ringing of multi-line phones and the aggressive, rapid-fire clacking of mechanical keyboards created a wall of chaotic noise.

Naomi Kent, a senior HR manager with tired eyes, met her at the reception desk.

Naomi handed Allison a cheap plastic intern badge on a blue lanyard. It had the lowest possible security clearance.

"Follow me," Naomi said, not smiling.

Naomi led her through a massive maze of gray cubicles. Junior analysts were screaming into headsets, ignoring them completely.

They walked toward a row of massive glass-walled executive offices in the far corner.

"Listen to me carefully," Naomi whispered, leaning close to Allison. "The Executive Vice President of Investments is Godwin Wheeler. He is a notorious workaholic. Do not waste his time."

Naomi pushed open the heavy glass door and stepped back.

Allison walked in.

Godwin Wheeler stood behind a massive mahogany desk. He was staring intensely at six different Bloomberg terminal screens, his eyes tracking the scrolling red and green numbers.

He slowly turned around.

His sharp, calculating eyes scanned Allison from head to toe. He was evaluating the so-called princess of the Lee empire.

He didn't offer his hand. He didn't say hello.

"If a private equity firm executes a leveraged buyout using a sixty-forty debt-to-equity ratio, how does a sudden two percent interest rate hike impact their year-one cash flow projections?" Wheeler fired the question at her like a bullet.

Allison didn't flinch. She took a deep breath.

She tapped into the brutal financial modeling drills she had memorized at Columbia.

She delivered a flawless, mathematically perfect breakdown of the cash flow destruction within thirty seconds.

Wheeler's eyes narrowed. A tiny, almost invisible flicker of genuine respect crossed his face.

He nodded once.

He pointed a thick finger at a massive stack of thick binders on the corner of his desk.

"Those are due diligence reports for the tech merger," Wheeler said. "I want the risk summaries cross-referenced and on my desk by five o'clock."

Allison walked over, picked up the heavy stack of binders, and carried them to a small, cramped desk outside his office.

She sat down and started working at a frantic pace.

Hours blurred together.

During the lunch hour, the other interns gathered in the breakroom eating expensive salads. Allison stayed at her desk, her eyes burning as she stared at spreadsheets, desperately hunting for Cheryl's hidden financial traps.

At 12:30 PM, Wheeler walked out of his office holding an empty coffee mug.

He stopped by her desk.

"How are your classes at Columbia?" Wheeler asked casually, taking a sip of the air.

"Intense," Allison replied without looking up from her screen. "I just registered for the Advanced Finance Seminar. I need the practical combat experience."

Wheeler let out a low chuckle.

"Good luck with that," Wheeler said. "My nephew just started teaching there. He has a terrible temper. He eats unprepared students alive."

Allison offered a polite, distracted smile. She completely failed to connect the dots between Wheeler's nephew and her own schedule.

At 1:00 PM, Naomi rushed over.

"The risk assessment meeting got moved up," Naomi said. "Get in there and take the minutes."

Allison grabbed her notepad and hurried into the massive glass boardroom.

The room was packed with senior executives. Judd's top loyalist, a sweaty man named Peterson, was presenting a quarterly asset report.

Peterson pointedly looked at Allison and asked her to verify a highly complex depreciation metric on page forty. He was trying to humiliate her.

Allison didn't even open the packet.

Relying purely on her photographic memory, she loudly pointed out a massive, hidden calculation error in Peterson's formula that artificially inflated the asset value.

The room went dead silent.

Wheeler, sitting at the head of the table, hid a smirk behind his hand. He was extremely satisfied with her aggressive counterattack.

But the victory was short-lived.

The meeting dragged on. Executives argued in circles over meaningless budget cuts.

Allison felt a cold sweat break out on the back of her neck. She glanced frantically at the large silver clock on the wall.

It was 1:45 PM.

Her Advanced Finance Seminar-the class that failed you for one absence-started at exactly 2:00 PM.

Her hand cramped as she scribbled the final line of the meeting summary on her legal pad.

The second Wheeler called the meeting to a close, Allison shot out of her chair.

She abandoned all professional decorum and stepped quickly out of the boardroom.

She power-walked down the long carpeted hallway, nearly jogging as she skillfully navigated around groups of investment bankers. Despite her efforts to avoid collisions, her hurried pace still drew several annoyed, questioning stares from the senior staff.

She slammed her hand against the elevator call button.

The doors opened instantly. She threw herself inside and punched the lobby button repeatedly.

The elevator plummeted to the ground floor.

The doors slid open. Allison sprinted out into the massive marble lobby.

Suddenly, she slammed on the brakes. Her boots skidded against the polished floor. She froze in absolute horror.