Foundations Of Us by Christine Elisabeth at Inkitt

Chapter 1

Chloe

I woke before the alarm because the radiator struck the wall like someone knocking to be let in.

Three blunt taps.

Silence.

Then the pipes settled with a long metallic sigh.

My eyes opened to darkness, and for several seconds I didn’t move. I listened instead—to the hum of the refrigerator in the corner, the occasional hiss of tires on the wet street below, the breathing of an old building that never seemed entirely asleep.

No footsteps outside my door.

No key turning in the lock.

Nothing was wrong.

I reached beneath the pillow for my phone and checked the time.

5:47 a.m.

Thirteen minutes before the alarm.

I switched it off anyway.

There was no point pretending I might fall asleep again.

Today was my first day at Sterling & Rowe Architects.

The thought moved through me with equal parts hope and dread, tightening something beneath my ribs. I lay there for another moment, staring at the faint water stain above the window, then pushed back the covers.

The studio was cold enough to raise goose bumps along my arms.

It wasn’t much, but it was mine.

A narrow bed stood against one wall, neatly made except for the corner I had just disturbed. Beside it, a second-hand lamp cast a pool of amber light over the three novels stacked on the floor because I still didn’t own a bookcase. A small table sat beneath the window with two mismatched chairs, although no one had ever used the second one. In the kitchenette, a trailing plant leaned stubbornly toward the glass despite receiving almost no direct sunlight.

The floor sloped.

The bathroom tap leaked.

One of the windows refused to close properly unless I pushed my shoulder against the frame.

Still, I had chosen every object in the room myself.

That mattered.

I folded the duvet, straightened the pillow, and smoothed my palm across the fabric until there wasn’t a crease left. Then I checked the front door.

Locked.

The chain was still in place.

I had checked it before bed. I remembered checking it. Even so, my fingers pressed against the lock once more before I turned away.

In the bathroom, I showered quickly and pinned my hair back while I applied a little makeup. My curls had their own understanding of order, which bore no resemblance to mine, and by the time I released them they had already begun escaping around my face. The fringe was worse. I dampened it, combed it, and watched it fall back into almost exactly the same position.

“Fine,” I told my reflection.

The woman in the mirror looked unconvinced.

I had spent too long choosing my clothes the night before. The ivory blouse was soft and simple, with small pearl buttons and sleeves that gathered neatly at my wrists. I wore it with navy trousers and the black leather pumps I had bought for my final interview.

The shoes had cost more than I could comfortably afford.

My coat had not.

It was dark camel wool, beautifully cut and almost unworn when I found it at a consignment shop in Astoria. Daniel would have disliked it. Too plain, he would have said. Too serious. He had always preferred clothes that made other men notice me, then punished me when they did.

I fastened the coat and looked away from the mirror.

Not today.

I refused to give him any part of today.

In the kitchen, I made a cappuccino using the small stovetop espresso pot my mother had given me when I moved in. The milk frother had stopped working two weeks ago, so I warmed the milk in a saucepan and whisked it by hand.

It wasn’t perfect.

It was warm.

That was enough.

My notebook lay open on the table beside a slice of toast.

I had already written the details on the first page.

Sterling & Rowe Architects

Sterling House, Midtown Manhattan

Start time: 8:00 a.m.

Margaret Lewis — Executive Assistant to James Sterling

Below that was a list of names from the company website, the interviews and every email I had received during the hiring process.

Olivia Chen, Chief Financial Officer.

Emily Carter, Human Resources Director.

Charlotte Hayes, Senior Architect.

Marcus Reed, Head of Security.

James Alexander Sterling, Chief Executive Officer.

I didn’t need the list. I remembered all of them.

Writing things down simply made the information feel contained.

Manageable.

My phone vibrated against the table.

For one sharp second, every muscle in my body locked.

Then I saw my mother’s name.

Mom

Your father would like it formally recorded that you should eat a proper breakfast.

A second message appeared.

I would like it formally recorded that we’re both very proud of you.

I stared at the words until they blurred slightly.

Then I blinked and typed back.

Toast counts as breakfast. I checked.

Her reply came almost immediately.

With whom?

Despite myself, I smiled.

Reliable sources.

Call tonight. No pressure. We love you.

I placed the phone face down.

My parents had asked me to stay with them after I left Daniel. They would have made room without hesitation, even though my old bedroom had become my mother’s sewing room years ago. My father would have driven into the city at three in the morning if I called. My mother would have listened to everything I still couldn’t say.

But going home had felt too much like retreating into the person I had been before him.

I needed to know I could build something of my own.

Even if, for now, it consisted of a leaking tap, three books on the floor and one determined plant.

I ate the toast.

At 6:42, I placed my notebook in my bag and opened the top drawer of the dresser to retrieve a spare pair of tights.

The camera was beneath them.

Old black leather. Silver trim. A shallow scratch across the lens cap.

My mother had given it to me for my sixteenth birthday, and for years I had carried it everywhere. I used to photograph fire escapes, rain against bookstore windows, people reading alone in cafés, the changing light across old buildings. Ordinary things that became something else when I framed them carefully enough.

I couldn’t remember the last photograph I had taken.

My hand hovered above the camera.

Then I covered it with the tights and closed the drawer.

At the door, I checked my bag.

Wallet.

Keys.

Notebook.

Phone.

Temporary access letter.

I checked the lock after I stepped into the hallway.

Once.

Then again.

Only after the second click did I leave.

Outside, September had painted the morning in shades of grey.

Rain had fallen overnight, leaving the sidewalks slick and dark. Delivery trucks idled beside the curb. The bakery on the corner had opened early, and warm air scented with bread drifted into the street each time the door swung open.

Queens was already in motion.

A woman hurried past holding the hand of a little boy in a yellow raincoat. Two men argued cheerfully over a stack of fruit crates. Somewhere above me, a window opened and music spilled out—something soft and old, carried away by traffic before I could recognise it.

For a moment, I wished I had my camera.

The thought surprised me enough that I nearly stopped walking.

Instead, I tightened my hand around the strap of my bag and continued toward the subway.

The train was crowded, though not yet unbearable. I found a place near the doors and positioned myself with my back against the wall. From there, I could see most of the carriage.

I always noticed exits.

I noticed raised voices.

I noticed hands moving too quickly and people standing too close.

It wasn’t fear, I told myself.

It was awareness.

There was a difference.

At Queensboro Plaza, a man pushed through the doors just before they closed and struck my shoulder with his messenger bag.

“Sorry,” he muttered without looking back.

My breath caught.

The reaction came first: the violent jump of my pulse, the sudden heat beneath my coat, the instinct to make myself smaller.

Then reason followed.

Crowded train.

Accident.

Stranger.

Gone.

I pressed my thumb against the edge of my notebook through the leather of my bag.

Five things I could see.

Four things I could feel.

Three things I could hear.

By the time the train entered Manhattan, my heartbeat had settled.

No one around me had noticed.

That was the important part.

Don’t let them see.

The rule had kept me functioning through dinners, meetings, apologies and nights I didn’t allow myself to remember. It had followed me out of Daniel’s apartment and into this new life, where it no longer belonged but refused to leave.

By 7:31, I stood across the street from Sterling House.

I had seen photographs of the building. I had studied the company website before my interviews and read more articles about its history than any reasonable person would consider necessary.

None of them had captured its stillness.

The tower rose more than sixty stories above Midtown, but it didn’t feel as if it were competing with the buildings around it. Pale limestone framed tall sections of bronze and glass. The proportions were elegant rather than dramatic, the older materials softening the height and making the building feel established instead of imposing.

It had been designed to last.

That was the first thing I thought.

The second was that I wanted to photograph the way the morning light gathered along the bronze window frames.

I crossed the street before I could linger on the thought.

The entrance doors opened soundlessly.

Inside, the noise of the city fell away.

Natural stone stretched across the lobby beneath a ceiling several floors high. A living wall climbed beside the reception area, dense with greenery, while an arrangement of white branches and pale flowers stood on a long table at its centre. The air carried a restrained scent of cedar and bergamot.

To my left, models of the company’s most significant projects stood inside glass cases. Beyond them hung a large abstract painting in rust, black and cream.

People moved through the space without colliding. They greeted security staff by name. A man carrying a cardboard model held the elevator for a woman with two coffees. Near the reception desk, someone laughed quietly.

No one was shouting.

It shouldn’t have seemed remarkable.

It did.

I approached the desk.

The receptionist looked up and smiled. She had warm olive skin, dark hair pulled into a sleek ponytail and the kind of expression that made welcome feel less like part of her job.

“Good morning. Chloe Bennett?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Sophie Martinez.” She rose and held out a prepared badge. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re early.”

“I hope that’s all right.”

“It means Margaret will like you.” Her smile deepened. “Although, between us, Margaret would probably have been here during construction if they’d let her.”

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

Sophie pointed toward the security gates. “Your permanent badge should be ready this afternoon. For now, that one will take you to the executive floor. The elevators are on the right.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Welcome to Sterling & Rowe, Chloe.”

There was no reason for four ordinary words to make my throat tighten.

I smiled carefully. “Thank you.”

The elevator climbed so smoothly that the numbers above the door offered the only indication we were moving.

Thirty-eight.

Forty-seven.

Fifty-four.

I checked my reflection in the bronze panel, then immediately wished I hadn’t. My face looked composed, but I could see the tension in the line of my shoulders.

I lowered them deliberately.

At the fifty-eighth floor, the doors opened onto quiet.

Warm walnut panels lined the walls. Pale rugs softened the stone floors, and floor-to-ceiling windows revealed Manhattan beneath a low silver sky. There were no oversized logos, no obvious displays of wealth. The space felt restrained, ordered and calm.

A woman stood beside the reception desk at the centre of the floor.

Margaret Lewis wore a navy suit, a cream silk blouse and low black heels. Her silver hair was cut neatly at her jaw. She looked exactly as she had during my final interview: elegant, observant and entirely impossible to deceive.

Her eyes moved once over my coat, my bag and the temporary badge clipped to the lapel.

Then she smiled.

“Seven thirty-eight,” she said. “I was told you arrived downstairs at seven thirty-three.”

“I’m sorry. I know I’m early.”

“Chloe, punctuality is not an offence.”

Heat touched my face. “Of course.”

She regarded me for a moment, not unkindly.

Then she gestured toward the desk. “Come. Let me show you where you’ll be working.”

My workspace stood outside a pair of tall wooden doors. It was larger than my kitchen and almost certainly more expensive than everything in my apartment combined.

Two monitors sat on the desk beside a phone console, a slim brass lamp and a vase containing three white anemones. There were drawers labelled for correspondence, travel, board materials and current projects. Every object had a purpose.

At the centre lay a black leather notebook embossed with the Sterling & Rowe insignia.

Margaret picked it up and handed it to me.

“A small tradition,” she said. “Everyone receives one.”

The leather was smooth beneath my fingers.

My name had been pressed into the lower corner in small gold letters.

Chloe Bennett

I traced it once with my thumb.

“They had it made already?”

“We were confident you’d arrive.”

I looked up.

Margaret’s expression remained composed, but there was something warm behind it.

“Thank you.”

“You earned the position. You don’t need to thank anyone for giving you what you earned.”

The words landed somewhere I wasn’t prepared for them to reach.

I looked back at the notebook.

“Now,” she continued, sparing me from having to answer, “Mr Sterling dislikes unnecessary ceremony, so we’ll keep the tour practical.”

She showed me the executive meeting room, the private kitchen, the archive and the terrace that wrapped around the eastern side of the floor. She explained the communication systems, the color coding on the calendar and the security procedures for confidential documents.

I committed everything to memory.

James took black coffee in the morning.

No sugar.

No milk.

He read printed briefing papers but preferred handwritten notes for anything requiring a decision.

He protected the first twenty minutes after major meetings so he could think before moving on.

He didn’t like people waiting unnecessarily outside his office.

“He’ll assume you know how to do your job,” Margaret said as we returned to my desk. “That is intended as respect, not neglect.”

“I understand.”

“He doesn’t require hovering. He does require accuracy. He expects people to tell him the truth, even when the truth is inconvenient.”

My fingers tightened slightly around the notebook.

“Does he listen?”

Margaret’s gaze settled on me.

It was the first question I had asked that wasn’t procedural.

“Yes,” she said. “He does.”

A door opened behind her.

Margaret turned.

I did the same.

James Sterling stepped out of his office with a document in one hand and a black fountain pen in the other.

The photographs online had made him look polished in the distant, impersonal way successful men often did. In person, the impression was different.

He was tall—taller than I had expected—and dressed in a charcoal suit that fit without drawing attention to its cost. His dark hair was slightly untidy, as if he had pushed a hand through it while reading. A mechanical watch showed beneath his shirt cuff. There was no smile prepared for my benefit, no performance of authority.

Only attention.

His eyes moved to Margaret first.

“The revised figures from Singapore?”

“Olivia is sending them at eight fifteen.”

He nodded once.

Then he looked at me.

Blue-grey, I realised.

His eyes were blue-grey.

“Chloe Bennett.”

It wasn’t a question.

I stepped forward. “Good morning, Mr Sterling.”

He offered his hand.

The reflex to hesitate lasted less than a second, but I felt it.

If he noticed, he gave no sign.

His grip was brief and steady. He didn’t tighten his fingers or hold on longer than necessary. He released my hand before I had to pull away.

“James is fine,” he said. “Everyone uses first names here.”

“Of course. James.”

“Margaret has spoken highly of you.”

I glanced at her. “I hope I can justify her confidence.”

His expression changed almost imperceptibly.

Not amusement exactly.

Something quieter.

“You don’t need to justify being here,” he said. “You were hired because you can do the work.”

For a moment, I couldn’t think of a response that didn’t sound too personal.

So I chose the safest one.

“I won’t disappoint you.”

The faint warmth disappeared from his expression.

He studied me, though not in a way that felt invasive. It was more as if he had heard something in the sentence I hadn’t intended to reveal.

“I expect you’ll make mistakes,” he said.

My stomach dropped.

Then he continued.

“So will I. The aim is to catch them early and correct them. Not pretend they don’t happen.”

I stared at him.

Behind us, a telephone began to ring.

James glanced toward my desk.

“Your first call.”

I moved automatically, setting the notebook down and reaching for the receiver.

“Executive office, Chloe Bennett speaking.”

A rapid British voice introduced herself as Helen Walsh from the London studio. The regional director had been delayed at a planning hearing and needed to move the nine o’clock video conference. She offered three alternatives, two of which conflicted with meetings already visible on the calendar.

I picked up a pen.

James remained where he was.

So did Margaret.

I listened, asked Helen to hold for a moment and scanned the schedule on my screen.

At ten thirty, James had a meeting with Olivia.

At eleven, a project review with the hospital team.

At eleven forty-five, a car was due to collect him for a client lunch.

There was no free hour.

But the notes beside the finance meeting indicated that Olivia was already attending the London call.

I looked toward James.

“Could your ten-thirty meeting with Olivia be incorporated into the London conference if I extend the call by twenty minutes?”

He considered it for less than a second.

“Yes.”

“And move the hospital review to ten?”

“The project director is already in the building.”

I checked the attendee list.

Priya Kapoor.

“Then I can ask Ms Kapoor whether her team is available an hour earlier.”

“Priya,” James corrected calmly.

“Priya,” I repeated.

A slight shift touched the corner of his mouth.

“Do it.”

I returned to the call and confirmed the new time with London. Then I contacted Priya’s assistant, rearranged the project review and updated the conference room booking. By the time I replaced the receiver, the entire process had taken four minutes.

Silence settled behind me.

I turned.

Margaret looked pleased, though she was too disciplined to show more than a slight lift of her eyebrows.

James glanced at the revised schedule on the monitor.

“You’ve used this system before?”

“No.”

“You remembered all the attendees.”

“They were in the notes Margaret sent on Friday.”

His gaze returned to mine.

“Good.”

One word.

Quietly spoken.