The Intern is the Undercover Boss novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: First Day
Dara, the new intern, takes Whitney's humiliation on her first morning and refuses to apologize in front of the floor, then the guest consultant walks in and he is the man from the hotel bar.
At 8:52 on Monday morning, my new boss tore my printed deck in half.
She did it slowly, so everyone on the design floor could watch.
"Dara, is it?" Whitney Dole said.
"Yes."
"Dara, this is the worst client deck I have ever held."
I had made it at four that morning, in a rented room, with a borrowed laptop.
It was not the worst deck she had ever held.
It was the only deck on that floor with the client's budget on the first page.
Whitney tore it again, into quarters, and let the pieces fall on my shoes.
"Pick them up."
Forty people were sitting at the long white desks.
Nobody looked at me.
Everybody was listening.
My name here was Dara Ross, and I was twenty-three on my paperwork.
I was thirty-one in real life.
I was also the president of Marlowe Group, which had bought this studio four months ago.
Nobody on that floor knew it.
That was the whole point.
Eleven days earlier, someone had leaked a forty-second video of a woman screaming at a crying designer in this exact room.
Our stock fell eleven percent in a week.
My chairman said to send an auditor.
I said an auditor would see a clean floor and a cleaner lie.
So I cut my hair into a ponytail, put clear-lens glasses on my nose, and signed up as an unpaid intern.
My chairman had said no three times.
I had gone anyway.
"I said pick them up," Whitney said.
I looked at the paper on my shoes.
I looked at the woman in the cream suit, with the red lipstick and the smooth blonde bob.
She was smiling.
I didn't bend down.
"The budget was on page one," I said. "The client's number is on page one. Your version of the deck has no number at all."
She blinked.
"Excuse me?"
"You gave me last year's template. I fixed it. If you'd like a different deck, tell me which part is wrong."
Someone near the windows made a very small sound.
It might have been a cough.
Whitney stepped closer, and her perfume reached me before her voice did.
"Interns don't fix my template."
"Then I'll apologize for fixing it. I won't apologize for the deck."
Her smile went flat.
"Everyone, did you hear that?"
Nobody answered.
"Dara here thinks she is better than the rest of you. Let's see how she does with lunch."
She pulled a card from her blazer and dropped it on the desk beside my hand.
It was a plain silver card, with her name on the back in marker.
"Fourteen lunches, eleven of them with allergies, from the place on Halsted. You pay with that card and you carry them yourself."
"The card belongs to you?"
"The card belongs to the team fund. You'll reimburse the team fund for the delivery fee and the tip."
"Out of what?"
"Out of your stipend, sweetheart."
I didn't have a stipend.
I had a fake name and a plan.
The plan said to stay quiet for three days, learn the floor, and watch.
I took the card anyway.
I had the whole scene recorded on a pen clipped inside my cardigan.
I had the whole sentence about the stipend.
I told myself that was enough for one day.
Then I bent down, finally, and picked up every scrap of paper, because I didn't want anyone to say I had left a mess.
My knees cracked on the floor.
A girl at the next desk, with short red curls and a baggy green sweater, slid a paper clip across to me without looking up.
I put it in my pocket.
"Clients at ten," Whitney said, to the room. "And our guest consultant is joining us today. Be impressive."
"Be impressive" was the nicest thing she had said all morning.
She turned toward the glass doors at the end of the floor.
They slid open.
A tall man walked in, dark blond, with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and ink on his hands.
He was reading something on his phone and smiling a little at it.
He looked up at the floor.
He looked at Whitney.
Then he looked at me, standing there with a handful of torn paper and a pair of glasses I didn't need.
I knew the shape of his shoulders.
I knew the scar along his thumb.
Nine days ago, in a hotel bar two blocks from here, I had told him my name was Dee.
I had gone upstairs with him anyway.
"Dee?" he said.
The whole floor turned to look.
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