Ownership of the heart

The twenty-sixth floor of Blackwood Global smelled like high-end toner, expensive espresso, and the quiet, vibrating anxiety of three hundred people trying not to get fired.

Aria Vance slammed her stapler down on a stack of reports with more force than necessary and groaned loudly earning little looks from her colleagues. "uuuuurrrggghhh if I have to look at one more spreadsheet, I am going to develop a permanent twitch in my left eye."

"Careful, Vance," Leo muttered from the next cubicle over, not looking up from his dual-monitor setup already used to her antics. "The 'Eye-Twitch' is a symptom of Blackwood Syndrome. Stage one is the twitch. Stage two is caffeine induced hallucinations. Stage three is when you start believing the CEO actually exists and isn't just an AI programmed to ruin our weekends. And step four is .... ummm.... uhhhh.... I don't know." he finished with a shrug. Aria groaned again, pushing a stray lock of dark hair out of her face.

"He exists, Leo. I saw his signature on the memo that cut our department's overtime budget. It's a very jagged, very aggressive 'K. Blackwood.' It looks like he signed it with a knife or a sharpening tool."

"I heard he doesn't sleep," Maya one of her close friend and colleague chimed in, rolling her chair over from the filing cabinets. She leaned in close, her eyes wide with the look of someone who spent too much time on office message boards. "I heard he lives in the penthouse of this building, and he has a private retinal scanner in his elevator so he never has to breathe the same air as us the 'commoners.'"

"Well, tell the Ghost of the Penthouse that us the 'commoners' are drowning ," Aria said, gathering a mountain of folders into her arms and stood up, straightening her clothes that go wrinkled from sitting. "I have to get these to the twentieth-floor archives before five, or my manager is going to have my head on a platter. And my phone just died. Again."

"Good luck, soldier," Leo said, saluting her with his right hand while his left hand held a cup of coffee she could have sworn he wasn't with earlier. "Don't get stuck in the vents and don't faint on us. Got it ? "

Aria didn't have time to laugh or reply him. She checked the wall clock and it said 4:48 PM. If she missed the archive deadline which was 5: 30 pm, the entire quarterly audit would be delayed, and the wrath of the "Icy King" would trickle down from the top floor until it hit her directly on the head.

She sprinted toward the bank of elevators, her heels clicking a frantic rhythm on the marble floor. Her arms were aching under the weight of the heavy folders, and a dull ache was beginning to throb behind her temples, which she knew was flu since she'd been trying to ignore since breakfast that morning.

"Come on, come