The Intern Who Reported the Boss, Not Knowing the Boss Signs Her Salary Chapter 01

The Intern Who Reported the Boss, Not Knowing the Boss Signs Her Salary Chapter 01

It was the third time the new intern had reported me for slacking off.

She towered over my desk, chin lifted. “Mr. Ashford gave explicit orders. No eating at your workstation. No drinking. No personal phone use.”

“You hit all three. That’s three grand. A full month’s salary gone.”

I looked at her young, sharp-featured face and smiled.

“She’d been here just over two weeks.”

Fifteen days, strutting around the office like she owned the place because Colton Ashford had her back.

But she didn’t know I was the majority shareholder.

What gave her the right to report the person who signed her paychecks?

***

My name is Sloane Whitfield. I’m thirty-eight.

At twenty-eight, I founded an interior design firm.

A decade later, Apex Design Studio was a name people in the industry actually recognized.

So I stepped back and handed day-to-day operations to the CEO I’d personally groomed, Colton Ashford.

Colton was five years younger, the protégé I believed in most.

I gave him real control. Outside of major project decisions, I stayed out of operations entirely.

I kept only a desk in the farthest corner of the design department.

No fixed hours. I came and went as I pleased.

The staff saw me as some semi-retired senior employee with no real authority. They called me “Ms. Whitfield” in that polite, distant way.

I liked the quiet.

I never interfered with personnel changes.

That changed two weeks ago, when Brielle Sutton showed up.

Colton personally walked her into the design department.

“This is Brielle Sutton. Ivy League. She’s joining the team, everyone help her get settled.”

His tone brimmed with approval.

Brielle smiled and greeted everyone, her gaze sweeping the room.

When her eyes landed on me, the look was pure scrutiny, edged with contempt.

She never behaved like an intern. Not from day one.

She complained her company-issued computer was too slow and made admin replace it with the latest iMac.

She sneered at the instant coffee in the break room. The next morning, her assistant was out buying freshly ground Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, charged directly to the company account.

People murmured. She heard them and just smiled that cool smile of hers.

“Mr. Ashford told me to. He said real creative work needs the right environment. You don’t cut corners on the stuff that actually matters.”

His name was her get-out-of-jail-free card.

And she was sharp, I’ll give her that.

She quickly gathered a clique of equally arrogant young designers around her.

The “old guard”? She treated us with open disdain.

In front of everyone, she declared my design philosophy “outdated and out of touch with current trends.”

At project reviews, she didn’t hesitate to tell our creative director his color palettes were “provincial and tired.”

At first, I chalked it up to youthful arrogance and let it slide.

I even helped her once.

A rush project came through, and Brielle volunteered, insisting she could handle it.

She overestimated herself.

An hour before the deadline, her entire model corrupted.

She was on the verge of tears. I was the one who sent the final files to the client at the last possible second.

She looked at me then with something like gratitude. Shock, too.

I thought maybe, just maybe, she’d soften after that.

I was wrong.

The next afternoon, I overheard her in the break room.

“Sloane Whitfield? She’s got experience, sure. Nothing impressive. Give me that many years to study the software and I’d outperform her without even trying.”

Someone else chimed in. “Seriously. She’s just coasting on seniority. Shows up, does nothing, collects a paycheck.”

Brielle laughed, and her voice dripped with superiority.

“Don’t worry. The company won’t carry dead weight forever. Mr. Ashford said the future belongs to people like us. Anyone who can’t keep up will get cut. It’s only a matter of time.”

I stood behind the break room door, coffee mug in hand. I didn’t walk in.

“Honestly? People like her are just taking up space and contributing nothing. Watch. I’m going to clean up that kind of culture myself.”

I didn’t have much of an appetite that afternoon.

It hit me then. The company I’d built with my own hands had already started growing something ugly in the places I couldn’t see.