Ficorpio
Chapter 1
You never really know what the absolute peak of workplace humiliation is.
It is accidentally sending all two hundred-plus chapters of Taming My Ice-Cold CEO to your boss’s office printer, then standing there watching page after page spit out in a frenzy of ink and paper while you lack even the courage to turn the machine off.
Half an hour later, in Adrian Sterling’s executive office, Adrian stared at the warm, ink-scented stack of evidence on his desk, his fingertips pressed so hard against the paper they had gone white.
“Sometimes,” he said in a low voice, his expression complicated in the way one might look at a rare and baffling form of incompetence, “being the boss is a very helpless position.”
Then he lifted his eyes to you.
“Ms. Bennett, is this the sort of thing that damaged your brain?”
You wanted the floor to split open and swallow you whole.
What made it even worse was that late that night, he actually knocked on the door of your apartment.
“Ms. Bennett.” Adrian leaned against the doorframe, the “criminal evidence” still gripped in one hand. “There are a few parts in this novel that aren’t entirely accurate.”
You froze.
Then he added, “Open the door. We should discuss them in detail.”
You had not had your period in three months, and Dr. Grace Monroe’s words hit you like a hammer to the chest.
“Your estrogen levels are low,” she said. “You may want to consider improving your hormonal balance. A boyfriend wouldn’t hurt.”
You sat on the bench outside the exam room at the Women’s Health Clinic, clutching your hormone panel report and staring into the middle distance, utterly dead inside.
Then Mia Parker sent you a message with a ZIP file attached.
Her note read: Hormone activation tool. Personally tested. Highly effective.
You opened it.
Inside was a shamelessly titled piece of erotic office romance fiction.
Later, while slacking off at work, you read more and more until you were embarrassingly hooked. Eventually, you decided you might as well print it out and savor it slowly.
You clicked Print.
The printer did nothing.
You clicked again.
Still nothing.
After repeating the process an unknown number of times, you cursed the useless machine under your breath and gave up.
Half an hour later, your phone vibrated.
A message from Adrian Sterling appeared on the screen.
Ms. Bennett. My office. Now.
Inside Adrian’s executive office, his face was so dark it looked ready to storm.
The CEO’s office printer beside him was still giving off a faint haze, clearly having been worked far beyond its intended capacity.
“You password-protected this proposal deck?” He picked up the deck you had submitted that morning, his tone soaked in mockery.
Chapter 2
You immediately put on your professional smile. “You said important documents should be kept confidential.”
“I said important documents.” Adrian’s brows drew together as he glanced at you. “Do you think a trash can needs a lock?”
You gritted your teeth and were just about to tell him the password when he spoke first.
“One-two-three-four-five-six.”
You: “…”
“Ms. Bennett, in the future, try not to waste effort creating problems that never needed to exist.” He flipped through the proposal without looking up.
“The slide template is nice,” he said suddenly, changing tack. “Expensive, wasn’t it?”
Before you could answer, he added, “Do you think putting a gold rim on a dumpster changes what’s inside?”
He tossed the proposal back onto the desk.
“This deck is like undercooked wild mushroom soup. Chaotic, unsafe, and probably toxic.” His gaze returned to you. “Ms. Bennett, is your current mental state still within normal operating range?”
You clenched your fists.
For the first time, you felt your grip on sanity begin to slip.
Adrian Sterling sighed, picked up a thick stack of paper from beside the printer, and dropped it in front of you with a sharp slap.
“Ms. Bennett. Is this the kind of material that damaged your brain?”
You focused on the top page.
Your mind detonated.
Wasn’t that the trashy little romance you’d meant to print?
Oh my God. You had connected to the CEO’s office printer by mistake.
More than two hundred chapters had piled up into a small paper mountain, and the poor printer was still grinding away, wheezing like it was fighting for its life. Every so often, a faint curl of smoke drifted from the machine.
Adrian rubbed his temples, exhausted. “Ms. Bennett, exactly how many copies did you print? Were you planning to hand out erotic office romance to the entire company as a team-building exercise?”
He sighed again, his voice full of helpless resignation. “Sometimes being the CEO is a very lonely job.”
Then he lifted his eyes to you, his expression unreadable. “Or is this your way of telling me you have certain thoughts about me?”
You stood frozen on the spot, mortification so intense you could have drilled a castle into the floor with your toes.
“No, I clicked the wrong printer…” Your voice trembled. “I’ve just been under a lot of stress lately, and I wanted something to help me relax…”
Adrian lowered his gaze and flipped through two pages. The title on the first page, Taming My Ice-Cold CEO, screamed up at him in bold letters.
His throat moved. His frown deepened. After a brief cough, he said, “I’m under a lot of stress now, too.”
Choking down your humiliation, you lunged forward and yanked the printer’s power cord straight out of the wall.
“Mr. Sterling, I’ll… I’ll take these and dispose of them.”
Chapter 3
You reached for the paper mountain, but Adrian only lifted his eyelids with lazy precision.
“Leave them here,” he said. “I need to study your mental state.”
You had nothing to say.
Back at your desk, you opened that ridiculous little file in a daze.
You only made it through the first chapter before you felt your brain start to shrivel.
The leads were a CEO and his executive assistant, and the story opened with office roleplay.
Absurd.
Absolutely absurd.
Scandalous.
Way too scandalous.
You collapsed facedown on your desk, dead inside, with only one thought left in your head:
I quit. I cannot spend one more day at this cursed job.
You had been Adrian Sterling’s executive assistant for five years. You were on call at all hours. Aside from sleeping with him, you had done practically everything.
Adrian Sterling, summarized in one sentence: sharp-tongued, morally questionable, and the undisputed champion of making other people’s lives difficult.
A Virgo. Late-stage control freak. Full of terrible ideas and even worse intentions.
Before you joined Sterling Market Group, you’d heard he had already fired dozens of assistants.
The only reason you had survived this long was simple: you were broke, and he paid extremely well.
Did you ever have feelings for him?
Before starting the job: Wow. What a gorgeous man. Exactly my type.
After starting the job: I want to tear his mouth off so he can never say another hurtful thing again.
Five years ago, you were still a fresh-faced newcomer to the corporate world when you accompanied him to your first business dinner.
One client kept staring at you with greasy interest and smiled as he said, “Ms. Bennett is rather shy, isn’t she? She hasn’t said a word to me.”
You were so nervous you couldn’t speak.
Adrian only slanted the client a look and drawled, “Maya knows how to speak to people like people, ghosts like ghosts, and dogs not at all.”
You stared at him in shock.
He glanced back at you as if you were the problem. “Ms. Bennett, next time you meet someone like this, go straight for the throat.”
“I’m afraid…”
“Afraid of what?” he said. “If someone wants to hit the dog, they still have to look at who owns it.”
So he was comparing you to a dog?
Adrian Sterling’s moral standards rose and fell entirely according to his mood.
Once, a rival company smeared Sterling Market Group’s products online, and Adrian went live himself to fight them.
He debated everyone, cursed out the trolls, then moved on to the rival CEO. He quoted statistics, legal precedent, industry reports, and then a shocking amount of profanity. He went on for three full hours.
In the end, the platform forcibly cut the stream because his language had gotten too filthy.
The result was that the rival CEO got roasted into silence, and Adrian earned himself the glorious title of “corporate flamethrower.”