Proving Ground.

Chapter 5

Serena — frist Person

             Serena left Damien Blackwood's office with her composure intact,She forced herself to walk calmly through the hallway, keeping her back straight and her expression neutral until she was safely back on the strategy floor. Every instinct told her to turn around, march back into his office, and demand answers. She wanted to ask why her father's name had affected him so deeply,she wanted to know what had been inside the folder he had hidden so quickly. But years of self-control kept those questions locked behind her teeth.

The moment she reached her desk, the mask slipped.

She sat down and realized her hands were trembling. Quietly, she pressed them against her thighs beneath the desk, hoping no one would notice,she replayed the meeting over and over in her mind. Damien's reaction hadn't been normal,his answer had come too quickly, too sharply, as if he had rejected the truth before he had even thought about it. She had spent years working in strategy, learning to read people as carefully as she read financial reports,the look on Damien's face had told her far more than his denial ever could.

Her father's name meant something inside Blackwood Industries.

Before she could redraw  herself back from her thoughts,Priya dropped into the chair beside her desk,she immediately noticed something was wrong.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," she joked, her curiosity impossible to hide. She had clearly been waiting all morning to hear how Serena's  meeting with Damien had gone.

Serena forced a small smile and dismissed it, insisting that nothing unusual had happened. She quickly changed the subject to the presentation they were preparing, describing Damien only as intense.

Priya laughed knowingly.

According to office rumors, Damien had gone through multiple assistants in just a few months,not because they were incompetent, but because they became too comfortable around him. He valued professionalism above everything else and rarely allowed anyone to get close enough to know him personally. Priya warned Serena not to mistake moments of kindness for friendship. Damien Blackwood, she said, built walls around himself for a reason.

Serena listened carefully, but her thoughts remained fixed on the image of the confidential folder disappearing beneath Damien's hand. She could still picture the bold letters spelling HART across the file before he shut it. Whatever information it contained, he clearly hadn't wanted her to see it.

She chose not to tell Priya any of that.

Instead, she buried herself in work.

The presentation became a distraction for the questions racing through her mind. She rewrote the entire sections, refined the language, and carefully polished every slide until each sentence communicated exactly what she intended. Concentrating on something she could control helped steady her emotions, even if only temporarily.

By mid-afternoon, she finally sent the completed presentation to the Whitmore team, copying Damien on the email. The moment she clicked send, anxiety settled in. She wondered whether he would criticize her work or ignore it completely.

The response arrived much sooner than expected.

A member of Whitmore's executive team replied to everyone, praising the presentation and specifically highlighting slide six as exactly the strategic shift they had been hoping for. The compliment was generous enough to embarrass Serena, who wasn't used to receiving public praise from senior executives.

Damien never responded.

For several minutes, his silence felt almost disappointing.

Then a calendar invitation appeared in her inbox.

"Strategy Sync,Thursday,10:00 a.m."

No explanation,

No message,

Nothing else.

Serena stared at the screen, slowly realizing what it meant. Damien had quietly pulled her into his inner professional circle. It wasn't praise in words, but in his world, actions mattered far more than compliments. The invitation told her that he intended to keep working with her.

She should have felt proud.

Instead, she felt strangely unsettled.

It was like winning a game without understanding the rules or realizing why her opponent had allowed her to win.

As the afternoon wore on, the unanswered questions about her father became impossible to ignore.

Shortly before the workday ended, serena slipped into the empty stairwell where she could finally have a private conversation. She leaned against the cool concrete wall, took a deep breath, and called the one person who might explain everything.

Her father answered almost immediately.

His familiar voice instantly brought comfort. He sounded tired after another long day at work, but warm as always, asking how her exciting new job was going.

For a moment, Serena almost abandoned the conversation she had planned.

Then she remembered Damien's expression, the hidden file, the sudden tension in the room.

Carefully, she asked whether he had ever known the Blackwood family personally before she joined the company.

Silence followed.

It lasted only a second.

Most people would never have noticed it.

But after everything that had happened that day, serena noticed every detail.

Her father's pause wasn't ordinary.

It wasn't the pause of someone searching for an answer.

It was the pause of someone deciding how much truth to reveal.

When he finally spoke, his voice was different.

More cautious than she had ever heard it before.

Instead of answering her question, he quietly asked, “why she wanted to know.”

— ✦ —

“Dad,” serena said in a much lower tone than she meant it to be, “ why does it sound like you're about to lie to me?”