Chapter 1

                                    

                                          
"You're crazy."
                          
That's all I ever heard whenever I told people that I aspired to work for Stella Louise Maxwell one day. No one seemed to ever understand why someone like me, or any sane person at that, would actually hope to work someone the media nicknamed the "Cutthroat Queen of Journalism", "She-Devil", "The Devil in Dior" and "Satanic Stella", which were all considered the nicer names they referred to her as. 
                          
I mean honestly, who would want to work for a woman who's been given horrific nicknames like those. No one in their right mind, right?
                          
Well, then there's me. The one crazy enough to accept an opportunity to work for the woman that had the world convinced that she could ignite Hell on earth if she truly desired to. But as odd as it sounded, I simply just didn't see Stella as "evil" in my eyes. 
                          
Of course, there were plenty of magazines and blog posts about how "vicious" she was for constantly stepping on other journalists' toes to create the best story for her magazine, or how "selfish" she was since she only seemed to care about herself and anything that had her name on it. 
                          
With all of the bad things being written about her, I guess people wondered how I could see her as anything other than wicked. But truthfully, I had never been the one to let someone else's words or opinions influence my feelings about a person. No matter who it was, I always believed that in order to create my own opinion of someone I would have to actually meet them and get to know them for myself. 
                          
But not everything that was written about her was bad, depending on how you read it. If you pieced together all of the positive things being said about her like I did, you would come up with a few good qualities that didn't make her seem so terrible. For example, Stella had a fierce attitude to challenge anything or anyone in her way, which I thought made her appear fearless. She also had a confidence that I envied, the kind of confidence required to not have a mental breakdown every week knowing that everyone seems to hate your guts. 
                          
As I stood behind her office door I told myself that I could really use some of her confidence right about now. It seemed like my heart was pounding so hard against my chest that at any given moment it would explode, while my stomach seemed to have a million knots tangled tightly inside of it. 
                          
I softly closed my eyes. "Get it together," I whispered to myself, knowing that I desperately needed to catch a grip and fast. I hadn't even stepped into the woman's office yet, and here I was already freaking out. 
                          
I took a moment to collect myself and geared my focus onto fixing my appearance as a short distraction. Taking both my hands, I ran them over my navy blue sheath dress, attempting to straighten out any wrinkles that my iron may have missed, before thoroughly fixing the cuffs on my white button-up shirt that I wore underneath. Once certain that everything was intact, I took one final calming breath and knocked on the door.
                          
"Come in," Stella answered assertively. 
                          
Stepping into her office, my eyes instantly wandered around the light saffron-colored room. I was like a kid in a candy store, examining every single thing in the room and being so intrigued by everything I noticed. Her office was glamorous, like something stripped straight out of an HGTV magazine that had been brought to life. Everything in the room was decorated so elegantly starting from the small crystal chandelier hanging above her desk all the way down to the circular, suede saffron rug on her polished hardwood floor. Magazines and different books filled her black painted bookshelves, and rested on top of the shelves were framed certificates that I could only wish to receive during my career.
                          
The sound of her clearing her throat snapped me back into reality. "Well, are you going to introduce yourself?"
                          
"Oh, uh, sorry, I'm Harper Daniels." I answered, "I'm your new personal assistant."