Elena went straight to her building. It was already late, almost empty.
She took her private elevator up to her office. She didn't turn on the main lights, just her desk lamp. She sat down and tried to work.
Emails. Reports. Approvals.
She worked till around 2am, but her eyes kept getting heavy.
She finally pushed her chair back, stood up, and walked to the back wall of her office. She opened the hidden door and went into the secret room.
It was cold inside. Quiet. The small lamp on the nightstand was off, she switched it on. The warm light filled the room.
She closed the door behind her, took off her heels, and sat on the edge of the bed. She just sat there for a while, staring at the wall, her arms folded.
She was tired, but not sleepy.
After a few minutes, she pulled the blanket over herself and lay down on her side. She left the small lamp on.
---
She woke up at 6:30am. The lamp was still on, its light now pale against the morning coming through the small frosted window.
She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and stayed in bed for a minute.
Then she got up. She showered in the small bathroom inside the secret room. The water was hot. She let it run over her head for a long time.
When she was done, she went to the closet. She had a full closet here — blazers, pants, dresses, shoes. All pressed, all arranged by color.
She picked a charcoal blazer, a white inner shirt, black pants. She dried her hair, tied it up in a neat low bun, light makeup. Just enough to look sharp.
By 7:50am, she was back at her main office desk. Heels on. CEO mode on.
She opened her laptop. The building was waking up now.
At exactly 8am, there was a knock.
Her PA peeked in. "Good morning, ma'am. They're here."
"Send them in," Elena said.
Celia came in first, tablet in hand, coffee in the other. Adam followed with his laptop already open.
"Morning," Adam said.
"Morning," Elena said.
Celia swiped on her tablet. "Agenda for today. First is urgent — Mr. Lee."
"He moved his call to 10am. He said if we don't have the updated demo for the dashboard, he's not renewing. His team tested it yesterday and the real-time analytics section is still showing yesterday's data."
Elena frowned. "Dev told me last night it was done."
"It is done," Adam cut in, placing his laptop on her desk. "But QA found a bug around midnight. The numbers lag by about three minutes."
Elena leaned in, watching the graph. "That's not acceptable for him. He runs ads based on this data."
"Dev is patching it now. They need one more hour."
Elena checked her watch. "Tell them I need it live by 9:30. I want QA to test it twice before we get on the call. Send me the patched link once it's live. And tell dev to join the 10am call."
"On it," Adam said, typing.
Celia continued, "Second — marketing. Ad spend is up 20% this week but sign-ups are flat. Campaign team wants to double the budget for TikTok ads."
"No. Don't double anything. We're burning money. Cut Instagram ads completely for two days. Move that entire budget to TikTok. Test it for 48 hours. If conversion doesn't improve by at least 10%, we pause everything and rethink the creative."
Celia nodded, noting it down.
"And last," Adam said. "HR issue. Two backend devs resigned this morning. Both got offers from Kline Tech."
Elena looked up. "Both?"
"Both. Email came in at 7am."
"Can we counter?"
"We can match the senior one. The other wants fully remote plus equity. That's above our band."
"Okay. Let the mid-level go. But counter the senior one. Give him 10% increase and make him lead on the new API project. We cannot lose him two weeks to launch."
"Understood," Celia said.
Elena closed the laptop.
"Anything else for this morning?"
"That's all for now," Celia said. "We have product review at 11."
"Good. Get me the patched link in 20 minutes. And coffee. Black, no sugar."
They both stood up and left.
Elena leaned back in her chair and exhaled slowly.
At 9:25am, Celia knocked and came in with coffee.
"Patched link is live. QA tested twice. Adam said it's truly real-time now. No lag."
Elena took the coffee. "Send me the link."
She opened it. The dashboard loaded. Numbers moving instantly. Clean.
A small smile. "Good. Tell Adam to bring his laptop. It's almost 10."
---
At 10am sharp, the call started.
Mr. Lee was on screen, mid-40s, glasses, straight to business.
"Elena."
"Mr. Lee. Good morning. Thank you for moving the call up."
"Let's see it. My team said your real-time was not real-time."
Elena nodded to Adam. Adam shared his screen.
"This is the live version, Mr. Lee. Pushed 25 minutes ago. This is your actual ad account data from today."
The numbers on the screen jumped. Every second.
Mr. Lee leaned closer to his camera. "Refresh it."
Adam refreshed. Still instant.
Mr. Lee was quiet for a few seconds. "Okay. That's real-time."
"We also added what you asked for last week," Elena said. "You can now filter by hour, not just by day. And you can export the hourly report."
She looked at Adam. "Show him."
Adam clicked. The hourly filter popped up.
Mr. Lee nodded. "That will help my team. Alright."
Elena leaned forward slightly. "So are we good to renew?"
Mr. Lee took a sip of something. "We will renew. But I want this uptime guarantee in the contract. 99.9% for the analytics page. If it lags again, I need credit."
"Done," Elena said without hesitation. "Celia will send the updated addendum today."
"Good. Then we're good. Send me the invoice."
"Will do. Thank you, Mr. Lee."
The call ended at 10:18am.
Adam exhaled loudly. "He said yes."
Elena closed her laptop. "I told you he'd renew. He just wanted to see that we care enough to fix it in one night."
Celia smiled. "You scared dev team though. They've been up since 4am."
"Good. Let them be scared. That's how we keep clients."
She stood up. "Celia, send the addendum. Adam, tell backend lead the senior dev is staying. I want him on the API call this afternoon."