Chapter 1

A simple story of two girls can be so complicated.

From my perspective, I knew it was going to happen from all along, but a lot of my friends say it is hindsight bias. Regardless of the naysayers, I am going to tell you from the beginning how it all unfolded.

Some context, Octavia, Raven, Lincoln, and myself were all working at the same startup company—Arkadian. It was Octavia's brother's company—Bellamy, but he sold all his shares to some guy named Finn one day without letting us know and skipped out of town. Obviously, Octavia was livid, with Raven matching her anger. But let's be honest, Raven would get mad at most situations regardless of their severity on the company. But Lincoln and myself were pretty casual about the news. I blame it on the fact that our previous company—Grounder Co. hired and fired top level management quicker than a buttered bullet.

The day Finn introduced himself was the same day she came. So, here's the thing; Finn was an excellent manager/CEO, and one of the reasons for his success was his ability to identify his weaknesses and have someone else take over in that area. Hence, where Clarke Griffin came into the story. She was a top tier marketing genius; her ability to create new marketing campaigns and ads were way above our current competitor's abilities.

I guess I forgot to mention that we were, or still are, a tech company that focuses on cybersecurity and physical security. Bellamy liked to consider it an all-inclusive body guard system. Raven and Lincoln focus on the cybersecurity, while Octavia and I handle the physical aspects of the job. Even more specifically, Octavia hires and fires the bodyguards, while I make sure our clients, who are usually very important, do not enter a space that we do not fully understand. Essentially, Octavia is behind the brawns and I'm behind the brains of our side of the company.

Since our successful startup, we catered to wealthy celebrities and politicians, including people such as Theo Jaha, Marcus Kane, and even the cybercelebrities like Monty Green and Jasper Jordan. Not that I'm name dropping or anything. Despite that success, Bellamy's end goal was to protect people as high up as our president. However, our company lacked something that none of us were good at—thinking outside of the box to better promote our brand. It wasn't until Finn bought out Bellamy (10.3 million dollars) to become the majority shareholder (only 10% larger than Octavia) that our weakest link would lead to my greatest success.

On Oct. 21, 2023, Finn Collins, former CEO of brands such as Founders Inc., NetGain Inc., and even Mountaineous Co. walked into our tiny meeting room to introduce himself.

"Hello all, I'm grateful that all shareholders could meet on such short notice. As you are already aware of, I am the new CEO of this company. My name is Finn Collins and I look forward to working with all of you on making this company even better than it was yesterday," Finn explained.

He was wearing a very nice dark navy pinstripe suit that made the rest of us look like low level chumps. His tone matched his suit nicely, however, it did not leave a belittling feeling. He continued to ramble on about how excited he was for this change in management and explained in boring detail what an impact we all can make if we have the right mindset. At some point our secretary knocked on the meeting rooms door to inform Finn that someone had arrived. After he excitedly told her to let her in he turned back to us, "one of my weaknesses is in marketing. And I'm acutely aware that none of you have marketing backgrounds that will set us apart from the competition," he said as Raven shifted in her chair in a way that only we knew meant she was very offended, "So, I would like to introduce to you Clark Griffin. Our new marketing head," he finished right as a blond girl was ushered into the room.

Quickly glancing her over, she seemed fairly average. Blond, about 5'6", fairly fit, and had a much more casual dress-code to her than Finn. She wore a loose fitting white top, navy slacks, with her coat draped over her left arm. Seeing her smile was the first moment I truly noticed her. It was then that I noticed just how blue her eyes were. "Hello all, my name is Clarke Griffin and I have over six years of experience in marketing for major companies. I plan on working closely with you all in hopes to better understand you all, the product we're selling, and the company as a whole. I look forward to getting to know every one of you better and watching you all continue to produce amazing work here," she intentionally looked everyone directly in the eyes when speaking.

Her eyes were sharp with knowledge and professionalism, but her smile was warm enough to melt an ice cube. A combination I had only seen once before. After she spoke a bit more about the specifics of her marketing background and the direction she would like to take the company, she sat down in a chair next to Raven to let Finn finish the meeting. Once it had wrapped up, it was lunch time and the four of us decided to take a mental break and went down a small dinner on the corner of the street. Raven was the first one to speak on the matter, "Can you believe Bellamy just up and walked out on us without telling us about this Finn guy? I mean, he just left us up and dry and went off on an extended holiday to whocares where!" she exclaimed while sliding into a booth at the back of the diner.

Octavia, feeding into the frustration and sliding to sit next to Raven, blinked hard and let out a sign before opening her eyes, "I have no idea what he was thinking. This Finn guy is nice and all, but he doesn't have the background to run a company like ours. He has dealt with mostly finance firms or webdomain property companies."

"I doubt he even knows the difference between the deep and dark web," Lincoln chided casually, "but regardless, change is usually a good thing. Especially since we had been seeing declines in our company value for the past three months," he shrugged.

The waiter came up to take our drink order before anyone else could jump into the conversation, and just as she left Octavia's eyes rose towards the door. Prompting all our eyes to follow only to find the blond walking into the diner alone. Octavia, usually disgruntled around new people ignored her at first. It wasn't until Lincoln waved politely did the blond notice us. He waved her over, got out of the booth, and told her to join us. Because I was sitting in the sit next to the wall I didn't bother to get up and just waited for her to decide to join us or not. Her face scanned ours quickly, "thank you but I'm just getting an order to go and heading back to the office to get back to unpacking my stuff into my office," she smiled warmly at us again.

It was definitely something about her smile.

"Okay, well, if you change your mind we'll be here for the next hour," Lincoln said casually sliding back into the seat next to me.

She walked over to the counter and proceeded to greet one of the staff. I swiveled back to face Raven, who was thumbing through her phone. "She's a blessing in disguise at least. It seems as though any company she's ever marketed for has gained leaps and bounds more profit due to her creativity. She definitely knows how to work adobe photoshop," Raven turned her phone to showcase a very simplistic yet alluring ad promoting the newest cell phone.

After each of us had our chance to inspect the ad, Octavia looked back at the figure of the girl approvingly. "At least she'll known what she's doing," she said right before our waiter came back to get our orders.

Author note: So, I'm really bad at finishing stories. But I had some creative juice in me to write this. Regardless, lemme know what you think!