The week went straight to hell. She felt like going through a messy divorce, fighting tooth and nail to get things in order. "On boarding your face! It feels like more of offloading the ENTIRE WORKLOAD on me!" Dan screaming on silent in front of the bathroom mirror!
It wasn't even the work itself—it was the shift. The sheer whiplash from being a woman clawing her way out of survival mode to suddenly being in charge. On paper, Danielle was Operations Manager. In practice? She was a firefighter, an interpreter, a tech support agent, a therapist, and a punching bag for unresolved company chaos.
By Monday morning, she was no longer just a candidate. She was the new Operations Lead of Horizon Holdings.
And nobody had a clue who she was.
Caden gave a half-hearted introduction via Slack:
"Everyone, meet Dan. Dan will be taking over operations moving forward. Direct your questions to Dan starting today."
That was it. No Zoom kickoff, no casual meet-and-greet. Just a message dropped like a pebble in a digital ocean.
From the team's perspective, Danielle Reyes came out of nowhere.
But Danielle didn't care.
She had been in rooms filled with silent hostility and masked skepticism before. This wasn't new—it was just virtual. She kept her camera off. She answered emails within minutes. She replied on Slack in curt, professional tones. She asked questions. A lot of them. But she never gave away anything about herself.
Before this, she'd specifically asked Caden to keep her identity limited to just "Dan." No gender. No age. Just the name. No breadcrumbs.
"Who is he?" someone asked on a private thread.
"Dan's here to fix things," Caden replied.
That was all the team got.
Slack notifications pinged nonstop, each alert a reminder of how tangled the chaos was. Passwords were scattered like forgotten keys—no central place, no clear handoffs. Files vanished into digital black holes, buried under inconsistent naming or lost in endless folder labyrinths. Processes? They might as well have been urban legends. Instead of smooth workflows, there was panic, frantic attempts to patch holes with duct tape and hope. The team was barely functional—well-meaning and hardworking but clearly overwhelmed, drowning in firefighting mode rather than building forward.
And then there was Caden. He tried. He really did. But his efforts felt scattered, scrambling to put out whatever fire was closest. The kind of startup energy that had once felt exciting now just smacked of exhaustion and chaos. Charm didn't stop urgent emails from disappearing into inbox limbo. It didn't prevent deadlines from crashing headlong into each other like reckless drunk drivers on a freeway at rush hour.
The operations themselves were a mess. Warehouses didn't talk to customer service; information stalled between teams like misdelivered letters. The eCommerce platform wasn't hooked up with logistics, leaving no one able to track why shipments were late—only that they were. No clear ownership, no accountability, just a stream of problems piling higher.
Danielle dove in headfirst, spending the first 48 hours like a forensic analyst on a crime scene. She combed through endless spreadsheets, puzzling over folder trees that seemed designed to confuse. She tracked every irregularity through ERP logs, hunting for patterns in the disorder. Her construction background had drilled one hard lesson into her: systems don't collapse because of sudden disasters. They fall apart because everyone assumes they're working—and nobody checks until it's too late.
Danielle didn't complain. Not yet. The whirlwind of chaos was heavy, but she bore it silently, focused on the work ahead. She rolled up her sleeves and started fixing things, piece by piece.
By Tuesday, a new SOP document sat ready—a clear, concise blueprint to replace the patchwork of guesswork that had passed for process before. She assigned roles with precision, making sure every task had an owner. Communication lines were reordered, cutting through the noise and confusion like a scalpel. She introduced tagging protocols for escalations, ensuring urgent issues would no longer slip through the cracks unnoticed.
The team's response was muted. No arguments rose. No thanks were offered. They simply… obeyed. The silence wasn't resistance; it was a quiet acknowledgement that the ship needed a captain, and Dan was steering.
Behind the scenes, the real power move happened.
"Follow Dan's lead."
— Axel Fitz-James Real de Lara
That order, though unspoken to the wider team, rippled through the ranks. And just like that, the quiet obedience took on new meaning—it was respect. Fear, maybe. But respect nonetheless.
By midweek, Danielle was already deep in the trenches. She had built three detailed trackers to monitor everything from inventory flow to customer complaints. Two SOPs were rewritten to reflect how the company actually worked—not how it was supposed to—and she pulled off a 4 a.m. call with the warehouse team to straighten out inventory discrepancies that had been snowballing for months. The early morning grogginess didn't phase her; the mess demanded attention, and she gave it her full focus.
When someone finally dared to ask, "Who approved these workflow changes?" Danielle's response was sharp and unwavering: "It needed to be done." There was no room for debate. No one argued.
Except Axel.
He never reached out directly—because subtlety was his signature move. Instead, he launched his critiques in curt, clipped Slack replies to her update threads:
"Who signed off on this?"
"This wasn't in the roadmap."
"Let's align before we roll out process changes, yes?"
Yes. No. Maybe go step on a Lego.
Danielle fired back with equally terse responses:
"The roadmap was incomplete."
"Signed off by urgency."
"Happy to discuss, but the team needed a lifeboat."
No emojis. No "thanks." Just razor-sharp professionalism hiding a thousand unsaid things.
And yet, amid the chaos, small cracks of progress appeared. One night, she sent a detailed email laying out a breakdown in their 3PL logistics, complete with actionable recommendations. Thirty minutes later, a reply came:
"Noted. Smart catch."
Sent from: [email protected]
She stared at that signature for a long moment. Dos? The Second? The heir with the old-money name and carefully guarded secrets. It fit. Exactly the kind of heir who hides power behind cold formality.
Still, Danielle bookmarked that email—not for the signature, but because of the two words: Smart catch.
The next day, two of her suggestions quietly went live. No fanfare. No credit. No pushback.
Fine.
Days blurred into nights. By day, she navigated Ellenore's homeschooling lessons with the precision of a multitasking ninja; by night, she buried herself in spreadsheets and workflows. Coffee was no longer a drink—it was her perfume, her constant companion. Her right eye twitched so often it might as well have had its own personality. But she didn't drop the ball. Not once.
By Friday, the tide was shifting. The team began seeking her input. They followed her templates. Even Caden started calling her "our Operations lead" in meetings, his tone carrying a newfound respect.
But then there was Axel.
Their Thursday sync call arrived like a quiet storm. The chaos had thinned into a sort of organized tempest. Danielle barely had time to breathe, let alone prepare for the one-on-one Axel had mysteriously added to her calendar with no subject line—just:
Thursday Sync — 8 PM PH / 2 PM CET
Invite from: [email protected]
When the call connected, it was just the two of them. No team. No Caden. Just Axel's name floating on her Zoom screen.
He was five minutes late.
"Am I early?" she asked.
He didn't smile. "No. This sync is just for you and me. You report directly to me."
Her jaw tightened. "Right."
No small talk. Axel dove straight into numbers, metrics, project timelines—the kind of rapid-fire questions that would leave most scrambling. But Danielle, who hadn't stopped working since Sunday night, had every answer ready. Every projection, every percent, every failing vendor's name.
He watched her speak, eyes narrowing—not in judgment but in calculation—like she was a code he couldn't quite crack.
"You don't talk much on Slack," he said after a while.
"I talk when there's something worth saying."
"No one's seen your face except me and Caden."
"And that's enough," she replied flatly.
He leaned back, amusement flickering in his eyes. "You're making yourself a mystery."
"I'm making myself effective."
Then his feed cut out.
"Apologies," he said, finally clicking his camera on. He looked exhausted, sleeves rolled up, collar loose. "Another fire."
Danielle didn't blink. "Same here. We're all burning."
A pause.
Then: "How are you managing, really?"
The softness in his voice caught her off guard.
She straightened in her seat. "Like someone who's done this before."
"You're sleeping?"
"Define sleeping."
He chuckled. "Right."
Silence stretched. Not heavy, just… there.
Then he said, "You've made more progress in four days than most do in four months."
Danielle's lips twitched into a small smile. "I don't do idle."
"I can see that."
A long beat. His voice dropped, warmer and lower.
"You still want that $3,500?"
She blinked. "To start, yes."
"No negotiation?"
"I've been negotiating my worth for ten years. I know what it's worth."
Another pause.
"Fine. But I expect miracles."
"I delivered them."
And just like that, the call ended.
Silence filled the void between continents, two professionals sizing each other up without words.
Outside the virtual walls, Danielle kept her ghost routine. No mention of where she was from. No details about her daughter. Not even a hint of her timezone. She replied at odd hours. Her name marked every updated tracker, every new SOP, every corrected shipment tag.
She was fixing the company from the inside out—and nobody could figure out who she really was.
By the weekend, she took a brief break—but only from operations. She opened her browser and began searching listings for two-bedroom apartments outside Metro Manila. Somewhere beyond the chaos. Maybe Antipolo. Maybe San Mateo. Where the trees were greener and the air cooler. Where her daughter could have a proper bed, not a foam mattress on a concrete floor.
They had a week until the first paycheck landed.
Danielle did the math again. Her pay—her real pay, after negotiating with Axel—was $3,500 a month. Not the initial $2,000 they had offered.
That negotiation had played out over email. Short. Sharp. No pleasantries.
That was it. No smiley faces. No counters. Just an agreement.
She could almost feel the mix of irritation and admiration behind his words—like he hated losing the upper hand but respected her for taking it.
And if this was the game, she was coming out gold.
Saturday evening settled like a soft sigh over their cramped apartment. Danielle closed her laptop gently, the click louder than she wanted in the quiet room. Ellenore sat cross-legged on the floor, focused on the Lego castle she was building—bright, plastic bricks clicking together with a rhythm that felt almost peaceful.
A breeze fluttered through the open window, carrying the faint scent of fried garlic from the neighbor's kitchen. A small reminder of home, Danielle thought, or at least a home she wanted to create.
She opened a new tab, fingers hovering over the search bar before typing: "Two-bedroom apartments near Metro Manila." The listings loaded slowly, each photo a promise, or maybe a question.
Antipolo. San Mateo. Somewhere green. Somewhere quiet. Places she barely knew, places where the air might actually be cool, where her daughter could have a room—not just a corner with a foam mattress on a concrete floor.
The cursor hovered over a listing with a small balcony, a hint of sunlight filtering through trees, and a rent that felt just barely within reach if she stretched the budget and made the first paycheck count.
Could we really make this work? She asked herself, scrolling through the details—commute times, neighborhood reviews, security features. Every line pulled her closer to a future she'd almost forgotten how to imagine.
Behind her, Ellenore's soft humming filled the room as she snapped another Lego brick into place.
"Mom, look! I made the tallest tower!"
Danielle glanced back and smiled, the tension in her shoulders easing for the first time in days.
"It's amazing, sweetheart."
She clicked through another listing, reading the description again. If only I could fast-forward two weeks. We'll have the paycheck. Then we can make this real.
But the weight of time pressed down. A week and a half wasn't long to find a new place, pack up their life, and start fresh. No pressure, right?
She closed her eyes briefly, feeling the fatigue settle deep in her bones. The twitch in her right eye was a relentless reminder: no rest for the weary.
But this was worth it. For Ellenore. For them.
Her fingers moved again, bookmarking promising listings, jotting down notes in her worn notebook. Addresses, phone numbers, questions for the landlord.
"Mom, can I have some water?"
"Of course."
She handed Ellenore a glass, watching her drink with that same quiet determination she felt in herself.
We're both figuring this out.
The city outside pulsed with life and noise, but inside their tiny apartment, wrapped in the soft hum of the fan and the scent of fried garlic, there was a fragile thread of hope.
Maybe this is the beginning. Maybe this is where things start to change.
She closed the notebook and finally let her breath out.
"Tomorrow, we start making calls."
Ellenore smiled up at her, unaware of the plan or the burden behind it.
"Okay, Mom."
And for the first time in a long time, Danielle felt something she hadn't in years:
Hope.