I burst into the company lobby, my heart a frantic, trapped thing against my hollow ribs. My uniform, usually just a stiff costume, felt like a weight dragging on my shoulders, on my soul.
"Camilla! Good God, where have you been?" Sophia's whisper was a lifeline. She appeared, her face etched with worry. "The real owner was here earlier. And Mr. Charles… he's been asking."
"I overslept," I breathed. The words were empty. Meaningless.
She leaned in, her kindness a small, sharp pain. "Wow. I love the way your mouth smells."
Heat, thin and sickly, crept up my neck. The memory was a fresh humiliation: me in the car, swerving, one hand on the wheel, the other clawing in my purse. My fingers closed around the small, cold can of mint spray. I'd brought it to my lips, pressed the nozzle, and felt a freezing, chemical mist coat my tongue and teeth. It was a hollow, perfunctory fix. The artificial sweetness clung, a cloying mask over the sour truth of my morning. A desperate, sterile lie.
Please, I thought, the plea a weak flutter. Don't see how broken I am.
But Mr. Charles's impatience was a storm cloud, dark and inevitable.
I gave Sophia a ghost of a smile, one that didn't reach my eyes, and turned. The corridor to his office stretched, a tunnel of polished floor and closed doors. My walk was not a march of doom, but a slow, heavy trudge... my hand hovered at the cold brass handle. I didn't knock. The thought didn't even form. My mind was a numb, grey static. I just pushed.
"Camilla!"
His roar hit me, but the image that followed… it didn't just horrify me. It unmade me.
There, in the sterile light, was the raw, grunting mechanics of it.
Him, his trousers down, his hand splayed like a starfish on a woman's back, pressing her into the mahogany. A low, guttural sound. The jarring pale of his skin against the dark wood.
My breath left in a silent rush. The air turned to syrup.
It wasn't disgust that rose, but a deeper, colder wave.
A memory—heat, weight, stillness—crashed over the present, blending with it. The chemical mint on my tongue turned to the taste of copper, of fear.
This. This is what killed him.
My hand, trembling violently, found the door handle. I pulled it shut with a soft, final click.
The world in the hallway tilted. I leaned my forehead against the cool wall, a low, silent whimper stuck in my throat. My knees were liquid.
Why?
The thought was not a question, but a plea. Why does anyone want this? This clumsy, stealing thing…
Sex is a curse.
Before I could gather the splinters of myself, the door opened.
The woman walked out. Dressed, but utterly unraveled. Her blouse was misbuttoned, her eyes vacant and glazed. She moved through the space I occupied without seeing me, trailing a scent of salt and shame.
"He's waiting for you," she said, her voice scraped raw and hollow.
I turned. The door seemed miles away. My body would not obey. With a effort that felt Herculean, I pushed it open again.
The room was now flooded with accusing light. He stood behind the desk—perfect, composed, a king on his clean, wiped throne. The only evidence was a sharp, chemical smell underneath the cologne.
"Good morning, sir," I whispered. My voice was gone. A dry leaf skittering on stone. I didn't just bow my head; my neck felt too weak to hold it up. My gaze fell to the shiny surface of the desk.
That's where it happened. That's where he…
A fresh tremor started deep in my core, a vibration of pure, unmoored grief. It wasn't for this woman. It was for me. For Bran. For the terrible, intimate violence of being a body.
"Are you okay?" he barked, the sound making me flinch. "Don't you know how to knock?"
The injustice was too big to hold. It just slipped through my fingers, leaving only a cold emptiness. My cheeks were cold, not hot. All my fire was gone, extinguished long ago.
"I apologize, sir," I murmured, the words automatic, rote. A prayer from a faith I'd lost. "I was not… focused."
I wasn't. I was back in my own dark room, four years ago, feeling a life drain away inside me.
He let the silence stretch, a cruelty that pressed down on my slouched shoulders. His eyes crawled over me—my shaking hands, my downcast eyes, the uniform that hung on me like a sack.
"You just came now, right?" The question was a trap laid in velvet.
A dull panic, slow and thick, stirred in my chest. "No, sir. The traffic…" I began, but my voice frayed into nothing. I couldn't even finish the lie. My eyes, wide and wet, flickered from the desk to the window, anywhere but his face. They wouldn't stay still.
"Really?" he drawled. He leaned forward, palms flat on the pristine wood. The wood. "The... traffic was bad. And Elara came before you."
Elara.
The name was another weight. Of course. The comparison. The constant, silent measuring I always failed.
A cold sweat beaded at my temples. I felt dizzy. "Ehm… my car," I stammered, the sentence crumbling as it left my lips. "It is not… it's slow."
"Can you just stop lying!"
His fist came down. A single, shocking thud that jolted through the floor and up my weak legs.
I didn't jump. I shrank. My shoulders curled inward, my chin touching my collarbone. A small, defensive animal. The roar didn't fill me with rebellion; it dissolved the last of my composure. A single, hot tear escaped, tracing a path down my cold cheek. I didn't brush it away. I just stood there, in the center of the room, shaking openly now, laid bare not as a liar, but as a ruin.
He wasn't looking at an employee. He was looking at a ghost who'd forgotten how to lie.
What was wrong with me!
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To be continued...