I sat in the cafeteria corner, my usual hideaway.
My cheek wasn't just hot—it had a memory. A perfect, stinging imprint of her palm that seemed to pulse with every beat of my heart. The wine stain had spread, a dark, ugly blossom over my chest, sticky and cold where it had soaked through to my skin.
Around me, the world was loud in a way that felt deliberately cruel. The clatter of trays, a burst of laughter from the marketing team, the drone of the vending machine. Normal life, pushing against the bubble of my shame.
Why do people get to decide everything in my life?
The question was a brick in my stomach. It was the sour taste of the cafeteria coffee. It was the exact, terrifying balance of my bank account: $4.87.
I'm was broke or should I say poor.
I wished my parents were here.
We weren't rich, but I was safe. Until my stupid, foolish self broke it.
I was the beginning of my own destruction.
The memory didn't feel like a memory. It felt like a punishment playing on a loop behind my eyes.
"Mommy, my finger's stuck." My voice, small and confused. I held out my hand. The silver ring—a cheap, pretty thing from a boy who'd smiled at me—was buried in a swollen, reddish-purple finger. It looked like a sausage.
My father's face changed. His easy smile vanished. "Who gave you this?" His voice was calm, maybe too tight.
"Just a boy at the park."I answered.
My mother made a sound—a tiny, choked gasp. She reached for my hand, then pulled back as if it were hot. "Oh, God. It's a tourniquet. We have to go. Now."
The car ride was silent except for the sound of my mother's rapid, shallow breathing.
My father drove faster than I'd ever seen. He kept looking at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes wide with a fear I didn't understand. "Just hold on, princess. Just hold on." He was talking to me, but his words felt like a prayer.
I was their only child. Their universe. And I was breaking.
He ran the red light. I remember the long, golden glare of the cross-traffic headlights, beautiful and terrible, right before they hit us.
The sound wasn't a crash. It was the world being crumpled and torn in half. Then, a silence so complete it was louder than the noise.
I do not like to remember this part of my life.
It was the most painful part of me, I wished I died.
My father was gone.
My mother held on until the bright, buzzing lights of the emergency room, then she let go, too.
And my finger?
The ring was snipped off with a pair of shiny medical shears in under a minute. The swelling was gone by the next afternoon.
But they were dead and the worst part it was all my fault.
They died for a two-dollar ring. For my carelessness. My childish want.
A tear rolled down my cheek, warm and ticklish. It dripped off my chin and onto the wine stain, vanishing into the dark fabric.
If I had been smarter, less trusting, less… needy, they'd be alive.
I stared at my hands in my lap. My left hand had worn the ring that killed my parents. My right had held Bran's on our wedding day, feeling his pulse through his skin.
A sound escaped me—a wet, choked-off snort that was almost a laugh. It hurt my throat.
I wasn't living a life. I was conducting a séance, forever haunted by the people I'd gotten killed.
Maybe that's why Bran sold me. Maybe he saw the hairline fractures in my soul and decided to cash out before the whole structure collapsed.
Maybe Lucian Thorne isn't buying a wife or a companion—he's acquiring a fascinating, tragic artifact. A beautiful vase that's already broken and leaks disaster.
And in three days, he'll come back. Not to rescue me. To take possession of the wreckage.
"Camilla." Sophia's voice was right beside my ear, making me jerk. I hadn't seen her sit down. Her face was a mask of concerned pity. "You're shaking. Everyone can see."
"I don't care," I whispered. My voice sounded rusty, unused.
"Listen to me," she said, her words fast and low. She put her hand over mine on the table. Hers was warm. Mine was ice. "Charles is in his office with HR right now. They're talking about letting you go. For cause. You need to go up there. Now. Get on your knees if you have to. Make him reconsider."
The words landed one by one, like stones.
A sack letter. For what?
My vision tunneled for a second.
"For what?" I heard myself ask, the question stupid and small.
"For that!" she hissed, her eyes darting toward the executive wing. "You embarrassed a Thorne. You think that's a slap on the wrist and a stained dress? That's a career death sentence. Go. Now."
The tears came then, not a flood, but a quiet, steady seepage from a deep, poisoned well. They rolled down, salting the corners of my mouth. But underneath the cold despair, a desperate, animal spark caught fire. I cannot be left with nothing.
I stood up. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else, but they held me.
I stood outside his door. The glass was smudged at eye level. I could see the blurry shape of him behind his desk. I didn't let myself think. I turned the handle and walked in.
The room smelled of lemon polish and expensive aftershave. He was writing something, his head bent. He didn't look up. I stood there, just inside the door, waiting. My heart was a frantic, caged thing trying to beat its way out of my chest.
Finally, his pen stopped. He lifted his head slowly. His expression was blank, professional.
"Sir," I said. My voice was a thin, reedy thread. It broke on the word. I cleared my throat, tried again. "Please. Don't terminate me."
He leaned back in his chair. It gave a soft, leathery sigh. He said nothing, just looked at me. His gaze traveled from my tear-streaked face, down over the ruin of my dress, to my white-knuckled hands clenched at my sides.
"You were given a simple task, Camilla," he said. His voice was calm, almost bored. "Provide peripheral support. Maintain atmosphere. Instead, you created a disruptive, unprofessional incident that may have cost this firm a pivotal business relationship."
"It was a mistake," I pleaded, taking a half-step forward. I could hear the beggar's whine in my own voice and hated it. "I stumbled. It was the carpet—"
"The carpet?" he interrupted, a single eyebrow lifting. A faint, cold smile touched his lips. "The carpet is not responsible for your competence. Or lack thereof."
The finality in his tone was a door slamming shut. Panic, sharp and metallic, flooded my mouth.
"Sir, I'm begging you." The words tumbled out. "I have debts. I have… nothing else. I'll do anything. I'll clean the building at night. I'll take a pay cut. I'll work every holiday. Just… please."
He was silent for a long moment. His eyes held mine, and the boredom in them changed. It sharpened into something calculating, attentive. He looked at me the way a man looks at a complicated lock he's just realized he has the key for.
"Anything, Camilla?" he asked softly.
A treacherous, thin splinter of hope pierced the panic. "Anything," I breathed, the word a solemn surrender.
He held my gaze, and the silence in the room became thick, suffocating. Then, very deliberately, he looked down at his desk, as if considering.
His right hand moved. Not to a drawer neither the pen.
It went to his waist. His fingers found the polished brass buckle of his belt.
Click.
The sound was a gunshot in the quiet room. My breath vanished, stolen from my lungs.
No. No, he wouldn't dare.
His other hand followed, grasping the pull of his zipper. The zzzzip was a long, metallic rasp that seemed to tear the very fabric of the world I knew.
The sound seemed to go on forever, scraping directly against my nerves.
Time didn't slow. It was as fast as ever.
This wasn't happening. This couldn't be real.
My mind detached. I observed from a faraway place. I noticed the precise pattern of his striped tie. The way a muscle ticked in his jaw. The dust motes dancing in a sunbeam across the room.
His hands moved again, this time with a practiced, casual efficiency.
My eyes snapped to the movement.
I saw his penis.
The understanding crashed into me, so ugly... I almost puked.
He wanted me to... Oh, God. He was serious.
A cold nausea, immediate and violent, rose from my gut. My face went numb. My ears filled with a high-pitched whine, like a television tuned to a dead channel. Every hair on my body stood up.
He was just… there. Exposed. A mundane, terrifying fact in the middle of the tidy office.
He wasn't flustered. He wasn't angry. He looked at me with a chilling, expectant calm, as if he'd just asked for a report to be filed.
"Prove your commitment. Suck it!" he said, his voice perfectly even.
SUCK WHAT?!
My body went into total lockdown. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I couldn't even blink. I was a statue of pure, petrified shock. The air was too thick to breathe. The smell of his cologne mixed with the lemon polish, creating a sickly-sweet cocktail that made my head swim.
Inside, a silent scream built, a pressure behind my eyes and in my throat so immense I thought my skull would crack.
No. How could I, I had never liked him and this action... I hate him more.
What do he take me as, a piece of trash... I have a messed up life but if I do this my life will be more complicated.
"Excuse me,"I bowed turning.
My body unlocked in one violent shudder. I took a stumbling step back.
I didn't look at him again. I turned, fumbled for the handle, and wrenched the door open.
I could hear the frantic, ragged sawing of my own breath.
The hallway's fluorescent lights were blindingly bright and silent. The cheerful potted plant by the elevator looked obscene. My hip throbbed where it had hit the doorframe—a real, anchoring pain in a world that had just turned surreal.
I reached the women's restroom. Pushed through the door. Stumbled to the sink. My reflection in the mirror was a stranger—eyes huge and black in a paper-white face, the wine stain a grotesque decoration on the dress I'd once thought was pretty. I gripped the cold porcelain, waiting for the violent tremors to subside, for the world to reassemble itself into something I could recognize.
"AHHHHHH!"
A woman's scream—raw, sharp, and utterly terrified—ripped through the building's quiet hum.
It wasn't a shout. It was the sound of something breaking.
My head snapped up. My own reflection stared back, wide-eyed. For a second, there was nothing. Then, a rush of footsteps, a growing murmur of confusion that swelled into a panicked tide.
I pushed out of the bathroom. The hallway was no longer empty. People streamed from their cubicles, faces pale, huddling in clusters, all staring toward one end of the corridor.
Toward Mr. Charles's office.
A tight knot of people had formed just outside his door. I saw Lena from Marketing, her hands pressed over her mouth. I saw Mr. Walsh from Accounting, his face ashen.
I moved forward, pulled by a dread I couldn't name. The crowd parted slightly as I neared, their whispers falling away as they glanced at me, then back into the office.
I saw it.
Mr. Charles was slumped forward over his pristine desk. His head was turned to the side, his eyes open and unseeing.
A single, perfect drop of blood had dripped from the desk onto the grey carpet, blooming into a dark asterisk. His reading glasses were still askew on his nose. And the air... it held a new, coppery tang underneath the lemon polish.
He was shot. Someone had killed him. Just now.
The world seemed to slow, the chaotic voices fading into a muffled roar. In the sudden, cold clarity of the shock, only one thought formed, ringing in my head with the clean, chilling tone of absolute truth.
Lucian Thorne.
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To be continued...