Charles did not like the new calendar system.
Invites used to land in his e-mail like homing pigeons. Board prep, acquisition huddles, even some personal briefs. He now missed those quiet breakfast meetings, where strategy got decided before anyone put on a tie.
Now, the pigeons flew to other rooftops.
External. As if he hadn't spent seven years of his life, building Blackwood corp together.
He was now been treated as if he were a temp with a fresh badge and a fragile sense of belonging.
He closed the laptop before the screen could rub in more of his own absence and stared at his framed degrees on the wall.
His office smelled like burned coffee and paper. He poured his coffee anyway, while he pretended he didnt know the reason, why he was beingn iced out.
Through the glass he could see the corridor. Assistants moving efficiently to discharge their tasks.When people passed by his door, their eyes caught on the plaque, slid away. No one lingered. It was the sort of politeness that hurt more than cruelty.
"Paranoid," he told himself. "You're being paranoid."
His gut didn't agree. It had been saying one sentence all week in a voice that sounded unhelpfully like his late mentor's, Julian Blackwood was biding his time.
Not firing. Not confronting. Waiting. Letting the floor under you soften, until he snapped him right out of the sea of deceit.
He opened the bottom drawer and took out the file he should have burned. An envelope. Inside, printouts that shouldn't exist. Server log fragments, the IP that linked a leak to his machine, a copy of the chapel photos that had detonated a thousand think pieces and opinions . He had printed them to feel the weight of his guilt. He had kept them because lawyers kept evidences. Perhaps it was Instincts or pathology.
His thumb found the edge of a glossy eight-by-ten.
Ashley Ashford laughing in a borrowed veil, head tipped back into a light too bright for a room like that. Julian beside her with that rare unarmored smile that made people understand why ruthless men got mistaken for heroes. A moment not meant for public consumption, of them on the boat.
He remembered forwarding the originals. Three clicks. Two breaths. For nothing, She had said, just to buy us time. Her voice had been warm over his shoulder at a bar that pretended to be quiet, the soft press of her arm along his sleeve making his brain misfire in polite directions. " I owe a friend at a magazine. Tiny story. Harmless pressure valve. I'll make sure they go to the right desk. Let me take care of it."
He had learned her name, the spelling the same way you learn the pattern of a traffic light on the road you drive every morning, by trusting it.
A laugh a shade too delighted, the tiniest charm on a bracelet that chimed when her fingers brushed a glass, perfume with a pepper note he'd started to smell even when he worked alone.
She'd told him she hated power games and then played them with a mercy that felt like intimacy. He'd believed it. It had been years since anyone had taken a chance on him or given him that kind of attention.
Until the shoe dropped.
More like a quiet rearrangement of the furniture when his back was turned. A message in the shared cloud he didn't know he had shared. A photo of his mother doing something random,the date stamp in the corner like a blade.
Be useful, Charles, the text below had said. Be discreet. She looks so small from far away.
He had thrown up in the office sink and brushed his teeth with mouthwash until his gums bled.
He slid the eight-by-ten back into the envelope and pressed the flap closed as if paper could contain all she'd made him do.
Outside his door, laughter. A colleague and Julian's driver, sharp and bright. He froze.
They passed without glancing in. Good. He didn't want them to see him like this. Sweat damp at the collar, jaw tight from grinding teeth.
He stood, walked to the window. He thought about his Boss,Julian, somewhere uptown, in his house making decisions with the silence of a man who had long ago learned how to starve his tells. He was not a man you wanted as your judge. Neither a man you wanted as your enemy, nor a man you wanted to disappoint.
So why not confess? Walk into the lion's office, close the door, and say I did this.
I was stupid. I was lonely. I was seduced and then I was trapped. I thought I could fix it and then I couldn't. Here is everything I kept. Save me if you can.
Because of the photograph. Because of the sick mother in a cardigan who saved used plastics in drawers and knew the names of the pharmacist's twins. Because of the message that had arrived the day he had typed and erased the words he needed to tell Julian, five times.
Because of Madie's kiss the night after he tried to end it. Apologetic, tender, almost pitying and the promise to stop murmured into the corner of his mouth.
Just one more task, and then we're clean. We'll be free of them. He had wanted to believe them were real people and not a clever pronoun that moved forever away from blame.
He went back to the desk, opened a clean doc, and began to draft an attorney–client confession anyway. Bullet points. Timestamps. A story a man like Julian could use instead of a body to put in the ground. He wrote it all down.
His fingers hovered. He read it once. Twice. It felt like jumping off something without checking the water.
He hit save. He did not hit send.
Soon after he got home and had showered, he heard it, his phone chimed.With dread he knew who it was already but instead of finding the normal random pictures of his family members, it was just a simple line.
Open the door.
Then the door bell rang, as if on cue. He flinched, hard enough he bumped his foot on the sofa.
"It's late" he mumbled to himself.
"Who is it?" he managed to yelled out."
For a reply he was met with silence and dread.
The door bell rang again, he thought he heard hills clicking softly. He went to peep and confirmed his fears.
There she was in the flesh, not the texts, or voice calls or parcels.
The devil herself stood at the front of his door. Every hair on his arms stood strong, as his blood went cold.
He opened the door after unlocking the extra lock, he had installed when the pictures started rolling in and waited.
She didn't come in at first. She just stood at the threshold watching him as if weighing and deciding on what to do with him. When she finally spoke, all she said was, "May I come in?"
When he nodded, she stepped inside and set a card on the console. It read Madeline Vale- L.V outreach.
She looked at him and said,"Let's finish what we started."