REOMEN
For the past four days, my office had offered a new kind of view, one that had become strangely compelling. Through the glass walls that separated my space from the rest of the floor, I'd catch glimpses of her. Paige. Still at her desk long after the sun had set, her office was often the only one still illuminated, a lone, stubborn lamp fighting against the deepening night outside.
I'd watch her sometimes, a silent spectator to her struggle from behind the polished expanse of my Giorgetti desk. I saw her run a hand through her hair in a gesture of pure frustration, the strands escaping from what had probably been a neat style that morning.
I saw her stare blank at her Laptop screen, her eyes glazed over with fatigue, a Starbucks coffee cup permanently glued to her hand like a lifeline. She looked increasingly tired with each passing day.
The sharp, defiant woman I'd bailed out of the 10th Precinct was fading, her edges softened and worn down, replaced by a ghost of exhaustion that moved through the office on autopilot.
But she was still there. She hadn't quit. She hadn't broken down at her desk or stormed into my office to yell at me. I'll admit, that was… interesting. It was more than interesting; it was a revelation.
Today, Denki was lounging in the chair across from my desk, one leg crossed over the other. We were shooting the breeze about nothing important—an upcoming Knicks game, a new Masa reservation—when he nodded his head toward her office, a lazy, knowing smirk spreading across his face.
"So," he drawled, the single word loaded with implication. "You trying to kill her, or what? That workload you dropped on her is insane, man. Even for you."
I leaned back in my own chair, the Italian leather creaking softly as I followed his gaze. She was there again, squinting at some papers under the harsh glow of her desk lamp, a pencil tucked behind her ear. "It's a standard project review," I said, my voice deliberately flat, giving nothing away.
Denki snorted, a short, dismissive sound. "Yeah, okay. A 'standard' project that would take my whole team three weeks. You gave it to one person and gave her five days." He shook his head, the smirk never leaving his face. "You're pushing her straight off a cliff. I'm just surprised she hasn't jumped yet."
I didn't answer right away. I just watched her. She took a long sip from the coffee cup, then went right back to work, her pen moving quickly across a notepad. A strange, unfamiliar feeling settled in my chest. It wasn't guilt. It was something else, something I couldn't quite name.
"She's still here, isn't she?" I finally said, turning my attention back to Denki. I let a cold, confident smile touch my lips, a mask of complete control. "If she can't handle the pressure, then she doesn't belong here. It's a simple test."
Denki just raised a skeptical eyebrow, seeing right through the flimsy excuse. "A test? Sure, Reomen. Whatever you say." He didn't press it, but the doubt hung in the air between us.
He left soon after, but his words stuck with me, buzzing in the back of my mind like an irritating fly.
I looked back at her office. She was still there, head bent over her work, fighting a battle I had designed for her to lose. Maybe Denki was right. Maybe I was pushing her too hard, too fast. But something about seeing her fight back, seeing that stubborn fire still burning even when she was clearly dead on her feet… It was better than I had expected. More satisfying.
She wasn't breaking. She was bending, sure—I could see the strain in the slope of her shoulders, the dark circles under her eyes. But she wasn't breaking. And I had to admit, I liked watching her bend. It showed me what she was really made of, stripping away the privilege and attitude to reveal a core of pure steel.
And it made me want to see just how much more she could take before she finally snapped.
I continued to watch her through the glass. Four days of this. Four days of watching her wear down, that sharp tongue silenced by exhaustion, that proud, perfect posture slumping over those endless files.
There was a part of me that enjoyed it—a dark, petty part that relished seeing the mighty Paige Rimestone brought to her knees by a challenge I had made.
Then a different thought slid into my mind, hot and unwelcome, derailing my train of thought completely. It wasn't about her work ethic or her resilience anymore. It was about the way her blouse collar had slipped just slightly, revealing the delicate line of her collarbone.
There was a faint sheen of sweat on her neck from stress and fatigue, and the way her lips moved silently as she read, forming words I couldn't hear, made me wonder what they'd taste like after all the coffee she'd drunk.
My gut tightened. A low, possessive heat flared in my blood, sudden and inconvenient. For a second, I didn't see an employee. I saw a conquest. I imagined walking in there, closing the door, and seeing that defiance in her eyes shift into something else entirely. Something raw. Something for me.
No.
I cut the thought off cold, mentally slamming a door on it. My fingers gripped the polished edge of my desk, my knuckles turning white. That was a distraction. A complication I could not afford. She was here to work. To pay her debt. Nothing more.
I forced my gaze back to my own screen, where numbers and graphs awaited my attention. My jaw was clenched so tight it ached. But the image was burned behind my eyes. The want was still there, a dull, throbbing hum under my skin. Annoying. Persistent.
Fine. If a tired woman with a pencil behind her ear could derail my focus completely, then I'd clearly gone soft. The problem wasn't her; it was that the challenge wasn't great enough. For either of us. This… fascination was just a symptom of a stagnant mind. Mine.
Hours later, a soft knock at my office door pulled me from my work. It was late, past eleven. The floor had been empty for hours, blanketed in a silence broken only by the hum of the ventilation system.
"Come in," I said, my voice rough from disuse.
The door opened. It was her.
Paige stood there, silhouetted against the dark, empty office behind her. She looked… destroyed. Her eyes were half-closed, shadowed by deep, purple bruises that stood out starkly against her pale skin.
Her glasses sat crooked on her nose. She was still in the same clothes from this morning, now looking wrinkled and tired, clinging to her in a way that spoke of long, stressful hours.
But in her arms was a stack of files. The same mountain I'd dropped on her desk four days ago in the Saddleback Leather portfolio.
She didn't say a word. She just walked forward, her movements slow and heavy with exhaustion, as if each step cost her dearly.
She placed the entire stack on the edge of my desk with a soft but definitive thud that seemed to echo in the quiet room.
She finally looked up at me, her gaze blurry from fatigue but unnervingly steady.
"It's done," she said, her voice a dry, worn-out whisper, scraping out of her throat. "A day early."
Then she turned, without waiting for a thank you or a dismissal, and walked out, leaving the door open behind her, the sound of her retreating footsteps fading quickly.
I just stared. At the closed files. At the empty doorway. Done. A day early. The sheer impossibility of it should have been satisfying. It was a testament to her skill, an undeniable return on my... investment.
A part of me, the part that was always calculating, noted the value of an employee with that kind of drive.
But the satisfaction, the triumph I'd expected to feel, didn't come. Instead, something else, something colder and more uneasy, took its place.
The quiet click of the main office door closing downstairs snapped me out of my thoughts. I looked at the clock. 11:17 PM. The MTA buses would have stopped running by now. Cabs this far out in the Financial District at this hour were scarce, unreliable, and exorbitantly expensive.
A low curse escaped my lips. "Fuck." She was exhausted, running on pure fumes, and about to walk out into a dark, largely deserted part of the city with no way home.
This was an inconvenience. A liability. I couldn't have my employee, one I'd just invested a significant amount of capital in, getting mugged or worse because I'd worked her past the point of rational thought.
I pushed back from my desk so hard my chair rolled into the wall behind me with a dull thud. I grabbed my keys and my Loro Piana overcoat from the stand, striding out of my office.
The main floor was dark and silent except for the faint glow of the elevator numbers descending. She was already gone.
I took the private elevator down to the garage, my mind racing, calculating the fastest route she might have taken. My Mercedes-Maybach purred to life, the sound loud in the concrete silence of the garage, and I swung out onto the nearly deserted street.
I spotted her almost immediately. A lone figure walking slowly under the dim, yellow glow of the streetlights, her arms wrapped around herself against the late-night chill.
I pulled up alongside her and rolled down the passenger window, the mechanism whirring softly.
"Get in," I said, my voice sounding harsher than I intended in the quiet of the night.
She jumped, startled, and turned to look at me. Her tired eyes widened in surprise and what looked like deep suspicion. She just stood there on the sidewalk, hesitating, a war playing out on her exhausted face.
Pride versus practicality. Finally, her shoulders slumped with a resigned sigh, and she pulled the door open and slid into the passenger seat.
The door closed with a solid, expensive thud, sealing us in the tight, silent space of the car. The engine was the only sound. The scent of her—tiredness, bitter coffee, and a faint, surprisingly sweet hint of shampoo—filled the air, mixing with the smell of the leather seats.
I pulled away from the curb, the tension between us so thick it was suffocating. I gripped the wood-rimmed steering wheel tighter, my eyes fixed on the road ahead, hyper-aware of her presence beside me.
This was a mistake. This was a very, very bad idea.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her head slowly tilt against the window. Her breathing evened out, becoming deep and regular. Exhaustion had finally won. She was asleep.
And I was left alone, driving through the sleeping city, with a vulnerable, sleeping Paige Rimestone in the seat next to me, and I had absolutely no idea what to do with her.