BELLS
Early morning at Larssen's, the office air smelled like recycled breath and burnt coffee. My spine felt like it had been replaced with wet newspaper sometime around 3 AM, vertebrae compressed into something barely holding me upright. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, a low-pitched corporate whimper that burrowed into your skull and nested there.
But I was hopeful. Stupidly, recklessly hopeful. Yesterday had been better - we'd talked, almost normally, then texted. And I'd convinced myself the last few weeks of frozen silence would thaw. That we could work together on the Yamamoto pitch without all that smoke-thick hostility choking the air between us. That Jude would eventually - eventually - get over my engagement.
He'd have to. We had a company to run. A deal to close. A future where I'd be the COO with equity stake in the firm we'd built, a firm that handled a major client turbocharging us into significance.
I have spent hours typing, deep in the PowerPoint, and now copy-pasting images with their fake corporate sheen, trimming paragraphs until every word earned its place. Concise. Packed. Just how he liked it. Just how I'd learned to think after two years of his particular brand of education.
I wanted to impress him. Needed it like air. Needed him to see me as a business partner again, not just a woman who rejected him at the gala, choose safety, chose the nice secure man.
A knock on my desk. Thoughts interrupted. Three sharp raps, knuckles on wood, like he'd never learned to ask for things.
I looked up. Jude. Charcoal suit, no tie, collar open, throat exposed like he knew exactly what it did to women and enjoyed the leverage.
Two fingers: follow me. Not a request.
"Does it speak?" I muttered, just loud enough for him to hear. The defiance felt good in my mouth, sharp and sour like unripe fruit.
But I was already standing. Already following. My heels clicked on the floor - too loud, too eager -and I hated the sound of my own compliance.
The door to his office clicked shut, a thunk that said: you're trapped now. My pulse kicked. The air conditioning was too cold suddenly, prickling my arms into gooseflesh, but my face felt hot.
Jude was unwrapping a Subway sandwich. The plastic crinkled obscenely loud in the quiet. A fucking Subway. Six-inch turkey on wheat, the smell of processed meat and cheap bread invading the space usually reserved for his cologne, the scent I'd memorised without meaning to. The cognitive dissonance made my brain stutter. This man, in that suit, eating franchise fast food with his bare hands. Yet I still craved him.
The man in front of me who'd waited two years, longer even if you count that period before Larssens. Years of nothing but mixed signals, professional distance interspersed with flirtation, of me wondering if I'd imagined the way he looked at me. Then suddenly: a love confession at an awards gala in front of 200 people. A kiss that tasted like whiskey and humiliation and something I didn't have a name for. Entitlement, maybe. An expectation that I'd choose him right then, standing there in a champagne coloured dress, while everyone watched. While Theo watched.
And I hadn't. I'd chosen the man who'd actually asked properly. The man who'd wanted me in daylight, not just in whatever dark corner of himself Jude kept his desires.
He bit into the sandwich - deep, penetrating, obscene - and looked at me with those pale blue eyes that always felt like an X-ray, like he could see straight through skin to the ugly wanting underneath.
He made a circular gesture with his free hand.
"Go."
His voice was low, made you think thoughts that had no place inside this soulless glass walled office.
"I just got here," I said.
"I mean your prep. Lay it on me."
I thought about laying other things on him. My body. My mouth. My years of pent-up ambition and rage at being so fucking good at my job and still never quite good enough to get the title. "Once we get Yamamoto…" he'd always said. I snapped back, teeth clicking together. Control yourself.
"Okay. Let me grab my laptop…"
"Hmm."
One finger up. Wait.
So I waited. Like someone who'd forgotten she had agency. I watched his jaw work, the muscle flexing under skin, the shadow of stubble that said he'd been up since five. Watched his throat as he swallowed and felt my own throat go dry, tight, like I was the one struggling to breathe.
"You won't have your deck at the dinner, will you?"
The question landed with purpose. Of course I wouldn't. But he'd made me prepare twenty slides anyway because apparently Jude Larssen's new mentorship style was professional waterboarding - controlled drowning - submerge you, then maybe let you catch a breath. Maybe.
"You told me to prep it."
"To help structure your pitch."
"My pitch?"
"They might throw questions at you while I'm eating pasta."
There it was. This was rehearsal. A simulation of the dinner where I'd have to perform for Yamamoto while they all ate leisurely, watching me twist. It made perfect sense. It made me want to strangle him.
But it also made me want to prove I could do it. That I wasn't just some woman he'd continuously promoted because he wanted to eventually screw me. Show I deserved every opportunity, every year he'd invested in me.
He took another bite. Ketchup at the corner of his mouth now, bright red against skin. My tongue felt thick. I imagined the taste. Sweet, vinegary, the salt of his skin. Imagined licking it off while his hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise.
"Are you going to finish that first?" My voice came out rougher than I meant. Wanting. Fuck.
"I'll multitask."
His eyes hadn't left mine. Gaze steady. I know what you're thinking and I'm choosing not to acknowledge it because I have self-control and you clearly don't.
I gave myself a pep talk, silent and desperate: You've worked with him a thousand times before. Get it together. This is nothing new.
Except it was new. Everything was new since the engagement. Since his coldness over the last few weeks had turned him from mentor to stranger, had made my heart grow fonder in that twisted way absence sometimes does.
I was rotting from the inside out with want. And it wasn't for Theo.
"Okay. Yamamoto-san. Seventy-five years old. Business veteran. Running YI since 1985…"
"Alright, this isn't a corporate bio."
The contempt in his voice felt like a slap, skin-stinging, immediate. My face went hot.
"What does he want?"
"Continued European expansion. Digital transformation across…"
"No." His voice dropped lower. "What does he want from us?"
I'd been fooling myself yesterday. Things weren't back to normal. His questions landed different now. Heavy, weighted with something that felt personal.
"Past projects we did for them," I started, voice steadier than I felt. "B2B platform redesign, LLM embedding, 30% lag reduction. Revenue impact was immediate. Then predictive maintenance pilot in Belgium."
"Nice. Bottom line?"
"Three million dollars annually. Estimated."
"And realised?"
I hesitated.
"I... don't know. That's proprietary information."
"Five million last year."
Of course he knew. Of course he'd already done the homework I didn't know existed. Jude Larssen didn't just prepare. He over-prepared, had contingency plans for his contingency plans.
"You can't attribute that just to our work," I said, voice weaker now, the fight leaking out.
"Yen confirmed."
"Yen?"
"Mhm. Yamamoto's PA. Also his niece. Being groomed for succession..." He took another bite, chewed deliberately, making me wait. "...or so she hopes."
The sandwich was nearly gone now. His fingers glistened slightly with oil.
"And she's slipping you info because?"
He didn't answer at first. Just lifted his hand instead, watching me while he closed his mouth around his thumb, sucking the grease off in one lazy pull.
It was obscene. It was intentional. It made heat shot straight between my legs.
"I asked nicely."
The implication hung there. He'd charmed her. Or screwed her. Probably both. Something ugly twisted in my chest. Jealousy. Possessiveness. The sick knowledge that I had no right to either emotion but felt them anyway, visceral and consuming.
"What's next?" He didn't let me spiral. Maybe that was mercy. Maybe it was just efficiency.
"They're currently retaining KPMG and EY for tech advice."
"That's hilarious."
Brutal.
"I actually have figures on Yamamoto's competitor's losses due to following KPMG's lead."
"To the tune of?"
"I... several millions. It's in the slides. I don't remember off the top of my head."
The temperature in the room dropped. Or maybe that was just my blood, suddenly ice-cold with the realisation I'd failed again. His face didn't change but I felt his disappointment pressing down on my shoulders, making the air harder to breathe.
"Then remember. And sources?"
"Financial Times. Investigative piece. Made a splash in the US last month."
"Good. What's the exact remit of KPMG and EY's tech advice?"
Silence. My silence. The sound of me failing, again.
"You don't know, do you?"
My face burned. Actually burned, heat up my neck, flooding my cheeks. I was thirty-two years old with two degrees and eight years in this industry, and he'd just reduced me to a child who'd embarrassed her parents at a funeral.
He'd never done this before. Never made me feel small. This was new, was specific to now, to my engagement, to choosing someone else.
This was punishment. This was what I got.
"Get on that. Also, Accenture and McKinsey are circling."
Something in me hardened. Calcified. The heat in my face turned from shame to anger, sharp and clarifying.
"You do realize Accenture has 200 people just on manufacturing clients," I said, voice edged with steel. "We could put, what, twelve?"
"David vs. Goliath." That half-smile, the one that never reached his eyes. "We must aim well."
He finished the sandwich. Crumpled the wrapper and tossed it in the bin. Still watching me. Still cataloging every micro-expression, every tell, every way I fell short of whatever impossible standard he held in his head.
I wanted him to stop looking at me. I wanted him to never stop.
"You have something on your chin."
He wiped it with a tissue, movements economical, elegant. Even that was perfect, yet another performance of competence.
"Thanks. What's our innovation angle?"
"Normally automation."
"Of what?"
"Whatever the clients need..."
He winced, like my mediocrity caused him bodily pain.
"Where is Yamamoto bleeding money?"
"Unplanned downtime," I said. "Reactive maintenance. Equipment breaks, production stops, they scramble..."
"Now that's just trivial."
The word hit like a backhand. Sharp. Stinging. I blinked, vision briefly swimming.
"We pitch scaling the pilot. Forty-seven sites. Five million per site. What's that?"
I froze. Numbers scattered in my head like dropped marbles. He watched me scramble, watched me mentally multiply, and there was something satisfied in his expression - a cat with a mouse, enjoying the struggle.
"This is primary school maths, Bells." - his contempt mixed with amusement - "Two hundred thirty-five million, conservatively. Bottlenecks?"
Fucking dick.
"Belgium went smoothly..."
"Belgium was a new plant."
I frowned, lost.
He exhaled. The sound was long, weary, like I was killing him slowly with my incompetence. Like every word out of my mouth was a small death he had to endure.
"No legacy systems. No entrenched middle managers refusing to adapt because it might expose their incompetence. No ancient machinery held together with duct tape and prayers. Of course it went smoothly. Try Osaka. Try Leeds. See how far smooth gets you there."
I felt stupid. Young. Everything I'd spent my entire career fighting against, everything I'd proven I wasn't, suddenly rushing back.
The tears came hot and sudden, burning behind my eyes, making my vision blur. I ducked my head fast, hair falling forward to hide my face, because I'd be damned - absolutely damned - if I let him see me cry.
His chair rolled back. The sound was loud in the silence, wheels on hard floor. Then I heard him stand, heard his footsteps - purposeful - and then he was there. Close. Close enough I could feel the heat radiating off him, close enough that the air between us felt charged, electric, dangerous.
"You need to withstand the pressure."
His voice was low, rough like sandpaper over wood.
I didn't move. Couldn't.
"Now go prep. For real this time."
A pause. Then he leaned down - I felt rather than saw it, the displacement of space, the warmth of him - and his breath ghosted over my ear, hot and deliberate.
"Make me want it."
The words landed like a brand. Like something that would leave a mark even after the heat faded. My legs had gone shaky, liquid, but I refused to collapse. Refused to give him that satisfaction. I turned toward the door with my head up, jaw set, determined to make it back to my desk with some scrap of dignity intact.
"Oh you'll want it, dick," I whispered as my hand touched the door handle.
Behind me, I heard it - a laugh. Low, quiet, satisfied.
It chased me back to my desk, that laugh. Followed me as I sat down as I hated myself for exactly ninety seconds before opening my laptop with fingers that still trembled.
Then I started to prepare. Exactly the way he wanted.
Not because I was broken. Not because I was weak.
But because I was going to nail this pitch, land this client, earn that COO title, and prove to Jude Larssen that choosing Theo over him was the smartest decision I'd ever made.
Even if every cell in my body called me a liar.