Dripping Sin

Dinner with colleagues

I almost called Daniel to say I'd be late home.

Then I remembered my phone was still switched off from this afternoon and turning it back on meant seeing his missed call sitting there and I wasn't ready to deal with that alongside everything else. I turned it on, texted him quickly. *Work dinner. Don't wait up.* Then I switched it to silent and dropped it in my bag.

He replied in under a minute. *Fine.*

Fine. Always fine.

I walked the two blocks to the restaurant in the evening air and tried to settle myself. I had changed the scarf for a light turtleneck I found in my emergency work bag and done my makeup in the office bathroom and I looked, if nothing else, like a woman who had her life together.

Appearances were doing a lot of heavy lifting tonight.

---

The restaurant was warm and low lit with long tables and the kind of atmosphere that was relaxed enough to feel casual but expensive enough to remind you that you were still at work. I heard them before I saw them, the particular noise of a group that had already been there long enough to order the first round.

Serena saw me come in.

She raised her hand with a smile and I crossed the room and counted heads as I walked. Fourteen people, just as she had said, arranged along both sides of a long table with Serena at the head and one empty seat near the middle that had clearly been left for me.

Not beside anyone friendly looking. Right in the center where everyone could see me.

"Mia, you made it." Serena said it warmly, for the table. "Everyone this is Mia Harlow, Mr. Carver's new personal assistant. Let's make her feel welcome."

A polite ripple of hellos. Some genuine, most measured.

I sat down and smiled and picked up the menu and felt fourteen different kinds of attention on me at once.

The woman to my left introduced herself as Paula, mid forties, warm eyes, the kind of person who had probably been at the company long enough to have seen everything and was surprised by very little. She leaned slightly toward me.

"You'll be fine," she said quietly. Just that.

I liked her immediately.

The man to my right was James, early thirties, handsome in an obvious way, who spent the first ten minutes asking me questions that sounded friendly and were actually inventory. How long had I known Mr. Carver before taking the position. Where had I worked before. Did I have experience in corporate environments or was this a new direction.

I answered everything without answering anything.

Serena watched from the head of the table with her wine glass held loosely and her eyes moving between me and James with the patience of someone who had organized this seating on purpose.

The food came. The conversation spread out across the table and I started to breathe a little more normally.

Then Serena tapped her glass.

"Since we're all here," she said, addressing the table, "I thought it would be nice for Mia to tell us a little about herself. How she came to join us." She smiled at me across the table. "In her own words."

Every head turned.

I set my fork down.

I had been in enough difficult rooms to know when a question had a shape to it. This one was asking me to explain myself in front of witnesses and whatever I said would be examined for cracks afterward.

"There's not much to tell," I said, keeping my voice easy. "Mr. Carver made me an offer and I accepted it. I'm looking forward to learning how this company works and contributing where I can."

"Of course." Serena nodded. "It was just quite sudden. One day the position was open and the next you were here." She tilted her head pleasantly. "Mr. Carver must have been very impressed with you."

The way she said impressed sat in the air for just a second longer than it needed to.

Paula reached over and refilled my water glass without a word.

I was about to respond when the temperature in the room changed.

Not dramatically. Just a subtle shift, the way a room adjusts when someone walks in that it instinctively recognizes. Conversations shortened. Posture straightened. Even Serena's smile moved into something more careful.

I didn't need to turn around to know.

He came in without announcement, jacket on, and spoke briefly to the host near the door before his eyes moved across the room and found the table. Found me.

He walked over.

"Mr. Carver." Serena rose slightly. "We're so glad you could stop by."

"Serena." He nodded at the table generally. "I won't interrupt. I wanted to stop in briefly and welcome Mia officially on her first day."

Every single person at that table was watching.

He looked at me.

His face was composed and professional and completely unreadable and he could have been looking at anyone, a colleague, an acquaintance, a new employee he was being courteous to.

"How was the first day?" he asked.

"Productive," I said.

"Good." He held my gaze for exactly one second longer than a boss would hold a new employee's gaze and I felt it in my stomach and prayed it didn't show on my face. "Enjoy the evening."

He said a few words to two of the senior men at the far end of the table and then he was gone, back through the restaurant and out the door, and the room slowly exhaled.

I picked up my fork.

I could feel Serena looking at me from the head of the table. I didn't give her the satisfaction of looking back.

But Paula leaned close to my ear under the cover of the conversation starting back up around us.

"She's been recording this whole dinner," she whispered. "Her phone has been propped against her glass since before you arrived."

I kept my face still.

"Why are you telling me this?" I whispered back.

Paula picked up her wine glass calmly. "Because I've been in this company for nine years and I've seen that woman destroy three people who didn't see her coming."

She took a sip.

"You seem like someone worth warning," she said.