Dripping Sin

Marked

I walked back into that office feeling like a different woman.

Which was the problem.

I should have walked back in feeling guilty and conflicted and full of the kind of shame that keeps a person's eyes forward and their spine straight. Instead I stepped out of that elevator with my dress smooth and my bag on my shoulder and something embarrassingly close to a smile on my face that I had to actively pull apart before anyone saw it.

I sat at my desk.

I opened the inbox.

I crossed my legs and told myself the rest of the afternoon was going to be completely professional and normal.

of course, It was not going to be normal.

---

The first sign was the quietness.

Not the whole floor. Just small pockets of it. The kind that opens up when you walk past a conversation that was going fine until you arrived. I caught it twice on my way to refill my water, two women near the window whose voices dropped just slightly as I passed, a man by the printer who looked up at me and then looked away a little too quickly.

I checked my dress. Smoothed my hair.

Everything looked fine.

I went back to my desk and kept working.

The second sign was harder to ignore.

I got up to ask the floor coordinator a question about the filing system and as I leaned over her desk she looked at me, then looked at my neck, and something moved across her face so fast she covered it with a cough.

I straightened.

Walked back to my desk slowly.

And on my way past the printer I caught my reflection in the dark screen and stopped breathing for a full three seconds.

There it was.

On the left side of my neck, sitting just below my jaw where my collar didn't reach was amark. Deep pink and unmistakable and absolutely not something that needed any explanation to anyone who had eyes.

My hand went to it immediately.

I stood in front of that dark screen and stared at Luca Carver's signature on my skin and felt heat climb from my chest all the way to the top of my head.

The entire floor had seen this.

I had walked back from a two hour lunch with my boss, wearing his mark on my neck like a stamp, and smiled at the receptionist and sat down and worked for forty minutes like a woman with no mirrors in her life.

I grabbed my scarf from my bag. Wrapped it around my neck twice. Sat back down and pressed my eyes to the screen and did not look up.

What I didn't know was that the damage was already done. The floor had seen what they needed to see and somewhere behind me in a cluster of desks, a conversation was already happening that I was not part of and would not know about until it was too late.

---

At some minutes before four.

I heard the heels first, measured and deliberate on the floor tiles, the walk of a proud woman who knew exactly where she was going and wanted you to hear her coming. A coffee cup appeared on my desk and I looked up.

She was beautiful the way expensive things are beautiful. Precise and intentional. Sharp cheekbones, hair that sat perfectly without looking like it was trying to, and a smile that was warm on the outside and something else entirely underneath.

"You must be Mia." She said it like she already knew the answer. "I'm Serena. Senior accounts manager, three years with Carver Group." She looked around my space the way you look at a room you used to want. "We're all so glad Mr. Carver finally filled the position."

"Thank you," I said. "And thank you for the coffee."

"Of course." She clasped her hands together loosely. "I actually came to mention something. It's a bit of a tradition here, new senior staff take the team to dinner on their first day. Nothing formal, just a way to break the ice properly." She smiled again. "There are about fourteen of us. There's a lovely place two blocks over."

I looked at her.

Fourteen people. Fourteen pairs of eyes that had spent the afternoon looking at my neck.

"Tonight?" I asked.

"If your schedule allows." She tilted her head. "Mr. Carver usually stops by briefly when he can."

I thought about saying no. I ran through every reasonable excuse and found that none of them were ones I could say out loud to this woman without her storing it somewhere and using it later. I could feel it already, the way she was watching me think, patient and pleasant and not missing a single thing.

"I'll be there," I said.

Her smile widened just slightly. "Perfect. Seven o'clock."

She walked away and I watched her go and noticed the way two women near the window sat up straighter as she passed them. Small adjustments. The kind people make around someone they answer to.

Serena Cole had a team on this floor.

And I had been here for less than one day.

---

At five o'clock I knocked on Luca's office door.

"Come in."

He didn't look up when I entered. He was working through a stack of documents with his pen moving steadily and his jaw set and he gave me approximately three seconds of eye contact before he looked back down.

This was a different man from the one in that hotel suite two hours ago. This one was cool and focused and sat behind that desk like the afternoon had not happened at all.

Which should have been fine.

It was fine.

"There's a staff dinner tonight," I said, keeping my voice even. "Apparently it's tradition for new senior employees. Serena Cole organized it."

He turned a page. "I know."

"She said you usually attend."

"Briefly."

I waited for something more. A look, a word, anything that acknowledged that we were two people who existed outside of this office dynamic. Nothing came. He turned another page and the pen kept moving and I stood in front of his desk feeling slightly foolish for expecting otherwise.

"Is there anything you need before I leave?" I asked.

He looked up then. Just for a moment. His eyes moved to the scarf around my neck and something passed through his expression so quickly I almost missed it.

"Wear something with a higher collar tonight," he said quietly.

Then he looked back down at his documents.

I turned and walked out embarrassed.

And in the elevator going down I pressed my fingers against the scarf at my neck and thought about Serena Cole's smile and fourteen people at a dinner table and the cold unbothered man forty-two floors above me who had left his mark on my skin and then gone back to his paperwork without blinking.

The most infuriating part was that it made me want him more.

I needed help.