Ana's POV
After that night, I made a decision, and the decision was distance.
If the office wanted to believe I had slept my way into my chair, I would give them nothing further to chew on.
No shared exits. No rides. No closed-door meetings with the boss.
I would be so cold, so correct, so relentlessly professional in public that even Marissa Kane would run out of things to whisper.
So that was what I did.
I stopped meeting his eye in meetings. I sent my updates through email instead of walking them to his office.
When we passed in the hallway I nodded the way I nodded at anyone, polite and blank, and kept walking.
I built a wall in daylight, and I told myself it was survival.
It worked. A little.
The whispers thinned. Not gone, never gone, but starved down to something I co
