CHAPTER 5 Unwritten Rules
738 Words
Location: His Office, Evening
He didn’t call me.
That was the first unwritten rule I learned: not all orders come in the form of words.
The report was done. Clear. Structured. Ruthless—exactly as he had asked. I had sent it an hour ago. Any other boss would have replied. A simple “okay.” A comment. A correction.
He didn’t.
His office was lit again. The door, once more, open.
I walked past it three times before realizing I was pretending to be busy. The fourth time, I stopped. My heart was beating too fast for such a simple act.
I knocked.
“Come in.”
His voice was calm. Prepared. As if he knew I would.
The office was orderly but not rigid. Laptop open. A few documents scattered. A half-empty glass of water. His jacket was on the couch, and now his shirt was unbuttoned by two buttons.
A small detail.
Not innocent.
“Did you read the report?” I asked.
“Yes.”
One word. No inflection.
“And?”
He stood and walked toward me slowly. My body reacted before my mind could process it. He circled the desk and stopped a few steps away.
“You were direct,” he said. “More direct than I expected.”
“You asked for that.”
“I did.”
He watched me in silence for a few seconds. The kind of silence that searches for reactions, not words. I felt the urge to fill it. I didn’t.
“First rule,” he said at last. “When you walk in here, you leave your need for approval at the door.”
“I’m not looking for approval.”
“Yes, you are,” he said calmly. “You’re just still good at hiding it.”
A flicker of irritation rose in me.
“Then why did you hire me?”
“Because you’ll lose it,” he replied simply.
“Lose what?”
“That need,” he continued. “To be enough for others. To be validated. To be confirmed.”
He took a step closer.
“It doesn’t work like that here.”
“Then how does it work?” I asked.
He reached out and closed the office door. Not abruptly. Deliberately.
The metallic click changed the air in the room.
“Here,” he said quietly, “power works.”
I crossed my arms instinctively.
“Your power.”
“No,” he corrected. “Mine is given. Yours is built.”
He leaned back against the desk, eyes fixed on mine.
“Second rule: don’t confuse my attention with personal interest.”
My heart skipped.
“I haven’t.”
“Not yet,” he repeated, using the same word that had followed me since the night before.
He stepped closer. The space between us narrowed dangerously.
“And the third rule,” he added. “The most important one.”
“What is it?”
His gaze dropped briefly to my lips, then returned to my eyes. Impossible not to notice.
“If you start feeling something you don’t understand, you come to me. Not to colleagues. Not to friends. Not to yourself.”
“Why?”
“Because I know exactly what’s happening,” he said calmly. “And you don’t.”
His words destabilized me more than any touch could have. There was something deeply unsettling in the certainty with which he positioned himself as the only reference point.
“That’s not healthy,” I said quietly.
“I didn’t say it was.”
Silence fell again. Something tightened in my chest—a dangerous mix of attraction and instinctive defense.
“Can I leave?” I asked.
“Yes.”
But he didn’t step aside.
I moved past him carefully, feeling again his warmth, his presence, his gravity. When I reached the door, my hand already on the handle, his voice stopped me.
“One more thing.”
I turned.
“Unwritten rules,” he said, “you won’t find them anywhere. You’ll feel them.”
His gaze held me a second too long.
“And if I break them?”
His smile was slow.
Dangerous.
“Then you’ll learn why they existed.”
I left his office breathing unevenly, aware of a truth I wasn’t ready to admit:
He wasn’t imposing rules to protect me.
He was imposing them to bind me.
- Writer
