Chapter Five
913 Words
Naya arrived an hour late to work the next day. Not because she slept off or couldn't hail a ride on time but intentionally. She had vowed to be a thorn in his flesh, it was the only form of control she had left and she intended to use it fully. It's not like he could sack her anyways, he has the debt to recover.
She strolled into the lobby with that energy — unbothered on the surface, fury stored carefully underneath. Mira looked up when she walked in and something shifted in her expression. The woman she had processed yesterday had been composed and clearly trying. This version of Naya was different and they both knew it.
Mira recovered quickly. "Ms. Cole." She turned and walked without waiting.
The process was efficient — ID card, NDA, desk orientation. Mira walked her through everything professionally though Naya caught her glancing over a few times with an expression she couldn't fully read. She didn't ask. Mira didn't offer.
She settled in. Learned the systems. Figured out where things lived. The floor moved around her at its usual controlled pace and nobody welcomed her and that was fine. She wasn't here to be welcomed.
She had been at her desk for about two hours when his office door opened.
She didn't look up. She heard his footsteps moving across the floor, away from her, then back. She kept her eyes on her screen and waited for something — a nod, a word, basic human acknowledgment that a new person was sitting at the desk directly outside his office on her first day.
Nothing.
He walked past her like the chair was empty and went back into his office and the door closed.
Naya stared at the closed door as if to burn a hole through.
Wasn't he the one who forced her here? He had sent that legal notice, handed her that contract, told her to be here — and he couldn't manage a single glance? She pressed her tongue to the inside of her cheek and breathed through it. Fine. She would do her job and pay him no attention whatsoever.
An hour later she needed a reference document for an email. She flagged Mira, who said she could retrieve it from the filing cabinet in Damian's office — he kept it accessible during office hours.
Naya looked at his closed door.
She walked towards it and knocked. Once. Twice. Three times.
No response.
She waited. Still nothing. She mumbled under her breath — "He might as well not notice me walk in since I'm so tiny for him to see" and pushed the door open.
She was not prepared for what she walked into.
He was not alone. There was a woman with him — completely undressed, on her knees, gagging on his d**k with her head being guided by his hand, his own head thrown back in pleasure. The woman didn't even flinch at the sound of the door. Didn't pause. Didn't acknowledge that another person had just walked into the room. She simply continued like Naya's presence was nothing.
Then Damian's head came forward.
And he looked directly at Naya.
That look. That was the part. Not what she saw, as bad as that was. It was his eyes. The same flat unbothered expression he had used to slide a contract across a desk and tell her to sign it. No shame. No apology. No acknowledgment that this was anything other than a completely unremarkable moment. He held her gaze — held it, deliberately, for long enough that there was no mistaking the intention behind it and then he positioned the woman's head deeper without looking away…as if trying to prove a point.
You are nothing, that look said. You are furniture. You are less than furniture. You are a desk outside my office and this is my office and I will do whatever I want in it.
Naya staggered back from the door. Her body moved before her mind did — hand finding the handle, pulling it shut, feet carrying her back to her desk. She sat down. Placed her hands flat on the surface.
They were trembling.
She stared at them like they belonged to someone else. She had seen the photograph last night — his tongue down a woman's throat at a public event, blurred but unmistakably him. She had thought she understood what kind of man he was. She had thought she was prepared.
She was not prepared.
There was a difference between reading about someone and walking into the middle of who they actually were, and that difference was currently sitting in her chest like something she couldn't breathe around. She had signed a contract with this man. She was legally obligated to sit outside that door every day. She had no way out that didn't cost her brother his freedom.
She picked up her pen.
She opened the next email.
She was going to do her job because it was the only thing she could control in this building and she was not going to fall apart over a man who had made it abundantly clear that she was nothing to him. Not even worth the basic decency of closing a door properly.
He was a monster.
She had suspected it from the letter. From the meeting. From the photograph.
Now she knew it in her bones.
And she still had to come back tomorrow.
- Writer
