I didn’t cry on the elevator ride down. Or when I passed the security guard on the ground floor who gave me a polite smile I couldn’t return. Or even when I realized I’d left my lunch in the staff fridge and I would, in fact, never see that overpriced pasta again.
But the second I walked through the apartment door and dropped my bag in the hallway with the gracelessness of someone who was emotionally concussed, my eyes blurred. Then burned. And then I was sinking onto the floor in the kind of silence that comes right before a storm.
Isabella didn’t ask. She simply peeled off her headphones, rose from the couch, and grabbed the blanket she usually reserved for hangovers and existential crises. She wrapped me in it without saying a word, tucked it around my shoulders, and handed me the good wineglass—the one that didn’t match the others because it was hers, because it was sacred, because she only used it when something was wrong.
She settled cross-legged next to me on the floor and, finally, said, “Tell me.”
I wiped at my cheeks with the sleeve of my blazer. “He didn’t yell.”
Her eyebrows lifted slightly.
“Didn’t insult me. Barely even raised his voice.” I swallowed. “But he made me feel—”
Small. Unqualified. Naive. Like I was someone who’d waltzed into his empire on a wave of idealism and was now being patted gently on the head and shown the door.
“Like I should be grateful he gave me the time of day,” I said finally, keeping my voice as steady as I could manage. “Like I was a girl playing pretend in a room full of men.”
Isabella’s mouth twisted into something between a grimace and a grim smile. “Ah. So: corporate sadist. You want to key his car?”
I let out a weak laugh, then immediately felt guilty. “The worst part is—I wanted him to like me.”
She tilted her head. “Like you, or like you?”
I didn’t answer, which I guess was an answer. And she didn’t push.
After a moment, she stood and held out her hand.
“I’m not going out,” I said, even as I let her pull me to my feet.
“It’s not that kind of out,” she said. “We’re going to break things.”
***
The rage room smelled faintly of disinfectant and something industrial, like paint thinner or robot sweat. It was colder than I expected, and a little too clean, but the sound of ceramic shattering behind the other side of the wall was oddly comforting.
“Pick your target,” Isabella said, gesturing to a table full of breakables. Plates. Vases. What looked like a cursed office printer from 2006. “Therapeutic destruction. Ten out of ten.”
I stared at the options. My palms were already slick in the gloves.
“Jeremy,” I muttered, and smashed the first plate with the metal bat they’d handed me like it was a party favor.
The sharp crack of it splintering against the wall was... good. Disturbingly good.
Isabella nodded like a proud parent. “That’s my girl.”
“Also my mother.”
Vase: gone. Clean hit. Sharp satisfaction.
“Now for the main event,” she said, gesturing dramatically to a mannequin in a cheap suit with a paper printout of some anonymous male model taped to its face. “Let’s pretend this is the bastard who made you feel like you were nothing.”
I adjusted my grip on the bat. The gloves creaked.
I didn’t say his name out loud. I didn’t have to.
I just pictured him leaning back in his chair with that calm, clinical expression. The way he never raised his voice, never lost control—but made sure I felt how far I still had to climb. The dissection of my proposals. The quiet edge in his gaze like he already knew how I’d fail. Like he was waiting for it.
And then I swung.
Not gently.
I hit the mannequin hard enough to knock it off balance. It rocked back on its stand and wobbled like it, too, was stunned by how much was behind that swing. The next hit felt easier. Cathartic. Like I was finally moving all the tension out of my chest and into something that deserved it.
But underneath all that righteous anger, there was something else.
A small, humiliating voice that whispered how much I still wanted his approval. How part of me wasn’t swinging because I hated him—but because I hated myself for not hating him enough.
Liam’s POV
“She’s not coming back, is she?”
Jamie was leaning in the doorway, a coffee in each hand and that particular brand of smug amusement that made me regret hiring him. “Too harsh on the baby strategist?”
I didn’t look up from my laptop. “She didn’t belong in the room.”
“Didn’t belong, or didn’t agree with you?”
“She pitched ideas we couldn’t execute. Offered data without context. She walked in like she wanted a TED Talk, not a job.”
Jamie shrugged. “Still. You might want to dial it back from ‘ice king’ to something less ‘psychological warfare.’”
“She wants to work here, she needs to take criticism.”
“And yet,” Jamie said, sipping his coffee slowly, “there she is.”
I glanced up.
She was just stepping off the elevator.
Ava Green.
She was five minutes late.
And she looked like she knew it. Like she’d walked into this building prepared for war, like every inch of her blazer and pinned hair and calm expression was part of a uniform. A new battle plan.
I let my gaze flick to the clock on the wall.
“Five minutes late,” I said when she reached me, voice flat.
She didn’t miss a beat. “Then I guess I’d better make up for it.”
The corner of my mouth twitched, and I fought it down. Fought the pull.
Because yes, she’d taken everything I threw at her last week. And now she was back. Stronger. Sharper. Standing in front of me like the first round hadn’t cut her at all—even though I knew it had.
She shouldn’t be this interesting.
She shouldn’t make me curious.
And she definitely shouldn’t make me feel like I might enjoy unwrapping her like a little present.