Violet’s POV
The supply room smells like paper and toner cartridges, and I'm halfway through counting printer paper when the door opens behind me.
I don't turn around. I already know who it is from the click of expensive heels against linoleum and the particular quality of silence that announces Victoria Snyder has entered a space.
"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Her voice carries that familiar edge of disappointed authority—the tone she's perfected over nineteen years of finding me insufficient. "Counting office supplies like some common intern?"
I set the clipboard down with careful precision, forcing myself to face her directly. "I'm working. It's called having a job."
"This rebellion has gone far enough, Violet." She crosses her arms, and the gesture feels rehearsed. Calculated. "You've made your point. Now it's time to come home."
Something hot rises in my throat. "I am home. This is where I choose to be."
"University begins in two months." She steps closer, and I force myself not to retreat. "Columbia. The education I'm paying for. The future I've secured for you despite your best efforts to sabotage it."
The reminder lands exactly where she intends it. Money. Control. The invisible chains she's spent my entire life tightening around my choices.
"I'm an adult." The words come out steadier than I feel. "Making my own choices. And I finally understand what's best for me."
Her expression shifts—calculation replacing maternal concern with surgical precision. "You've fallen under the influence of an unstable woman." Each word lands deliberate and cutting. "A pregnant woman who can't even manage her own scandals. Adison Ward is destroying herself, and she's taking you down with her."
The accusation ignites something fierce in my chest. "Adison is the strongest person I've ever met. She's brilliant and brave and everything you never were."
"She's a mess." Victoria doesn't raise her voice. Doesn't need to. "And you're too naive to recognize manipulation when it's happening to you."
"The only person who's ever manipulated me is standing in this supply room right now." I step forward, closing the distance she's tried to maintain. "Adison sees me. Actually sees me. Not the disappointment you've spent many years trying to fix."
My mother's composure cracks—just slightly, just enough to reveal the fury beneath her polished exterior. Then she delivers her final strike with the cold precision of someone who knows exactly where the blade will land deepest.
"Fine." The single word drops like a stone. "I'll stop funding your education entirely. An assistant's salary won't cover Columbia's tuition. You were stupid to walk away, Violet. And you'll remain stupid without the degree I was generously providing."
The words hit like a physical blow. My lungs stop working properly.
"You're—" I start, but she's already moving toward the door.
"Enjoy your little rebellion." She doesn't look back. "I hope it's worth what it costs you."
Then she's gone, and I'm alone in the supply room with my clipboard and the trembling spreading through my body like earthquake aftershocks.
I press my back against the metal shelving, trying to remember how to breathe normally. The tremors intensify—hands shaking, knees threatening to buckle, tears burning behind my eyes with pressure that feels like drowning.
She's taking away my education. My future. The one thing I thought was mine regardless of how much she disapproved of my choices.
The door opens again.
"Are you alright?" Zachary's voice cuts through my spiraling panic. "I saw Victoria leaving. She looked—" He stops when he sees my face. "Violet."
The simple concern shatters what's left of my composure.
The tears spill over in ugly, choking sobs that I can't control or hide or perform away. My shoulders shake with the force of it, and I press both hands against my mouth trying to contain sounds that keep escaping anyway.
Zachary closes the distance immediately.
His arms wrap around me, pulling me against his chest with surprising gentleness. One hand strokes my hair—careful, rhythmic, grounding. His other arm bands across my back, holding me steady while I fall apart against expensive fabric that probably costs more than my entire wardrobe.
"Breathe." The word rumbles through his chest. "Just breathe, Violet."
I tried. I failed. The sobs keep coming in waves I can't predict or stop.
But then something shifts. The tears quiet faster than they should—not because the pain has lessened, but because I'm suddenly, intensely distracted.
His scent wraps around me. Something clean and expensive and distinctly male that makes my brain short-circuit. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat pounds beneath my cheek, and I'm hyperaware of solid muscle pressed against me in ways that feel nothing like professional comfort.
Heat floods through my body despite the tears still wet on my face. My breath catches for entirely different reasons than grief, and I feel his grip tighten fractionally in response.
This is wrong. Inappropriate. Exactly the kind of complication neither of us needs.
I don't care.
The door opens.
We spring apart like startled animals caught doing something we shouldn't be. Zachary's mask slides back into place so fast I almost believe I imagined the gentleness in his expression seconds ago.
I reel backward, my mind scrambling between the sting of my mother's words and the dizzying awareness of what just happened.
Adison stands on the threshold, one hand pressed against her barely-there belly.
Her eyebrows rise as she catalogs the scene—my tear-streaked face, Zachary's carefully reconstructed composure, the charged air crackling between us like evidence neither of us can hide.
"Italian." She announces it like a command. "Immediately. I'm pregnant and ravenous, and I need witnesses when I order everything on the menu."
The absurdity of the statement breaks something in my chest. A laugh escapes—watery and genuine and completely inappropriate given that I was sobbing thirty seconds ago.
"Everything?" I manage, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
"Everything." Adison's smile turns wicked. "Appetizers. Entrees. Three kinds of pasta. Possibly dessert before the main course because pregnancy rules don't apply to chronological eating."
Zachary clears his throat, professional distance reasserting itself with visible effort. "I'll make reservations."
"Already did." Adison gestures toward the hallway. "Car's waiting. Let's go before I start eating office supplies."
She disappears, and I'm left standing in the supply room with Zachary and the ghost of his arms around me and the terrifying realization that everything just got infinitely more complicated.
He meets my eyes for half a second—something unguarded flickering behind his usual composure—before the mask completes its reconstruction.
"Come on." His voice comes out rougher than professional. "She's serious about the office supplies."
I follow him toward the door, my body still humming with awareness I can't seem to shake.
Victoria took away my future. But standing here in the aftermath of Zachary's unexpected comfort, I'm starting to think maybe I'm building a different future entirely.
One my mother never imagined. One I'm choosing for myself.
Even if it terrifies me completely.