I watched the footage three times before deleting it.
Not because I didn’t want to keep it. Because I wanted to keep it too much.
Floris had kissed me like she meant it. Fought me like she belonged to no one. Came undone like she’d forgotten I was the one holding the leash.
And for the first time in years, I hadn’t wanted to stop her. But control is everything. So I did what I always do.
Buried it.
By the time I entered the office the next morning, I had already rewritten the narrative in my head.
It was a moment. A misstep. A data point in a long experiment I still had every intention of mastering.
Then I saw Sia and I knew the experiment was no longer mine.
She was standing by Floris’s desk like she’d just stepped out of a fire—with nothing but rage left behind.
“You absolute fucking idiot,” she snapped, voice like a blade.
So it had already started.
Floris dropped her bag. “Good morning to you too. Someone wake up on the wrong side of corporate hell?”
“Don’t.” Sia’s voice cut the air. “Don’t you dare make jokes about this.”
“Sia—”
She didn’t let her finish, replaying the moment from yesterday.
I remembered it too. The second when I saw her in the doorway and how I couldn’t care less. Not even a flicker of .
Because Floris was in my lap, still shaking from the way I’d made her come. Still mine.
Floris flushed. “It wasn’t what it looked like.”
“It was exactly what it looked like! You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”
“I’m not sleeping with anyone!”
“Bullshit,” Sia hissed. “I have eyes. I saw the way he was holding you. The way you were looking at each other. Like he’s your savior instead of your captor.”
And there it was.
The line Sia had been waiting to draw since the beginning. The one between the women who survive me, and the one who might undo me.
“Even if something was happening, which it’s not, that would be my business,” Floris said.
She didn’t believe that. Not really.
But I liked that she said it.
“Your business?” Sia scoffed. “Your business is going to get you killed. The pattern is always the same—he makes them fall in love with him, then destroys them when he gets bored.”
Floris didn’t flinch. She looked straight into the storm and lit a match.
“Maybe that was the pattern before. But I’m different.”
“Different how? Because you think you’re special?”
“No, because you think you were special once, and now you’re jealous that it’s me he’s changing for, not you.”
The silence that followed was volcanic.
I held my breath.
Sia’s face went pale. Then red. Then hollow.
“What did you just say?” she whispered.
“You heard me,” Floris said, stepping closer. “This whole concerned mentor routine is bullshit. You’re pissed off that Eric treats me differently than he treated you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I? You were his assistant for fifteen years. In all that time, did he ever hold you? Ever look at you like you mattered beyond your usefulness?”
My jaw tightened.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“He destroyed me—” Sia began.
“He ignored you,” Floris said. “And now you have to watch him actually care about someone else.”
I should’ve stopped her.
But I didn’t.
“You can’t stand that I’m getting the version of Eric you always wanted,” she said.
I turned away from the monitors.
Because she was right.
And because Sia was about to burn the world down for it.
“That’s not—this isn’t about me!”
“Isn’t it?” Floris pushed. “You’re not trying to save me, Sia. You’re trying to punish me.”
“What I never could…” Sia laughed bitterly. “What I never could was survive him with my soul intact.”
“Then why didn’t you warn me properly?” Floris asked. “Why didn’t you tell me the whole truth from the beginning?”
“Because you wouldn’t have listened! Because girls like you never listen until it’s too late!”
“Girls like me?”
“Girls who think they can save the monster.”
There it is, I thought.
She finally said it.
“You think you’re special,” Sia continued. “You think this is real.”
“It feels real.”
“Of course it does. That’s his specialty—making psychological warfare feel like love.”
“She’s wrong,” I muttered to no one, even though I could still hear them.
“You’re wrong about him,” Floris said aloud, almost like she’d heard me. “He’s changing.”
“He’s adapting. There’s a difference,” Sia snapped.
When she turned to leave, she hit her final mark.
“When he gets bored with your particular brand of resistance… don’t come crying to me.”
“I won’t need to cry to you,” Floris said. “Because that’s not going to happen.”
“We’ll see.” Sia’s voice was venom.
And then the door slammed.