POV Floris
The tape changed everything. Not just what I knew about Sia, but how I fit into Eric's twisted ecosystem. Suddenly I wasn't special—I was just the latest iteration in a long line of broken women who'd thought they could survive Eric Brighton.
Weirdly enough, that realization came with actual work assignments. Normal work. The kind that didn't involve psychological warfare or kneeling on marble floors.
"Network security audit for the London office," Sia announced, dropping files on my desk like they were radioactive. "Due Friday."
I stared at the papers. "That's it? No mind games? No cryptic instructions about earning my keep?"
"Just analyze their firewall protocols and identify vulnerabilities." She turned to leave, then paused. "Oh, and Eric wants a comprehensive report on Rotterdam competitors' digital infrastructure."
"So… actual cybersecurity work."
"Revolutionary concept, I know."
But here's the thing about working in a corporate hellscape—normal feels more unsettling than chaos. At least with psychological torture, I knew where I stood.
This sudden shift to legitimate business tasks felt like the calm before Eric unleashed whatever fresh nightmare he'd been cooking up.
I dove into the work anyway. Partly because I'm actually good at this shit, partly because it beat sitting around waiting for the other designer shoe to drop.
The Rotterdam project was fascinating in a deeply illegal way. Eric wanted detailed intelligence on TimeCorp's security systems—not just public-facing stuff, but internal networks, employee access protocols, even executives' personal devices.
"This is corporate espionage," I muttered, cross-referencing IP addresses with employee databases.
"This is competitive analysis," Sia corrected, appearing behind me like a corporate ghost. "There's a difference."
"Yeah, about ten years in federal prison."
"Only if you get caught."
We worked in silence for the next hour, two women committing felonies with the casualness of people ordering coffee.
The irony wasn't lost on me—here I was, the whistleblower who'd destroyed her career exposing corporate malfeasance, now actively participating in the exact same shit.
Around noon, I'd mapped TimeCorp's entire security architecture. Their firewalls were Swiss cheese, their password protocols laughable.
Timothy Hartwell's personal laptop was connected to their main servers through a VPN so poorly encrypted that a high school hacker could break it.
"Lunch?" Sia asked, like we hadn't just spent the morning hacking into a competitor's private servers.
The executive cafeteria was all glass and pretension, filled with people who probably had offshore accounts and flexible relationships with business ethics.
We grabbed salads that cost more than my old monthly grocery budget and found a quiet corner.
I couldn't stop staring at Sia. Every time she spoke, I heard that broken voice from the tape: Please. I can't breathe without you.
"You're being weird," she said, spearing a cherry tomato with surgical precision.
"Define weird."
"You keep looking at me like I'm a maze you're trying to escape."
I was. The Sia from the tape—vulnerable, desperate, in love with a man who treated her like furniture—seemed impossible to reconcile with the ice queen sitting across from me.
This woman could cut glass with her stare and probably had. That woman had begged for scraps of Eric's attention.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask. I might not answer."
I took a breath, dove in. "How long have you worked here?"
"Fifteen years."
"In what capacity?"
Her fork paused halfway to her mouth. "Various capacities."
"That's deliberately vague."
"I'm a deliberately vague person." She took a careful bite, chewed slowly. "Why the sudden interest in my career trajectory?"
"Professional curiosity."
"Bullshit." The word came out sharp, final.
Around us, conversations continued—mergers and acquisitions, quarterly projections, the kind of sanitized corporate speak that masked predatory business practices.
"You used to be his executive assistant," I said. It wasn't a question.
The silence stretched between us like a tightrope over an abyss. Sia's composure didn't crack, but something shifted behind her eyes.
A flicker of the woman from the tape. "Yes," she said finally. "I was."
"For how long?"
"Two years."
"What happened?"
She set down her fork with deliberate precision. "I got promoted. To someone who understands how this works." Her voice was steady, but her knuckles were white around her water glass. "To someone who survives."
"By throwing other women into the meat grinder?"
"By keeping them alive long enough to find their own exits."
The words hung between us, heavy with implication. I thought about the tape, about Sia's desperate pleas, about the woman who'd loved Eric Brighton enough to beg for his attention.