The video file sat on my laptop like a loaded gun. Henri's voice—"a necessary sacrifice"—looped in my head all night, confirmation that my desperate lie had actually been the truth.
I felt powerful and completely fucked at the same time.
The next morning, I stepped off the elevator onto the 40th floor and stopped dead. My desk was gone. Like, completely gone—just an empty space where I'd spent the last few weeks pretending to be a normal assistant.
Technicians were packing my things into boxes. My stomach dropped.
"What's happening?" I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.
Alan appeared in his office doorway, immaculate in a charcoal suit. "A security upgrade, Madame Garnier." His tone was pure corporate calm, the kind that makes HR violations sound like strategic planning.
I stared at him.
"Given the sensitive nature of the Iris archives and your... history," he continued, "I'm eliminating all potential data risks. Your workstation is being moved inside my office. Effective immediately."
The blood drained from my face. I looked past him into his massive glass cage.
There, in the far corner, sat a small desk—identical to mine but somehow diminished, like a child's furniture in an adult's room. A solitary island in his territory.
"Inside?" I whispered, horrified.
"It ensures a secure data perimeter." His voice was flat, emotionless. "All Iris-related work will be conducted where I can personally oversee it."
A technician brushed past me carrying my coffee mug and a stack of files. I watched my professional life get physically relocated into his surveillance radius.
No more private calls to Sofia. No more breathing room. No more pretending I had any autonomy left.
Alan stepped closer, his voice dropping to that low murmur that made my skin prickle. "Welcome to the inner circle." A ghost of a smirk played on his lips. "Or perhaps you didn't want to be closer to your boss?"
My breath caught. I refused to give him the satisfaction of a response.
"Don't disappoint me," he said, and walked back into his office—our office now.
The atmosphere inside that glass box was suffocating. Every keystroke felt monitored, every breath calculated. I sat at my new desk pretending to work on Iris files while Alan held calls in French, English, and what sounded like German.
He was a machine. Ruthlessly efficient, coldly brilliant.
And he was watching me. I could feel it even when I didn't look up—his attention like a physical weight pressing against my spine.
Around 3 PM, I heard heels clicking down the corridor. Fast, angry heels.
I looked up just as the door to Alan's office slammed open, cracking against the wall hard enough to rattle the glass.
Anna Artois stood in the doorway, her face a masterpiece of controlled fury. Her eyes swept the room and landed on me like a sniper finding her target.
"What," she demanded, her voice dangerously quiet, "is she doing in here?"
Alan didn't even look up from his screen. "Working, Anna."
"Working?" Her laugh was brittle, sharp enough to cut. "In here? I've seen how you look at her, Alan. The entire floor has." She advanced into the room. "You two are too close. What is this? What is she doing in your private office?"
My face burned. I stared at my monitor, fingers frozen over the keyboard, wishing I could dissolve into pixels and disappear.
Alan slowly raised his head. His eyes weren't angry—they were ice. Pure, lethal cold.
"She stays," he said, his voice quiet and absolute. "You can leave. Now."
The silence was deafening.
Anna stared at him, her chest heaving, realizing in real time that she'd just lost a battle she didn't know she was fighting. She looked from his expressionless face to mine, her eyes promising murder.
Then she spun on her designer heels and stormed out, slamming the door so hard I flinched.
The silence that followed was somehow worse than her rage. I sat frozen, my pulse hammering in my throat.
Alan simply returned to his work as if nothing had happened. As if his fiancée hadn't just publicly accused him of—what? An affair? Obsession?
As if he hadn't just chosen me over her in front of God and corporate espionage files.
The rest of the day was psychological torture. Every time I shifted in my chair, I felt his attention sharpen. Every email I sent, every file I opened—I could feel him cataloging, analyzing, filing away data about me like I was one of his Iris Project subjects.
When the clock hit 6 PM, I grabbed my bag so fast I nearly knocked over my coffee. "I'm leaving," I said to no one in particular.
Alan didn't look up. "Good night, Élise."
The way he said my name made my stomach flip.
I practically ran to the elevator.
My apartment building was quiet when I got home, the hallway lit by those depressing fluorescent lights that make everything look vaguely criminal. I fumbled for my keys.
That's when I saw it.
A sleek black box propped against my door. No delivery slip, no label—just expensive matte black packaging from a Parisian couturier I'd only ever walked past while window shopping.
My stomach twisted. I picked it up. It was light, ominous.
Inside my apartment, I set it on my tiny kitchen table and stared at it like it might explode. Finally, I opened it.
Layers of black tissue paper rustled as I pulled them back. Underneath was a dress.
Emerald green silk, long sleeves, a deceptively simple cut that screamed money. It was elegant, severe, and probably cost more than my rent.
I lifted it out with shaking hands. Underneath was a single card—thick Veridian stationery, the company logo embossed at the top.
The handwriting was Alan's. Black ink, sharp aggressive strokes that looked like they'd been carved rather than written.
"There is a pre-gala dinner tonight with the Artois family. You will accompany me. The car will be downstairs at 7 PM."
And at the bottom, a final sentence that made my blood run cold:
"You will wear this. You represent me. Your appearance reflects my standard. Do not disappoint me."
Not a gift. A uniform. Not an invitation. A summons.
He was deliberately throwing me into a room with Anna Artois—the woman who'd just stormed out of his office promising murder—and he was dressing me for it himself.
I looked at the clock. 6:47 PM.
Thirteen minutes to decide if I was going to walk into this trap or burn the dress and run.