POV: Jasmine
Monday. First day of the decision week.
I arrive before dawn, the building empty and silent as a tomb. My hands shake as I prepare everything with meticulous precision—coffee exactly as Jackson specified, black with two sugars, temperature between 175 and 180 degrees. Files organized with color-coded tabs. His schedule was printed and highlighted. Every detail is perfect because perfection is the only defense I have left.
The cleaning crew watches me work with something like pity in their eyes. They've seen executives come and go, seen assistants ground down by impossible demands. They know what Jackson Blackwood is. Everyone knows.
By seven forty-five, everything is arranged. Coffee steaming. Documents aligned. My armor—tailored pants, high-collared blouse—buttoned tight against whatever's coming.
Jackson arrives at eight, and the temperature in the room drops ten degrees.
He surveys the arranged perfection with slow deliberation, taking in every detail I've prepared. The coffee. The files. The rigid posture I can't quite relax. His lips curve into a smile that doesn't reach his eyes—the expression of a predator who's found prey exactly where he expected it.
"Good girl."
The words land like slime spreading across my skin, coating me in something I know I won't be able to scrub away no matter how long I stand under scalding water. My stomach turns, but I force my face to remain neutral.
"Is there anything else you need, Mr. Blackwood?"
He doesn't answer immediately. Instead, his gaze travels down my body with deliberate slowness—assessing, cataloging, finding me wanting. Something in his expression shifts from neutral to displeasure, and my pulse spikes with fear.
"We need to discuss your wardrobe." His voice is conversational, almost friendly, which makes it worse. "What you're wearing doesn't suit my aesthetic."
"I dressed professionally—"
"You dressed like a nun trying to hide from God." He moves closer, circling me the way he did yesterday, and I force myself not to flinch. "Too conservative. Too covered. Not what I want to see when I look up from my desk."
"What would you prefer?" The question tastes like acid.
"Shorter skirts. Lower necklines." His breath is hot against my ear as he stops behind me. "Clothes that give me access whenever I want it."
The threat beneath the civility is unmistakable. This isn't a request. It's a command, backed by the implicit promise of destruction if I refuse.
"I'm helping my sons because of you," he reminds me, his voice dropping to something intimate and obscene. "The least you can do is dress appropriately for the role you're playing."
In the bathroom, I change into the backup clothes I'd packed and prayed I wouldn't need. Shorter skirt ending mid-thigh. Blouse unbuttoned low enough that the curve of my breasts is visible with every breath. I look at my reflection in the harsh fluorescent light and barely recognize the woman staring back.
This is survival, I tell myself. This is the price.
When I return to his office, Jackson appraises me with that calculating gaze, his eyes lingering on every inch of newly exposed skin. The satisfaction in his expression makes my stomach heave.
"Much better." He gestures for me to approach the desk. "Come here."
My legs move before my brain can object. Conditioning. Training. The survival instinct that says compliance is safer than resistance, that enduring is better than fighting when the odds are impossible.
I stop beside his chair, close enough to smell his cologne, close enough to see the silver threads in his hair and the cruel set of his jaw.
His hand reaches out.
I'd known it was coming. Had braced for it since the moment I walked through the door. But knowing doesn't make it easier when his fingers close around my breast through the thin fabric, squeezing with proprietary confidence.
"Hold still."
His thumb finds my nipple, circling it with deliberate pressure, and I hate my body for responding. Hate the biological reality that physical stimulation triggers reactions regardless of desire or consent. The flesh hardens beneath his touch, and his smile widens.
"There we go."
His hand slides lower, trailing down my stomach, and I squeeze my hands into fists so tight my nails cut crescents into my palms. Fingers press against the fabric of my skirt, pushing between my thighs with the casual entitlement of a man who has never been denied anything in his life.
I count backwards from one hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight. Focus on the numbers, not the violation. Ninety-seven. Breathe through my nose. Ninety-six. Don't react. Ninety-five. Don't give him the satisfaction.
Survive it because survival is all I have left.
His fingers press harder, finding the heat of me through layers of fabric, and I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste blood.
Then, as suddenly as it started, he removes his hand.
I watch in frozen horror as he brings his fingers to his nose and inhales deliberately, closing his eyes like he's savoring a fine wine. The gesture is so deliberately degrading that my vision blurs with rage and humiliation.
"You can go," he says, already turning back to his documents, dismissing me like I'm nothing. Like what just happened was nothing.
I walk out of his office with measured steps. Through the glass walls, I feel eyes on me—colleagues who witnessed whatever they could see, who are drawing their own conclusions about the new girl in the short skirt standing too close to the patriarch's chair.
The bathroom is twenty steps away. I count each one.
The door closes behind me. I make it to the farthest stall before my knees give out, and then I'm vomiting into the toilet, my body rejecting everything—the coffee I forced down this morning, the fear I've been swallowing, the violation I just endured.
I heave until there's nothing left, until I'm just dry-heaving over porcelain, tears streaming down my face.
That's when I hear the voices.
Two women entering the bathroom, mid-conversation, their words carrying clearly through the stall door.
"Did you see that? Through the glass?" The first voice is eager, hungry for gossip.
"How could I miss it? He had his hands all over her." A pause, a snicker. "And she just stood there. Didn't even try to stop him."
"Guess we know how she got her position," someone laughs.