Chapter 22
Ihadn’t been planning on leaving, but there was a big difference between it being my decision or his.
With an indignant huff, I returned to my desk, muttering about arrogant, domineering bosses who ordered people around.
I lost myself in my work, just shutting out absolutely everything that was happening with Harrison, with the apartment, with my new outlook on what I did and didn’t deserve—all of it.
I turned it all off and focused on my work so intently that I didn’t notice when someone was hovering over my desk until an envelope dropped onto the top of the stack of papers I was working on.
I looked up to see Evil Barbie from the day before yesterday.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Yes, you can do your job,” she said with her hands on her hips like she was scolding a small child. “Once Harrison and I are married, I’m going to insist that he get a better secretary.”
“I’m not a secretary.” I smiled up at her. “His secretary is on vacation. I’m a paralegal.”
“As if there’s any difference.” she said, waving off anything I said. “Look, I need you to do something. I don’t care if you think it’s beneath you since I’m just the fiancée, but you need to do it, or I will get you fired.”
I hated this woman with everything I had, but I knew it would be much faster just to smile and agree to whatever it was that she was here for.
“How can I help you, ma’am?”
I may have added the “ma’am” just to annoy her, and with the way her puffed-up Botox lips twisted into a snarl, I knew it worked.
It may have been petty, but I enjoyed the little hint of vindication I got from getting on her nerves. It was catty and a bit mean, especially since I was the woman sleeping with her fiancé, but I never said I was perfect, and I certainly didn’t pretend to be.
“I need to speak to my fiancé.”
“Mr. Astrid is in a meeting.”
“I don’t care if he’s in a meeting. Go get him.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Astrid is not in the building. He took a meeting somewhere else, and I don’t know where he is.”
“How can you not know where he is?”
“Because,” I said evenly and slowly as if speaking to a child. “I am not his secretary, nor am I his mother. Have you tried calling his phone?”
“It’s your job to know where he is.” She stomped her probably ridiculously expensive stiletto at me.
“It really isn’t,” I said.
“Well, I’m not leaving until you tell me where he is. I don’t know why you think you get to keep my fiancé from me. Who do you even think you are? I don’t care if you’re his secretary or his paralegal or whatever. I’m going to be his wife. That means I will always be more important because unlike you, I’m good enough for him. You are probably just some little charity case he’s taking pity on.”
Her words stung more than she could possibly know. No, I did not have this job because I was a charity case. I had this job because I was the best paralegal here, but her calling me a charity case hit a nerve harder than she could know.
“Ma’am, as I have already stated, I do not know where Mr. Astrid currently is. I have not seen nor heard from him since he left this morning and I’m not expecting him back in the office during business hours today.”
“That’s not acceptable,” she screeched, loud enough that several of the others in the bullpen all stopped to look at us.
I took a deep breath to maintain my composure.
“I apologize if you don’t find that acceptable, but that’s all I have to tell you. I don’t know anything else. I am happy to take a message if you would like, or I could try calling his cell phone if you don’t have the number.”
“Of course I have my fiancé’s cell phone number.” The way her eyes darted to the floor and then to the space right over my left shoulder told me she didn’t.
“Right,” I said, giving her a pleasant smile and praying this woman would just leave already.
Instead, she leaned down, hovering over my desk, the smell of her expensive perfume smothering the air around me. “Look, you little street urchin, I don’t know who you think you are, but you cannot keep him from me.”
“I’m not trying to keep him from you. I’m telling you he’s not here. Is there a message you’d like me to give him?” I spoke slowly and condescendingly, hoping that she would finally get the point.
“Fine.” She huffed. “Tell him I was here looking for him and give him these to approve.” She tapped a long, manicured fingernail on the thick envelope on top of my desk.
“Absolutely, I will see that he gets it.” I carefully moved it to the side out of my way.
“Good,” she said. “It’s the announcements for our engagement and copies of the wedding invitations for him to approve. I will hear about it when he gets home if you don’t give them to him. I will have you fired.”
She turned on her heel and stomped away, leaving only an invisible trail of the cloyingly sweet, toxic scent of her perfume.
“Oh my God, girl, who was that?” One of the other paralegals, whose name I never remembered, stood in front of my desk.
“I believe that was Mr. Astrid’s fiancée,” I said.
“What did she want?”
“She was just dropping off some things for Mr. Astrid to look over. I’m guessing they got their signals crossed, because she was under the impression that he was here.”
“But why was she yelling at you?”
I just shrugged. I had no other answer. I had absolutely no idea why I was the one she decided to aim her venom at.
“God, for the way that she was going after you, you’d think you were fucking her man or something.”
I pretended to cough on a sip of coffee, hoping it would hide the telltale signs of my guilt. I pressed my fingertips to my cheeks as if it were the coughing fit that made them flushed.
“Yeah, I don’t know, maybe her bikini wax was a little rough this morning?” I joked, and the other paralegal laughed, placing her hand on her chest as she walked back to her own desk.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I were the asshole in this situation?
If I asked people on Reddit who was the victim—the paralegal screwing her boss or the entitled rich bitch that was being cheated on—I wasn’t entirely sure I would be seen as the victim anymore.
Yeah, she was a grade-A Karen, but maybe she knew.
Instinctively maybe she knew the reason her fiancé wasn’t at home last night wasn’t because he was late at work but because he was with me.
Did he go home last night and crawl into bed with her after leaving the one he’d fucked me in?
I no longer felt vindicated by my pettiness toward her.
She was the victim whether she consciously knew it or not.
I was the villain.
I had knowingly, willingly, had sex with a man who belonged to someone else.
Twice.
It was one thing when I was entertaining fantasies of him before I knew he was engaged, but for me to let it go this far knowing that he belonged to someone else was deplorable. I had become the worst kind of woman.
My bullshit reasoning this morning was nothing more than the future lawyer in me arguing my own innocence, even though I knew I was guilty as sin. Maybe I should switch sides and become a defense attorney?
I was the other woman who was fucking a man that could help her career.
It wasn’t as if he had given me a chance to say no. But I knew that was no more of an excuse than one a criminal driving the getaway car would make, claiming innocence because they weren’t the one inside robbing the bank.
I was just as guilty.
If I had truly said no, truly shown him I didn’t want to have sex, then there wasn’t a doubt in my mind he would have stopped.
He didn’t because he knew I wanted it. Knew I wanted to be forced to my knees. Knew I wanted to be dominated by him. Knew I was just as attracted and drawn to him as he was to me.
In the moment, it didn’t matter who else I was hurting by my actions, and I was no better than any of the people that I had helped prosecute.
I had knowingly let my ambition, my own wants and needs, cloud my better judgment, and I’d acted in my own interest regardless of the pain and harm my actions inflicted on others.
Adultery may not have been punishable by law in the United States anymore, but if it had been, I would have turned myself in.
My entire adult life was spent working toward becoming a lawyer. I wanted to stand in front of the bar after passing the exam and have those great men and women look at me and say that I was their ethical equal.
Of course, I knew not all lawyers were ethical, in fact, some were downright shady, but that wasn’t me. I had always believed that ethics meant doing the right thing because it was the right thing, not because someone was watching.
My gut twisted painfully, and I knew that I couldn’t accept any of this anymore.
I couldn’t do it.
I looked down at my phone.
It was 4:45, and I had already done well over the amount of work that could be expected for a single day.
If Harrison was not back in the next fifteen minutes, I was clocking out at 5:00 p.m. with my colleagues.
The second 5:00 p.m. hit, the office around me got louder.
The other paralegals and a few of the secretaries packed up for the night and for the first time since I started working here, I followed suit.
Harrison may have requested, no, demanded, that I stay late at work, but I knew that if we were alone in his office again there was no way I would be able to resist him.
Especially after knowing how his mouth felt on my skin and how he felt inside of me. I considered myself a strong woman, but even I had limits.
There was no way for me to take back what had already happened, but I could at least do everything in my power to make sure it never happened again.
In the elevator, I grabbed my phone to call the car service, but at the last minute I thought better of it and called someone else instead.