Chapter 3 - Kirsten
Three days. That’s how long I’ve been trying to pretend my one-night stand isn’t sitting in a corner office forty feet from my desk.
It’s not going well.
Every time I hear footsteps in the hall, I tense up. Someone mentions his name, and my stomach does a little flip. A glimpse of him through the glass walls of his office brings back exactly what those hands felt like on my skin.
This is a nightmare. An absolute, unmitigated nightmare.
“You okay?” Becca peers over the partition. “You’ve been staring at that spreadsheet for twenty minutes.”
“I’m fine. Just focused.”
“You don’t look focused. You look constipated.”
I sputter my lips and reply, “Thanks for that.”
She grins and disappears back to her side. I force my attention back to my screen, but the numbers swim together. I can’t concentrate. Not with him so close.
The worst part is how different he seems here. At the bar, he was charming. Playful. The kind of guy who made you feel like you were the only person in the room.
Here, he’s someone totally different.
I watched him eviscerate the head of marketing in a meeting yesterday.
The man presented a quarterly report full of optimistic projections and vague promises, and Menlow picked it apart piece by piece.
His voice never rose above a conversational tone, but by the end, the marketing director looked ready to crawl under the table and die.
“These numbers are based on what, exactly?” Menlow asked as he flipped through the presentation. “Hope? Wishful thinking? Because I don’t see a single data point to support your conclusions.”
“Well, we projected based on historical trends—”
“Historical trends from a company that was hemorrhaging market share before I acquired it. Try again.”
It was brutal, how precisely he dismantled every argument.
And God help me, I found it fascinating.
The contrast shouldn’t be attractive. It definitely shouldn’t make me wonder what other sides of him I haven’t seen yet.
I need to get a grip.
My computer pings with a new email. I click on it, grateful for the distraction.
It’s from Gordon Wallace, one of the senior managers from the old regime. The subject line reads: Brief Meeting—Your Presence Required.
My stomach drops.
Gordon Wallace and his colleague Richard Tillman were part of Vasiliev’s upper management before the takeover.
They’ve been keeping their heads down since Menlow arrived, lurking in their offices and avoiding the spotlight.
I’ve barely spoken to either of them beyond the occasional hallway greeting.
So why do they want to meet with me?
I type back a quick confirmation and check the time. The meeting is in fifteen minutes. Just enough time to work myself into a full-blown panic.
Stop it. It’s probably nothing. Maybe they need help with a report. Maybe they have questions about the data systems. There are a hundred innocent explanations.
But my gut tells me this isn’t innocent.
I save my work and head toward the elevator. Wallace and Tillman have offices on the floor above mine, in a section of the building that’s been eerily quiet since the merger.
The elevator doors open, and I step into a hallway that feels abandoned. Half the offices are empty now, their former occupants either laid off or reassigned.
The door to Wallace’s office is already open by the time I get to it, and he’s sitting behind his desk. He’s a heavyset man in his fifties with thinning gray hair and a face like a bulldog. Tillman stands by the window, wearing the kind of smile that feels rehearsed.
“Ms. Berry.” Wallace gestures to the chair across from him. “Thank you for coming. Please, sit.”
I lower myself into the chair and fold my hands in my lap. “Of course. What can I help you with?”
Wallace and Tillman share a look I can’t read. Then Wallace leans forward, resting his elbows on the desk.
“We’ll get straight to the point. A few weeks ago, you accessed a folder on the shared drive. One that wasn’t meant for general employees.”
My blood runs cold.
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” I manage, “I access dozens of folders every day for my work.”
“This one was misfiled. You would have been looking for the Henderson account data, but you clicked on something else instead.” Wallace’s eyes bore into mine. “Ring any bells?”
I could lie. Pretend I don’t remember. But something about the way they’re looking at me tells me they already know the truth.
“It was an accident,” I reply in a high-pitched voice. “I closed it as soon as I realized it wasn’t what I was looking for.”
“But you saw the contents.”
“I glanced at them. Briefly. I didn’t understand most of it.”
Tillman moves away from the window and comes to stand beside Wallace’s desk. “Ms. Berry, we’re not here to get you in trouble. Quite the opposite, actually. We want to make sure this little accident doesn’t become a problem for anyone.”
“I don’t see why it would. Like I said, I didn’t understand what I saw.”
“But you remember it.” Tillman’s smile doesn’t waver. “Don’t you?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to.
“Here’s the situation,” Wallace begins, “those documents contain sensitive information. Information that could be… misinterpreted if it fell into the wrong hands. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“I haven’t told anyone. I wouldn’t even know what to tell them.”
“Good. That’s good.” He nods. “But the new ownership has been asking a lot of questions. Digging into the company’s history. Looking for discrepancies.”
My throat tightens. “What does that have to do with me?”
“You work closely with data. You have access to systems that most employees don’t.” Tillman clasps his hands behind his back. “You’re also quite talented, from what I hear. The kind of person who notices things others miss.”
“I just do my job.”
“Exactly. And we’d like you to keep doing your job.” Wallace picks up a pen and taps it against the desk. “With one small addition. We need someone to keep us informed about what Karpov is looking into. What questions he’s asking. What data he’s requesting.”
I stare at him. “You want me to spy on the new CEO.”
“We want you to protect yourself.” Tillman’s voice drops lower. “And protect the people who could be hurt if certain information came to light. Trust me when I say that you don’t want to be caught in the middle of this.”
“And if I refuse?”
The room temperature seems to be dropping. Wallace sets down his pen and fixes me with a stare that makes my skin crawl.
“Ms. Berry, you’re a smart woman. You know how these things work. The documents you saw could implicate a lot of people. Including you, if someone decided to point the finger in your direction.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Doesn’t matter. Access logs show you opened that folder. You spent thirty-seven seconds looking at it, to be precise.” He spreads his hands. “That’s enough to raise questions. Enough to destroy a career and make your life very, very unpleasant.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. They’ve been watching me. Tracking my every move on the company network.
“This doesn’t have to be adversarial,” Tillman adds in a tone that’s probably meant to be reassuring. It isn’t. “You help us, we help you. Everyone walks away happy. But if you decide to be difficult…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to.
“Think about it,” Wallace says, standing to signal that the meeting is over. “We’ll be in touch.”
I leave the office on unsteady legs. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my temples. I make it to the elevator, press the button, and wait.
What the hell just happened?
Those documents. I knew something was wrong with them. The transactions didn’t add up, and the money moved through accounts that shouldn’t exist. But I had no idea—
No idea what? I still don’t understand what I saw or what these men are involved in or why they’re so desperate to keep it hidden. All I know is that I’m trapped. Caught between two forces I don’t understand, with no clear way out.
The elevator arrives. I step inside and hit the button for my floor.
Spy on Menlow. Report back to Wallace and Tillman. Let them use me as their eyes and ears while they do God knows what behind the scenes.
Or refuse and watch them destroy everything I’ve worked for.
I’m still weighing my options when I return to my desk. My hands are shaking as I pull up my email, trying to look normal. Trying to act like my entire world didn’t just tilt on its axis.
Half an hour later, a new message pops up. From Menlow Karpov.
Please come to my office at your earliest convenience.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Then another.
Get it together. He doesn’t know anything. This is probably just a follow-up from your last meeting. Nothing to worry about.
But everything feels like something to worry about now.
I stand, smooth my blazer, and head toward his office. The walk feels longer than it should. Each step echoes in my ears.
His door is open. He’s sitting behind his desk, reviewing something on his laptop. When I knock on the frame, he looks up.
“Kirsten. Come in. Close the door.”
I do as he says. The click of the latch behind me sounds unnaturally loud.
“Have a seat.”
I sink into the chair across from him, folding my hands in my lap to hide their trembling. He eyes me for a moment, those ice-blue eyes taking in every detail.
“You look tense,” he observes.
“Its… been a long day.”
“It’s barely noon.”
“It’s been a long morning, then.”
One corner of his mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “I won’t keep you long. I just need you to sign something.”
He slides a document across the desk toward me. It’s several pages thick, with tabs marking the signature lines.
“What is this?”
“Your new employment contract. Given the restructuring, we’re updating the terms for all retained employees. Standard procedure.”
I pick up the document and flip through it. The words all run together. I can’t focus. My brain keeps replaying Wallace’s threats, Tillman’s false smile, the casual way they discussed ruining my life.
I should read this carefully. I know I should. But all I can think about is getting out of this office before I fall apart.
The terms look similar to my old contract. Same salary. Same benefits. Same job responsibilities. I flip to the signature page and reach for the pen he’s already placed beside the document.
“Any questions?” he asks.
“No. It looks straightforward.”
I sign my name on the first line. Then the second. Then the third.
He takes the document back when I’m finished and glances over the signatures before sliding it into a folder.
“Perfect,” he states. “And here I thought you might fight me on that new clause we added in.”
My mouth goes dry. “What kind of clause?”
He leans back in his chair, the picture of calm. “A marriage clause. By signing this document, you’re now officially my wife.”
The words don’t make sense. They’re just sounds strung together in an order that my brain refuses to process.
Wife.
His wife.
I signed a contract. An employment contract. Standard procedure, he said. Restructuring paperwork. Nothing out of the ordinary.
And now I’m married to him.
My stomach drops straight through the floor. I grab the armrests of my chair so hard my knuckles go white, and I can’t seem to draw a full breath. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.
I think about Wallace and Tillman upstairs, waiting for me to report back with information. About the documents burned into my memory that I still don’t understand. About the life I had three weeks ago, before mergers and layoffs and mysterious folders on shared drives.
Before him.
I look at Menlow—really look at him—and try to reconcile the man in front of me with the stranger who bought me drinks at that bar. The one who made me laugh. The one who made me forget, just for one night, that my life was falling apart.
He doesn’t look like that man anymore. He looks like something else entirely. Something dangerous.
And apparently, he’s my husband.
The room tilts. Or maybe I do. Either way, nothing feels solid anymore. The walls seem to close in around me. My pulse pounds in my ears, drowning out everything except the echo of those two impossible words.
My wife.
I open my mouth to speak, to scream, to demand an explanation—but no sound comes out. My throat has sealed itself shut.
All I can do is stare at him while my entire world crashes down around me.