Chapter 22
Nika
When I opened the door and sniffed the air, it was clean.
Working from home had come to an end.
There were plenty of people on the floor but the atmosphere was strange. Heads down. Eyes on screens. The silence of people who had collectively experienced something humiliating and had silently agreed, without a single meeting or memo, never to speak of it again.
Really? They all witnessed one another shitting themselves. Now they have to face those very same people in the place where it all happened.
Was the cake you or me? I asked.
Let’s call it a joint task force, Bad Girl said mischievously.
My lips twitched when I thought of Carla curled up beside the pillar.
I spotted Francis at her desk and felt the knot in my shoulders ease slightly.
“Morning,” she said happily, only to get the side eye from Andy.
Carla and Graham didn’t look up.
I stood there for a moment and let that land.
I had never done anything to them. Not once. Years of coffee runs and covered gaps and swallowed sharp answers and carefully worded emails designed to cause the least amount of friction. Years of making myself smaller and easier and less of a problem.
It was the same in every team.
Why? Because these were the people who talked behind my back.
Not anymore.
That’s my girl.
Any lingering doubt and guilt about the cake dissolved. Just—gone. Cleanly and completely and without ceremony.
Fuck them.
Finley had gotten a taste of Bad Girl when he came through my door with a knife and bad intentions, and although it had been an experience I wouldn’t be cataloguing as enjoyable, I would do it again without hesitation. Because I wasn’t about to lie down.
Not for anyone.
Not anymore.
“Morning, Francis. Drink?”
“I’ll come with you,” she said, standing. “I’m loving the contact lenses, by the way. Permanent feature now?”
I nodded, setting my bag down on my desk.
“Good.” She fell into step beside me. “You have such pretty eyes. They shouldn’t be hidden away.”
That was when they all looked up.
Graham and Andy registered me with the mild interest of people clocking a change they couldn’t be bothered to name. But Carla’s jaw dropped. Her eyes did a slow, calculating sweep—hairline to hem—the way they always did when she was assessing something and deciding what to do about it.
“Get me a coffee,” she said.
“While you’re up, can I have—” Graham began.
“No,” I said.
Andy’s face did something pinched and complicated.
“When was the last time anyone got me a drink?”
Silence.
They looked at one another. A silent, circular consultation that reached no conclusion because there wasn’t one to reach. The answer was never and they all knew it.
Francis discreetly closed her fingers around my wrist and tugged.
I turned and followed her.
It was silly, really. They didn’t mean anything to me—hadn’t for a long time, if I was honest. They were furniture. Background noise. The ambient sound of a life I was already walking out of in increments.
But the tear still came. It still rolled down my cheek.
I wiped it away before we reached the kitchen and didn’t mention it. Neither did Francis, which was why I liked her.
??
??
??
The atmosphere turned frosty by mid-morning.
Sides had been taken. No announcement, no confrontation—just the slow, deliberate withdrawal of the people who had decided.
Francis found herself excluded from the conversation that passed between Andy and Carla’s desks.
She didn’t say anything about it. Neither did I.
We kept our heads down and our conversation between ourselves, which suited me fine.
Do you want me to bite them? Bad Girl asked.
No.
Just a little nibble.
I smiled at my screen.
It was around eleven when Claire appeared.
She moved through the floor with the purposeful walk of someone on an errand, and I assumed she was heading for Andy—but she turned before she reached him and came directly to our bank of desks instead.
She stopped beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Our wonder girl has been called upon,” she said.
I glanced at Francis, who mouthed what?
I gave a small shake of my head. I had no idea.
I was aware of the floor going quiet. Not the collective shame-silence of earlier—something more attentive than that.
Andy had looked up. Carla was staring with the sharp focus of a woman doing rapid calculations.
Graham looked vaguely lost, the way Graham often did, his eyes carrying that blank quality that made it impossible to tell whether the lights were on or simply pointed in the wrong direction.
He is dangerous, Bad Girl hissed, her attention snapping to something I couldn’t see. That filthy wolf. We need a permanent solution.
Not now, I told her.
“Could you go and see Mr Gallagher in his office?” Claire said.
The silence that followed had weight to it.
“Come now.” Claire’s laugh was bright and slightly too quick. “Let’s not keep our CEO waiting.”
The nerves in it put me on edge.
I noticed, when I stood, that her hand stayed on my shoulder until the last possible moment—releasing only once I was upright and moving. As if she’d expected me to bolt.
We don’t run, Bad Girl said, with the offended certainty of someone who had never bolted in her life. This is our territory.
I tapped my card over the sensor. The door clicked open.
Behind me, I could feel the eyes of the entire floor following me out.
God. Everyone was so temperamental this morning.