Chapter 7
Artyom
The afternoon meeting ended fast.
That stupid woman finished up and walked out with her head down.
I leaned back in my chair, rolling that pale-pink badge between my fingers. The plastic edge had been worn rough, the lanyard faded in one spot like it had been scrubbed a hundred times.
In the photo, she smiled at the camera. Neat. Proper. The kind of polite smile nobody could fault.
But her ice-blue eyes looked dead.
I had seen that smile too many times—at negotiation tables, in boardrooms, in places that were already rotting but still demanded good manners.
She had stitched that mask on so tight nobody could see the skin underneath had bled raw.
My thumb scraped over her face in the photo, like I could wipe the smile right off.
A knock. Maya came in, arms loaded with a thick stack of files—everything I'd told her to pull on Willow half an hour ago.
"It's all here, Mr. Sokolov." She set it on my desk. "Four years with the company. Marketing specialist. No promotions."
Four years.
No move up.
I flipped to the second page—project history.
Last year's commercial complex campaign.
I'd heard the presentation. Her logic cut like a scalpel, slicing through the noise straight to the point.
The analysis underneath was painstaking, like she'd combed every inch with a magnifying glass.
Someone that sharp didn't get buried for four years by accident.
"Her Q3 rating last year was an A," Maya said, still standing there. "But she wasn't on the year-end awards list."
"Why?"
"Word is she turned down her manager's... private 'terms of cooperation.' After that, she got shut out of the core team on three straight projects."
I turned to her evaluations.
Four years of A's. Same ink, same clean marks. No hesitation.
Her HQ secondment record ran three full pages, starting her second year. Every assignment lasted more than two months. Comments read: "Exceeded expectations," "Can lead projects independently."
She'd been core staff on three projects. Every one blew past KPI. Two of them won group annual excellence awards.
That kind of résumé, and she was still a specialist after four years.
I tapped the row of "A" ratings with my fingertip.
Maya pushed her glasses up. "Director Tom Carson recommended 'delayed promotion' two years in a row. His reasons were 'needs more seasoning' and 'position is indispensable.'"
Indispensable?
That was the first time I'd heard a marketing department couldn't spare a specialist. She produced, she took the abuse, she didn't make noise—so she got to stay nailed to the floor.
Because when someone was useful, why the hell would anyone let them go?
I opened her report from that commercial complex campaign.
First line on the cover: Tom Carson. Big, black type. On the second page, the contributor list had her name shoved into a corner, one font size smaller, tucked under "technical support" and "data processing"—you'd miss it if you didn't look hard.
Nice.
I looked at Maya. "Pull every project Tom Carson touched in the last three years. Focus on authorship changes and bonus allocation."
Maya blinked. "All of them?"
"All of them."
It was a massive job. But if a company couldn't make sure people's work got seen—got treated fairly—then the 'system' was just a fig leaf.
Maya went quiet for a few seconds, then nodded. "Understood. I'll bring in audit."
She turned to leave. I stopped her. "Wait—also check if Tom's been getting unusually close to HQ HR or any execs lately."
"Got it."
After she left, my office fell silent.
Outside the window, the sky dimmed. City lights flickered on in patches, reflected on the glass like shifting gold leaf.
I looked down and picked up the badge again. The plastic had warmed from my hand.
Had I been too harsh with her?
Maybe she hadn't been spineless. Maybe she'd fought and lost too many times, and she'd stopped betting on herself.
I kept reading. At the very bottom of her personal info, there was an additional disclosure line.
Night job—bartender. Two years. Address: The Ember.
Ember.
I remembered that place. I'd invested in it.
Last year, when Maya brought me the proposal, the deck said "High-end nightclub renovation plan." I'd barely glanced at the location—good neighborhood, steady traffic—and signed off.
A bartender?
I stared at the line for two seconds.
Would a bartender really get that drunk that easily?
Last night flashed through my head—her stumbling into my suite, unsteady, cheeks flushed, eyes wet like glass marbles soaked in water.
She'd clung to my shoulder, pressed herself into me, fingers clumsy as she worked at my shirt buttons, saying bold, filthy things nobody should say to a stranger.
But this morning in the conference room, she'd curled into her chair like a scared rabbit, too terrified to even meet my eyes.
Two completely different people.
I closed the file and leaned back, eyes on the ceiling. It looked like a mistake, not a setup.
But...
I'd seen this game a thousand times—women trying to climb into bed pulled every trick in the book.
I'd watched someone fake a faint in an elevator.
Someone "accidentally" spill red wine down my shirt and use it to ask for my number.
Someone even paid a crew to stage a whole hero-rescues-damsel routine.
I picked up her file again. In the photo she wore that proper smile. If all of this had been an act, she'd sold it well—the timid, bumbling thing, the way she took insults without biting back. It all looked real.
I grabbed my coat off the chair and headed out.
I didn't want to judge off a gut feeling. Whether she was acting or she was the real thing, I needed to see it myself.
?????
Ten p.m.
The Ember's neon sign burned bright enough to hurt.
I pushed inside. The music hit like a fist, loud enough to lift the roof. Bodies ground together on the dance floor. The air reeked of booze, perfume, and smoke, sharp enough to make you squint.
I took a seat and ordered a bottle of whiskey.
When the bartender slid a glass over, I glanced toward the bar.
She was there.
Simple black work uniform. Deep copper-red curls twisted into a messy bun, showing round earlobes and a soft jawline.
A shaker spun fast in her hands. Ice cracked inside, swallowed by the music.
She flipped her wrist and poured a golden-brown stream into a glass rimmed with salt, a thin lemon slice hooked on the edge.
Smooth. Skilled. Almost careless, like she belonged there.
She pushed the drink to the customer and smiled.
That smile wasn't the badge smile. This one was alive—like she sank into work she actually liked, eyes bright like they held scattered stars.
I leaned back, sipped my whiskey, and watched her handle a handful of customers.
"New girl? I ain't seen you before." Some guy slumped over the bar, looking her up and down. "You're pretty damn fat. Bet you've been sneaking drinks all night, huh?"
My fingers tightened around the glass. Cold bite pressed into my palm.
Men always ran their mouths about women's bodies like it made them matter, like dragging someone down would lift them up.
Trash.
She lowered her eyes, smiled lightly, didn't answer.
She picked up a bar towel and started polishing a glass that was already clean.
The guy puckered his lips, bored, and stumbled off with his drink.
She didn't look up. The towel kept circling that same glass.
I watched her for ten minutes. Someone ordered, she mixed. Someone teased, she smiled. Like a puppet with no temper, dumb as hell.
A place like this ate people alive. With her personality, she shouldn't have lasted a week.
I set my glass down, about to signal her over, when a familiar figure swayed up to the bar.
Jacket open. Tie crooked. Face flushed red with booze.
Tom Carson.
He braced himself on the bar, eyes sticking to her like warm syrup.
"Willow," he said, voice slick and nasty. "Well, look at you. You play so damn proper at the office, and here you are, working a place like this behind everyone's back?"