Chapter 11 Orla
ORLA
The walk back to the vehicles stretches approximately thirty meters but feels like thirty kilometers. Everyone watches, obviously watches, while simultaneously pretending not to watch.
My suit jacket, retrieved from the back room, bears wrinkles that tell stories I'd rather keep private. My hair, normally controlled in its sharp bob, has abandoned all pretense of professionalism. I can feel Thraka's marks on my skin, hidden beneath fabric but burning nonetheless.
"Ms. Peace." The CEO's voice is a drizzle, precise and cold as a scalpel. "Mr. Thraka. You'll ride with me."
Not a question.
Thraka's hand tightens on my waist, protective, possessive. I feel the rumble building in his chest before it reaches his throat.
"It's fine," I whisper, touching his arm. His muscle jumps beneath my fingers, coiled tension ready to spring. "Just a conversation."
"Conversations do not smell like threats," I tell him, keeping my voice low, controlled, aware of the dozen pairs of eyes tracking our every movement across the rain-slicked parking lot.
"How do you even know what corporate threats smell like?" Thraka counters, his accent thickening the way it always does when he's agitated, when the veneer of civilization he's been carefully constructing threatens to crack. His nostrils flare, actually flare, like he's scenting the air for danger.
"They smell like him." Thraka jerks his chin toward the CEO, who waits beside a black SUV with the patience of someone who knows compliance is inevitable. "Like paper and power and cold metal."
Accurate, actually. Disturbingly accurate.
The interior of the CEO's vehicle smells like leather and expensive cologne. Thraka barely fits in the backseat, his knees jammed against the driver's seat, his shoulders too broad for the space. He looks like a bear trapped in a taxi.
I sit beside him, spine straight, hands folded in my lap. Professional. Contained. Completely at odds with the fact that I can still feel him inside me, still taste him on my lips.
The CEO doesn't speak during the drive back to the main lodge. Doesn't need to. The silence does his work for him, building pressure, creating anxiety.
I've sat through enough board meetings to recognize the tactic, the calculated silence, the manufactured tension, the way powerful men wield quiet like a weapon.
Let the subordinates sweat. Let them imagine all the possible consequences.
Let anxiety do the heavy lifting so the actual punishment feels like relief.
My Fitbit buzzes against my wrist, the vibration sharp and accusatory.
Heart rate elevated. Again. Still. The little digital display shows numbers that would concern a medical professional: one hundred and twelve beats per minute while sitting motionless in luxury leather upholstery.
My resting heart rate used to be a perfectly optimized sixty-two.
Now my body treats baseline existence like cardiovascular exercise.
Thraka takes my hand, threading his massive fingers through mine, the gesture startlingly gentle from someone who broke a conference table on his first day.
The CEO's eyes flick to our joined hands in the rearview mirror, the glance so brief and clinical it could almost be mistaken for checking blind spots.
Almost. But I know better. I've spent years in boardrooms learning to read the micro-expressions powerful men think they've mastered, the tiny tells that betray calculation beneath carefully cultivated neutrality.
His expression reveals absolutely nothing, no surprise, no disapproval, no judgment.
Just the blank, professional mask of someone collecting data points, filing information away for future leverage.
That emptiness is somehow worse than outright anger would be.
Anger I could quantify, calculate, prepare for.
This careful neutrality is a loaded gun with the safety off, and I have no idea when he plans to pull the trigger.
Monday morning arrives with the inevitability of taxes and terrible news.
My alarm screams at six. I silence it, shower, dress in my sharpest suit, armor made of wool blend and spite.
The hickey on my neck, vivid purple-red, unmistakably Thraka-shaped, requires three painstaking layers of concealer, blended with a master forger doctoring incriminating evidence.
I layer on the foundation like I'm building a defensive fortification, each application smoothed and set with powder until the mark disappears beneath professionally neutral beige.
My reflection in the bathroom mirror looks composed, controlled, completely professional. Perfect winged eyeliner. Hair styled into submission. Expression carefully neutral, the mask I've perfected over years of performance reviews and hostile takeovers.
My reflection is an absolute, shameless liar.
Coffee tastes like ashes and regret. My espresso machine, normally my most reliable relationship, more consistent than any boyfriend, more dependable than quarterly earnings, produces something bitter and wrong this morning.
The crema looks off, the temperature feels incorrect, and the first sip hits my tongue with all the appeal of battery acid mixed with disappointment.
I dump it down the sink and try again. Same result.
Even my technology has turned against me. The universe itself is signaling its disapproval, one failed extraction at a time.
The office building looms, glass and steel and corporate neutrality. I badge in at seven forty-five, exactly on schedule, routine providing structure when everything else feels chaotic.
Thraka waits by my desk.
He wears a suit, the fabric straining across his shoulders, the sleeves too short, but he's attempted a tie. It sits crooked, the knot lumpy, like he wrestled it into submission and lost.
"Good morning, Little Manager."
My stomach flips. Stupid stomach. Stupid body, responding to his voice like Pavlov's dog to a bell.
"Good morning." I set down my bag, boot my computer, go through the motions. "You're in early."
"Could not sleep. Missed your warmth."
"Thraka." I glance around. Empty cubicles, but walls have ears in corporate environments. "We're at work."
"I am aware. Your scent is different here. More stressed. Less satisfied." He says this at normal volume, as though commenting on the weather or the quality of the break room coffee.
Heat floods my face, creeping up from my collar, burning across my cheeks. I can feel the precise temperature differential between my normal skin tone and this mortifying blush. "Please stop talking about my scent in the office."
"Why? It has a good scent. Even if I'm stressed, still good.
" He sounds genuinely confused by my objection, head tilted like a large, predatory golden retriever trying to understand why the ball shouldn't be thrown inside.
"You smell of coffee and anger and that soap you use. And me, a little bit. From last night."
"Thraka." My voice comes out strangled.
"What? Is true."
My computer loads with agonizing slowness, the progress bar creeping across the screen like it's deliberately torturing me. Each second stretches. Password. Email. Calendar. The applications open one after another, each revealing layers of corporate communication and scheduled obligations.
There it is, glowing with the ominous red of a mandatory meeting, the color choice itself a warning: 9:00 AM - CEO Office - O. Peace, Thraka - RE: Incident Report.
My heart drops somewhere into my stomach, possibly lower, possibly into my sensible low-heeled pumps.
The world narrows to that single calendar entry. Incident Report. Two words that could mean anything, but in context mean exactly one thing.
"We have a meeting with the CEO." The words come out flat, professional, completely at odds with the panic building behind my sternum.
Thraka leans over to read the screen, his chest pressing against my shoulder, solid and warm and completely inappropriate for the workplace. "Good. I will explain to the Chieftain that you are mine now. The claiming is complete. He must respect this."
"That's not remotely how corporate hierarchies or professional relationships function in this environment."
"Then explain to me how they function."
I pause, considering the question with the weight it deserves, then answer with complete honesty.
"Poorly. Inefficiently. Through layers of bureaucratic nonsense and liability mitigation.
" I close my eyes, pressing my fingertips against my temples where a headache is already forming, mentally cataloging every worst-case scenario and preparing contingency plans for the impending disaster.
"And they absolutely, categorically, under no circumstances involve territorial claiming rituals or declarations of ownership to senior leadership. "
The CEO's office occupies the top floor, naturally. Corner office, floor-to-ceiling windows, view of the city spreading below like a kingdom. The desk costs more than my car. The art on the walls costs more than my condo.
Power, displayed with architectural precision.
The CEO, Richard, fifteen years my senior, Harvard MBA, three divorces, zero sense of humor, sits behind that massive mahogany desk like a king upon his throne.
His fingers are steepled in that particular way senior executives learn at some secret seminar on intimidation tactics.
His expression remains carefully, deliberately neutral.
Boardroom face. The one that reveals nothing, concedes nothing, promises nothing.
"Ms. Peace. Mr. Thraka." His voice is smooth, modulated, the vocal equivalent of expensive scotch. "Please, sit."