Page 33 of Sexting the Boss
She walks away with a stiff smile and a straight spine, and her heels click with unnecessary force.
I look at Victoria. “You don’t have clearance for this floor anymore.”
She’s unfazed as she looks around the hallway like it’s nostalgic. “Old habits. And old connections. Your front desk still recognizes my name.”
“I’ll fix that,” I say.
She steps closer. “Can’t we at least pretend we ended things like adults?”
“We didn’t.”
Her smile tightens. “I’m here for business, not personal history.”
History is the part she always pretends went differently. She used our relationship like it was a security badge, and she used my best friend because he had the access she needed. Dan was the systems architect who built our internal reporting tools, which meant he could manipulate numbers in places most people didn’t even know existed.
Victoria fed him early deal memos, internal forecasts, vendor rotations, anything she could pull from my schedule or my desk when I wasn’t looking. He used that information to shift dates, hide losses, and falsify valuation entries in two overseas subsidiaries.
They created the illusion of stability long enough for her to buy in heavy, ride the fake uptick, and sell before the real numbers hit.
It wasn’t a small hit either. If that fraud had landed at the wrong time, the board would have forced a restructuring, and the company would have bled out for a year. I put a stop to it because I noticed inconsistencies in the Moscow quarterly packet and followed the thread myself.
I locked both of them out of the system, reran the books from scratch over a weekend, and disclosed the issue to the auditors before it could become a scandal. She walked away clean by claiming ignorance. He didn’t.
She still walks around like none of that ever happened.
I keep my face neutral. “You don’t have business with me.”
“That’s true,” she agrees with a nod. “But you might once you hear what I came to offer.”
I open my office door and step inside. “You have five minutes.”
She follows. I don’t invite her to sit, but she sits anyway. Same arrogance as always.
“You’re expanding into the Lane markets,” she says. “And you’ll hit regulatory walls unless someone smooths the path. I know those agencies better than anyone, and I can make those delays disappear.”
The audacity of this woman makes me almost chuckle. “I don’t need favors from you.”
“You need results,” she replies, folding her hands. “And you know I’m effective when I want to be.”
I stare at her until she shifts in her seat. It takes longer than it should, but she does.
“You burned your credibility years ago,” I say. “I’m not attaching my company to your name.”
She presses her lips together. “One mistake?—”
“It wasn’t one.”
A beat passes. She pushes her hair behind her ear and leans back in her chair, studying me.
“You’re different,” she says. “Something’s pulling your attention.”
I don’t answer. She watches me with too much interest. “I hope you’re not making the same mistake twice.”
“Leave,” I say.
Her eyes narrow again. “You should at least consider?—”
“Leave.”
