Page 28 of Claimed By the Boss
Then I get in the shower.
The water is hot. I stand under it until my shoulders drop from where they’ve been living near my ears since approximately eleven o’clock last night.
Then I wash my hair, and I think about the offshore clause on page fourteen, about the lawyer who told me clean and airtight, and I think about the wall I keep running into from every direction.
I don’t think about the kitchen again.
When I get out, I take my time. Moisturizer, the good kind Lena sent from Zurich in a small package with a note that saidyou work too hard and your skin is suffering. I pull on my clothes for the day. Black trousers, a cream blouse with a collar that sits high enough. I check the mirror.
The mark is covered.
I know it’s there. That’s enough.
I leave my hair down. I’ve been putting it up for the office since my first week, a habit left over from a lifetime of presenting myself as someone who has everything managed. This morning I leave it down because I want to. That’s the only reason. I’m not performing anything for anyone.
I pick up my bag, and I go to work.
Zane’s office door is closed when I arrive.
Roman is at the far end of the corridor with his phone and a coffee, and doesn’t look up when I sit down. Oliver, two floors below, has already sent the morning’s calendar to my inbox.
Three meetings, two calls, a document requiring Zane’s signature before noon. I open my laptop, and I start movingthrough the morning the way I move through every morning in this building, methodically, without looking up from what is directly in front of me.
At eight forty-three, his door opens. He comes out with a folder under his arm and stops at my desk to leave two documents for filing.
He’s in the gray suit today, the one that fits differently from the others, and he smells like that cologne that has been inside my lungs since the first day I met him. He sets the documents on my desk. His hand is on the edge of the desk for two seconds.
I don’t look up from my screen.
He goes back into his office. The door closes.
I straighten the documents on my desk. Put them in the filing tray. Pick up my coffee. Set it down. The morning continues.
I make the call on my lunch break, walking three blocks from the building in a direction I haven’t taken before, so the route is not predictable.
Her name is Joanna, a lawyer I knew through a friend in law school, sharp and careful and not connected to anything in Zane’s world. I have her number in my phone under a name that is not her name because I’ve been paying attention.
She picks up on the third ring.
I tell her what I need. She asks for the documents. I’ve already photographed every page of the employment package and uploaded it to an account I opened from a library computer twoweeks ago. I send her the link, and she tells me she will get back to me by the end of the week.
I walk back to the building. Stop at the coffee cart on the corner. Buy something I don’t need. Stand on the sidewalk for a moment, looking up at the building that has my name in an offshore clause on its forty-fourth floor.
Then I go back upstairs.
Joanna calls on Friday.
I take it in the bathroom off the penthouse kitchen, door closed, tap running for no reason except that it makes me feel less exposed.
“I’ve been through all of it,” she says. “Three times.” A pause that tells me before the words do. “Celine, this document is clean. Every clause has your signature. The offshore structure is structured to route any legal challenge back to your own consent. Whoever drafted this knew exactly what they were doing.”
“I know what they were doing,” I say.
“There’s no angle I can find. I’m sorry.”
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror. The mark on my neck has faded to yellow at the edges. A few more days, and it will be gone entirely.
“Thank you,” I say. “Send me your invoice.”
