Page 1 of Twisted Shot
CHAPTER 1
MILA
Sleeping with a coworker in secret is a lot like skydiving. A reckless thrill people romanticize, right up until they’re strapped into a parachute, staring into the abyss, and wondering for the umpteenth time if this leap of faith is worth it.
Sure, itcouldwork out. Maybe it’s a slow, heady climb of breathless anticipation, tension winding tighter with every stolen glance and flirty text.
Or the chute might not open, and someone could plummet face-first into a field of jagged rocks and shattered dignity.
And Mila Anderson is plummeting.
She sits bolt upright on the edge of an aggressively modern sofa, blinking at Richard’s laptop in disbelief.
She’d previously been nursing a cup of chamomile tea, dutifully reviewing his Q3 projections and marketing strategy deck like the supportive, almost girlfriend she thought she was.
Or at least, like the almost girlfriend who did not just stumble upon a nearly naked selfie from another woman to her man.
Now she’s freefalling through a cloudy haze of dismay. Her short, fledgling relationship with Richard flashes before her eyes: every time he turned off notifications when she walked into theroom, every late-night “client call” he took from the balcony, every moment he placed his phone face down on a restaurant table with that oily little smile.
She did not mean to snoop, really. But his Messages app, wide open on his laptop, wouldn’t shut up, pinging like a desperate little bird slamming against the condo’s spectacularly oversized window. She’s only human. A woman can only take so many dings before she gives in to curiosity, or, as she now knows, straight-up masochism.
ASHLEY
Is she gone?
???
I can’t wait to see you, babe.
Then, as if that wasn’t enough to kick Mila’s heart straight into her throat, comes the kicker, a topless selfie. Buxom brunette. Pouty lips. Strategic arm placement for maximum cleavage and minimum doubt they’re fucking.
Mila blinks once. Twice.
But no—there she is, clear as day. Ashley Gibbons, the chirpy little social media strategist Richard insisted they bring onto the team because “she’s just so innovative.”
“Classy,” Mila mutters under her breath, clicking the trackpad to minimize the window before it can traumatize her further.
Ashley, with her fake-nice smiles and high-pitched giggles and that habit of leaning a little too close when Richard is talking.
Mila takes a long sip of chamomile tea like it might calm the rage simmering in her bloodstream.
Spoiler: it does not.
She stares out the window of Richard’s downtown Toronto loft and laughs. It comes out sharp, like a cork popping off a shaken bottle. The view is perfect. The furniture is curated within an inch of its life. Even his plants look more successful than most people she knows. She spies a fiddle-leaf fig that is absolutely preening in a tall white pot, its broad leaves polished, upright, and stretching toward the glass.
The soundof water trickles from the bathroom, a soothing reminder that Richard has absolutely no idea his carefully constructed house of cards is crumbling in real time.
Mila leans back on the uncomfortable sofa and crosses her arms.
She’s not heartbroken. Not gutted. Not crumpled on the bathroom floor in some tragic cinematic heap.
No. She is incandescently, spectacularly pissed.
Pissed that she broke her own rule and dated someone from work. Pissed that she let herself be swayed by his calm, buttoned-up logic, that she let him convince her being with him wasn’t just a good idea, but agrown-upone. Sensible.
And most of all, she’s pissed that after years of keeping her guard locked up so tight it squeaked, the one time she let someone past it, he managed to prove her right in the most cliché, humiliating way possible.
She crosses her legs, one bare foot bouncing in the air as she eyes the open PowerPoint deck on his screen. It’s the type of presentation she imagines herself delivering one day when she finally earns that promotion at Hollis Group, standing at the head of the boardroom table beneath the steady gaze of Jaryd Hollis and the entire C-suite, her own team at her back.
