Page 104 of Twisted Shot
MILA
Mila’s office seems colder than it did a week ago.
Not literally, although the late winter chill still claws at the windows. But everything else feels off. Like someone crept in during her absence and scrubbed away every trace of warmth and familiarity with bleach, leaving behind nothing but the shell of what used to be hers.
Mila stares at her computer screen, watching the cursor blink in rhythm with her anxiety. She’s opened and closed the same email three times. Her inbox is full. Her hands won’t stop fidgeting.
God, she misses him.
His hands fisting her hair. His rough voice in her ear.
Instead, she’s stuck in this sterile office, drowning in dread and pretending nothing’s wrong.
Her phone buzzes against the desk.
Richard
Come to my office.
Mila glares at the screen. The way he summons her, like she’s a dog trained to heel. She should ignore it, block the number, hurl the phone into traffic. But she can’t—not with the threat of him telling Jaryd hanging over her head like a guillotine.
So she gets up. Straightens her blazer. Reapplies her lip gloss with shaking hands.
The hallway feels like it’s grown an extra mile overnight. Her heels click against the tile with each step, her pulse thudding in her ears. Every nerve in her body is begging her not to give him this. But what’s the alternative? She’s trapped, and she knows it.
She knocks once.
“Come in,” Richard calls out cheerfully. As if he hadn’t turned her insides to ash less than twenty-four hours ago.
Mila steps inside, every muscle tight with resistance. She doesn’t sit. Can’t. Her body won’t let her.
He glances up, gestures lazily at the chair across from him. “Suit yourself.”
His desk is immaculate. Not a file out of place and several shiny industry awards strategically positioned so anyone who walks in is reminded who owns the air in this room. A man so in love with his own reflection, she half expects to catch him whispering to the glass.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “And I’ve decided I’m willing to keep what I saw...between us.”
Her stomach turns sharp and sour, like she’s swallowed something rotten. The floor might as well tilt beneath her.
“How generous,” she manages, her voice taut with restraint.
“Richard can be merciful,” he says.
Mila swallows a full-body gag,
“In exchange,” he goes on, tone smooth and self-important, as if this were a polite negotiation over coffee instead of—let’s call it what it is—blackmail, “for a few minor concessions.”
Of course.
She crosses her arms, already bracing for the blow.
“The Whalers account,” he says. “You’ll hand it over. Effective immediately.”
Her jaw goes slack. “Are you serious?”
“And you’ll step back from any credit related to the gala. No interviews. No internal recognition. I’ll take the meetings with Jaryd. You’ll stay where you belong—behind the scenes.”
It takes every ounce of her self-control not to recoil. Her vision tunnels with rage, but beneath the anger is a rising tide of something uglier—helplessness, thick and choking. She has worked too hard, sacrificed too much, clawed her way through every sexist boardroom and passive-aggressive performance review to get here, onlyto watch it all dangle by a thread in this man’s smug, manicured hands.
