CHAPTER 7

Jessica shoves the office door open so hard it cracks against the wall like a gunshot.

Bill Muntz flinches behind his oversized mahogany desk, his stubby fingers freezing mid-bite around a jelly donut. Powdered sugar dusts the lapels of his too-tight blazer, and his piggy little eyes blink up at her like she's lost her damn mind.

Oh she has.

“What the flying fuck is this, Bill?” Jessica slaps her payslip down on his desk hard enough to scatter a stack of invoices. 

"Well, good morning to you too, Jessica."

"Don't good morning me, Bill. You wanna explain this to me?"

Bill sets the donut down slowly. Dabs his mouth with a napkin like he's got all the time in the world. As he leans back in his leather chair, the thing groans under his weight like it's begging for mercy then he folds his hands over the mound of his belly.

“I assume you’re referring to the payroll adjustment?"

"Adjustment? You cut my net pay by thirty percent!" Jessica’s chest heaved under her silk blouse. "Why? Where's my money?"

He sighs that patronizing exhale he does when he wants a woman to feel small. "Sit down."

"I'll stand."

"Suit yourself." He opens a manila folder open on his desk and pretends to read it, though Jessica knows good and well that folder's been sitting there waiting for this exact conversation. 

"You've been late four times this month. You left early last Wednesday without authorization. You misfiled the Davenport account which, by the way, cost us a client. And your attitude with the front desk staff has been..." He searches for the word. "...less than professional."

Jessica laughs the kind of laugh that tastes like battery acid on the way up.

She leaned over the desk, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders, grey eyes burning. "Don't give me that corporate horseshit. That's crap, and we both know exactly what this is about, you pig."

His eyes lift from the folder. Something oily shifts behind them. "Excuse me?”

She steps closer to the desk, pulse hammering so hard she can feel it in her temples, but she doesn't let him see that. She learned a long time ago that men like Bill feed on fear like ticks feed on blood.

"This isn't about me being late. This isn't about some misfiled account. This is because I won't let you fuck me the way you fucked Dana."

Dana Reeves. Twenty-four years old. Blonde. Sweet as peach cobbler and twice as soft. She'd been Bill's “sex-cretary.” 

For eleven months, she'd had the kind of perks that made the rest of the office whisper behind their coffee cups. 

Extended lunch breaks nobody questioned. Bonuses that appeared on her checks like magic. Dana floated through that office like she was wrapped in Teflon, and everybody knew why. Because three, sometimes four nights a week, Bill's office door would be locked from five-fifteen to six o'clock, and nobody was stupid enough to knock.

To think, Dana was a loud, proud slut who didn’t mind bragging to her colleagues about how Bill would pin her against the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the London streets, his sweaty hands bruising her thighs while he drilled her from behind. She’d laugh about the way he liked to pull her hair until her eyes watered, calling her his "filthy little payroll expense" while he pumped his load into her.

It wasn't news he liked to face-fuck her until she gagged, or how he’d have her bent over the conference table while he ignored calls from his wife. It was a daily soap opera for the rest of the staff. 

The soundproofing in the old building was a joke. The nerd staff in the IT department made it their daily ritual to linger near the vents and record the moans.

Afterwards, they’d sit at their desks, headsets on, listening to the thwack-thwack-thwack of Bill’s belly hitting her ass and Dana’s high-pitched wails of "Yes, Daddy, drill it!" 

More than one technician had been caught scurrying to the men’s room to jerk off, to the live audio of their boss grunt-fucking the blonde in 4B.

It was high-quality, live-action p**n for the price of a nine-to-five.

One legendary Tuesday, Bill had left from his office for an impromptu board meeting with a massive, crusty streak of his own cum dried white against the crotch of his navy pants. 

He’d finished so hard he’d forgotten to wipe, and the staff watched in silent, horrified awe as he walked toward the elevator with his own shame plastered to his thigh.

But Bill owned the firm, and the firm paid the bills so what was a little office sexcapade between a stout pig and a social climber?

In a city as expensive as London, you learned to mind your own business. 

If the boss wanted to turn the executive suite into a 21st-century brothel, the staff just looked at their monitors and waited for their direct deposits to hit.

Then Dana's fiance found the texts.

He showed up at the office one morning, veins popping out of his neck, screaming loud enough to rattle the blinds. Security had to drag him out. Dana quit that day. Packed her desk into a cardboard box with mascara streaking down both cheeks and never looked back.

That left the secretary position wide open.

Jessica had been a junior analyst that was smart, sharp, and far too good for this mid-tier London firm, so when Bill offered her the promotion, she took it, thinking she could handle a creep like Bill.

What she didn't take was the rest of the offer.

Because even when she was just some blonde employee, she'd catch him staring when she walked past the break room, that slow, wet gaze that practically tore off her blouse but she didn't give a shit.

Jessica is beautiful, and she knows it. High cheekbones. The kind of figure that makes men in grocery stores walk into shelving displays. But she never gave Bill so much as a second glance, and that ate at him like rot in a floorboard.

She’d done her job, ignored his heavy breathing, and spent her nights exploring the dark, sweaty corners of London’s club scene on her own terms. But now, the thumb was squeezing. He’d cut her pay to starve her into submission.

So now he's hitting her where it hurts. 

Bill's jaw tightens. For a moment, the mask slips, and she sees him for exactly what he is — a sweating, cornered little man drunk on the only power he's ever held.

"Well," he says quietly. "Big deal. You want to play the morality card? Be my guest but here's how this works, sweetheart. You show up on time, you keep your head down, you be a good little diligent worker bee and you get your full paycheck." He pauses. Lets his eyes drop to her chest as if hoping for some cleavage. "Or... you give me some pussy and enjoy the perks. Same deal Dana had. Wasn't so bad for her, was it? At least not till that boyfriend of hers got nosy."

The air in the room turns to concrete.

Jessica's hands ball into fists at her sides. "I could sue your fat ass into the ground for every word you just said. Sexual harassment, wage theft…take your pick.”

He smiles.  "You could, but let's be honest, Jess. You're gonna pay for a lawyer on that salary? You gonna drag this through court for probably months? You sure you want to do that?”

The worst part is that he's right.

She doesn't have the money. She doesn't have the strength for the drama, or the retaliation that would follow her to every job she ever applied to in this city.

He's calling her bluff, and they both know the hand is empty.

Jessica nods slowly as something cold and calm settles over her like snowfall.

"You know what, Bill?" She exhales. "I quit."

His eyebrows jump. He wasn't expecting that.

"But before I go." Jessica turns around. Walks to the office door. Her heels click against the tile with a rhythm that sounds almost like a countdown.

She reaches the door.

Turns the lock.

Bill's smile fades. "What are you doing?"

She turns back to him, a predatory glint in her blue eyes. She starts unbuttoning her blouse, one slow, deliberate button at a time. 

Bill’s mouth hangs open, a string of saliva glistening on his lower lip. 

"Before I go," she steps toward him as the silk fabric slides off her shoulders, and lands on the chair. "I have something to show you.”

His big eyes stay  glued to the lace of her bra.

She is going to leave him with an image that will haunt his pathetic dreams, and then she is going to walk out into the London sun and find someone who actually knows how to handle a woman like her.