Helped her set it up

I swung the door open.

I don't even remember turning the key. One second I was in the hallway and the next I was inside. The light from the bedroom was spilling out into the dark living room and I was just…..standing there.

Processing.

Because what I was seeing didn't make sense yet. My brain was still loading. Still trying to find a different explanation for what was right in front of me.

The bedroom door was open.

And Daniel wasn't alone.

Sienna was on all fours on the bed, her back arched deeply, dark hair falling loose down her spine and swaying with every forceful thrust. Daniel was behind her, gripping her hips tightly as he drove into her from behind, his cock sliding in and out of her wet pussy with wet, rhythmic slaps. Her full breasts swung heavily beneath her, nipples hard, and she was moaning loudly, pushing back against him to meet each deep stroke. The scent of sex, sweat, her arousal, and his musk, hung thick in the air. Daniel's face was tense with pleasure, one hand tangled in her hair as he pulled her head back slightly while pounding harder.

That laugh — the one I'd heard through the door — made a horrible kind of sense now. The most horrible kind.

"Sienna…..what?"

My own voice startled me. It came out flat.

They both turned.

And they didn't stop.

Daniel kept thrusting into her slowly now, not pulling out, just rolling his hips lazily while looking straight at me, his cock still buried deep inside Sienna's pussy. Sienna turned her head over her shoulder, still impaled on him, and something crossed her face. Not shock, not guilt, but something closer to satisfaction. Like she had been waiting for this part.

"Nora…" Daniel started, his voice dripping with sarcastic amusement as he gave Sienna another deliberate, shallow thrust that made her gasp.

"Get off her!" I don't know why that was the first thing I said. Stupid. Useless thing to say. "When… what are you two….??"

"You can close the door on your way out," he said casually, still buried inside her, one eyebrow raised in mock politeness like I was interrupting a casual chat.

I laughed. Actually laughed. A broken, airless sound that didn't feel like mine. "Are you serious right now? Are you actually —"

"What did you expect?" He said it so easily, still rocking slowly into Sienna as he spoke, his tone laced with biting sarcasm. "You've been holding out for what, a year? A year, Nora. What was I supposed to do." He gave a little sarcastic chuckle. "Poor me, right? Stuck with a girlfriend who treats sex like it's a chore she needs to schedule between her little independence tantrums."

The words hit me somewhere behind my ribs.

"Is that what gives you the guts to—" I couldn't even finish the sentence. Tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn't even think.

"I'm a man. You acted like every time I touched you it was something I needed to apologise for." He shrugged. Actually shrugged, still lazily fucking Sienna while talking to me. "You got what you deserved."

“Look at how pathetic she looks….” Sienna said, her voice breathless. “Probably came here to cry out the office’s drama.”

The room tilted slightly.

I gripped the door frame.

"How long." My voice came out quieter than I wanted. "How long have you two —"

"Does it matter?"

"How long, Daniel!"

Sienna finally moved. Unhurried. She reached for the sheet and pulled it loosely around herself, then looked at me the way you look at something mildly inconvenient. A delayed train. A small stain.

"Long enough," she said, smirking.

"How long is long enough —"

"Before you, Nora." She tilted her head, her eyes sharpening with hate. "Long before you."

The air went out of my chest.

Before me? Before me meant —

"The whole time." I heard myself say it. "The entire time we were together…."

"He needed something from you." She said it gently. That was the worst part. The gentleness of it. "You had something he needed."

I turned to Daniel, my eyes already watery. "What does that mean?"

He was already sitting up. Relaxed, like this was a normal conversation he was just getting through. "Your stepdad, Nora. Victor Vance. The man's got half the city in his pocket and he's been quietly making sure nobody important shuts doors on the people his family is connected to." He reached for his phone on the nightstand. Didn't even look at me. "Your name opened rooms I couldn't get into on my own. That's it. That's all it was."

The ringing in my ears got louder.

"I didn't…." I started. Stopped. My throat was closing. "I never asked him for anything. I never used his name, I never took his money, I worked for everything I have —"

"Doesn't matter what you did." Daniel finally looked up. "Matters what you are. And what you are is Victor Vance's stepdaughter. Whether you like it or not, that name follows you. I just knew how to use it better than you did."

Three years.

Three years I spent turning down every offer. Every time my mother said just let him help you, Nora, there's no shame in it. Every time I felt the weight of that name and pushed it off deliberately because I wanted, I needed, something that was actually mine. Something nobody could take credit for. Something real.

And it was never real.

Not one day of it.

"You're pathetic, you know that?" Daniel's voice again. "Walking around like you're so independent, so untouchable. You're not independent. You're just stubborn. There's a difference." He looked back at his phone. "You can go now."

I didn't move.

My legs weren't working properly.

"The drafts," I said. Somewhere in the wreckage my brain was still trying to function. "I… I have files on your laptop, from the Meridian project, I need —"

"I deleted them."

For a second, I stopped.

I stared at him. "You what??"

"Few days ago. I cleaned up the drive." He didn't look up. "Wasn't my problem to store your work."

"You deleted…." My voice broke. "Daniel that was — that was the only proof I had, they're saying I leaked the project files, they're saying I…." I stopped. Something cold moved through me. Slow. Settling into all the gaps. "You knew. You knew they were going to accuse me."

Silence.

"You helped her set this up!"

He didn't answer.

Which was an answer.

Sienna stood up. She moved across the room toward me and I should have stepped back but I didn't. I just stood there, completely emptied out, watching her come.

She stopped close. Too close. Near enough that I could smell her perfume — the same one she wore to work, the same one I'd probably passed in the corridor a hundred times without thinking anything of it.

She looked at me for a second without saying anything.

Then she leaned in.

Her voice was so quiet only I could hear it.

"I'm going to take everything from you." Soft. Almost sweet. "Your job. Your reputation. Every little thing you scratched and clawed for." A small pause. "And there is nothing you can do about it."

She pulled back.

Smiled at me like we were colleagues exchanging pleasantries.

"Close the door on your way out, Nora. You know where it is.”