“Welcome to the big office, Eve.”

I woke up on the rug in that penthouse with sunlight cutting across my bare legs and the taste of two strangers still in my mouth.

My body felt wrecked. Sore between my thighs, ass tender, jaw aching, dried come on my stomach and the insides of my legs. The place was silent. No note. No numbers. Just the city stretching out beyond the glass like nothing had happened. I found my clothes in a pile near the couch, pulled them on, with shaking hands, and got out of there before anyone could come back.

The next few weeks felt surreal.

I texted Richard the same night. He came over. We fucked like we were trying to erase the previous night(by fucking more), then again the morning after. It kept happening. Late evenings where I’d open the door already wet. Mornings where I’d wake up with his arm heavy across my waist and the ache of him still inside me. He started staying over more. Left a spare shirt in my closet. Asked about my rent, my hours, the dead-end job that barely covered anything. I stopped telling him to leave. The guilt never went away, but the need got louder than the guilt. We weren’t just crashing into each other anymore. Something was forming—regular, hungry, harder to walk away from every time he put his hands on me.

One night after he’d finished inside me and we were still catching our breath, skin sticky from hot sweat, he brought it up.

We were in my bed. Sheets kicked down. His fingers tracing idle lines on my hip. He spoke like he was discussing the weather.

“There’s a position open at the company. Administrative, but it pays better than what you’re doing now. Benefits. Room to move up if you want it.”

I turned my head on the pillow and looked at him.

“You want me working for you.”

“I want you not scraping by while I’m in a position to fix it.” His hand kept moving on my skin. “You’ll be on the executive floor. My floor. The boys are there most days. Adrian included. If that’s a problem, say so now.”

It was a problem. Everything about it was a problem. I said yes anyway. Partly for the money. Partly because the idea of only seeing him at night already felt like not enough.

Two days later I walked into the building.

Glass and steel. Quiet security. A key card Richard had waiting for me at the front desk. He met me in the lobby himself, hand briefly at the small of my back as he guided me to the private elevator. The ride up was silent. My pulse sat high in my throat.

The executive floor opened into open glass offices and a long corridor of dark wood doors. Richard walked me through, introducing me to a couple of assistants and one older director whose name I forgot immediately. Then he stopped in front of a cluster of offices near the end of the hall and raised his voice just enough.

“Boys. Got a minute.”

Adrian stepped out first.

The second he saw me his whole face tightened. Something angry and raw moved behind his eyes before he locked it down. He didn’t offer his hand. Just gave me a short, stiff and awkward nod.

“Eve.”

“Adrian.”

My voice came out thinner than I wanted.

Richard barely paused. He turned as two more men came out of the offices behind Adrian.

The first one was tall, dark-haired, quiet in the way that took up space without trying. The second had a broader build and an easier set to his shoulders. Both of them looked at me with completely unreadable faces—no surprise, no flicker.

Oh...my God..

My stomach dropped so hard I felt it in my knees.

These were the same men.

The same ones who had taken me up to that penthouse, spread me out on the rug, and used me until I couldn’t hold myself up. The same mouths, the same hands, same fuckin cocks that had been inside me while I was too drunk to ask for names.

And now they were standing in front of me in tailored suits, shaking my hand like we’d never seen each other naked, while Adrian watched from three feet away and Richard kept his hand lightly on my shoulder like everything was normal.

I couldn’t catch my breath properly. Heat crawled up my neck and into my face and my pulse was so loud in my ears I almost missed Richard’s next words.

Richard spoke like he was introducing strangers.

“Eve, this is Cole and Grant. Cole runs operations. Grant’s in acquisitions. Boys, Eve’s starting with us today. She’ll be in the office next to mine.”

I had to shake their hands.

Cole’s palm was dry and warm, grip firm and brief. His eyes stayed on mine the whole time—steady 'n heavy, giving nothing away. Grant’s handshake lasted half a second longer. There was the ghost of something that could have been a smile at the corner of his mouth, but it never fully formed. His gaze moved over my face once and then settled, polite and blank.

He gave my shoulder a small squeeze and spoke in that same calm, even voice.

“Welcome to the big office, Eve.”

I stood there between all three of them, the memory of that night slamming through me with nowhere to go, and realized the floor had just dropped out from under whatever was left of the life I thought I still had.