All Chapters of SINFUL AWAKENING: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The first time Jade Mercer let a man bend her over a boardroom table, it was a Tuesday.Not the kind of Tuesday anything remarkable was supposed to happen. Grey sky, burnt coffee smell in the elevator, seventeen slides on her laptop and a presentation she had rehearsed until the words stopped meaning anything. She had worn her most boring dress deliberately, the navy wrap she chose when she wanted rooms to underestimate her, and she had walked into Crest Holdings at nine fifty-eight thinking about nothing except the Valen account and whether slide eleven was redundant.She had not walked in expecting Dominic Crest.He came in late, as powerful men always do, as if punctuality were a courtesy that applied only to people with less money. The meeting was already running when the door opened and every head turned with that involuntary, embarrassing obedience. Jade kept her eyes on the screen. She was mid sentence and she did not break.She felt him looking at her from the moment he sat do

She was at his office at nine the next morning.Not Jade. Someone else entirely.Jade arrived at Crest Holdings at eight fifty-five, coffee in hand, hair down, wearing a slate grey dress that was professional enough for the world and fitted enough to remind herself of who she had decided to become. She had slept in Dominic's bed and woken to the smell of coffee already made and a man who looked at her across his kitchen like she was something he had not expected to still want in the morning light but did anyway, thoroughly and without apology.She had left his building feeling like a woman walking on new ground.That feeling lasted precisely until she stepped off the elevator on the forty-second floor and saw the woman standing at Dominic's office door.Tall. Blonde in the specific way that required maintenance and money. Wearing a cream dress that probably cost more than Jade's first car and carrying herself with the particular ease of someone who had stood in this exact hallway many

Jade found out on a Wednesday.It was Dana who brought it to her, which told Jade everything she needed to know about Dana's instincts and why she had survived four directors on this floor when people with shinier resumes had not. She came into Jade's office at eight fifteen in the morning before the rest of the team had filtered in, closed the door quietly behind her, and sat down with the particular stillness of someone carrying information they have already turned over several times before deciding to speak."I need to show you something," Dana said.She placed a printed email chain on Jade's desk. Jade read it once quickly and then again slowly, the way she read anything that mattered. It was an internal thread from three weeks ago, before Jade had joined the company, discussing the preliminary Valen strategy. Preliminary, internal, and stamped at the bottom of the thread with a distribution list that contained exactly four names.None of those names were external.And yet the thr

Dana was already at her desk when Jade arrived at seven forty-five.The floor was empty. The overhead lights were still on their low morning setting, that particular pre-business hour dimness that made the open plan feel like a different room entirely. Dana had a coffee waiting on Jade's desk, which Jade noticed and appreciated without comment, and when Jade sat down Dana came in and closed the door and placed a single printed sheet face down on the desk between them.She did not turn it over immediately."Before you see this," Dana said, "I want you to know that I verified it three times. I did not want to bring you something I was not completely certain of.""I understand," Jade said."The first name is Ryan Cole. His access logs show six instances of files being opened outside business hours over the past three weeks. Small files. Nothing dramatically sensitive on its own but cumulatively a pattern. Three of those sessions ended with print jobs sent to the floor printer at times wh

SINFUL AWAKENINGChapter 9: The Financial PictureThe file arrived at six fifty-three on Friday morning.Jade was already at her kitchen table, hair unbound, wearing a shirt that belonged to Dominic because she had stayed again and her own clothes were folded on his bedroom chair, coffee cooling beside her laptop. She had been awake since five, running through the board meeting structure in her mind, mapping the angles, identifying the weaknesses in their position and the strengths they had not yet fully deployed.When the encrypted file landed in her inbox from the contact she had called three days ago she set down her coffee and opened it immediately.She read for forty-five minutes without stopping.By the time she reached the final page her coffee was cold and the shirt she was wearing felt insufficient armour for what she was now holding.She closed the laptop and sat for a moment in Dominic's quiet kitchen with the early morning light coming grey and thin through the windows and