All Chapters of Off Limits: Playing With Fire (Short Stories Collection): Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I used to think humiliation had a sound. Like glass breaking, or a car crash. Something loud and violent you could point to. I was wrong. Humiliation sounds like polite laughter. The kind that ripples through a rooftop party at 11:47 PM, when three hundred of Manhattan’s most connected people decide you’re the punchline. “Come on, Alina. Don’t act shocked.” Ethan’s voice carries because of course it does. He’s holding a mic. He’s always holding a mic. The DJ cut the music for his “birthday toast” ten minutes ago and I should have left then. Sienna told me to. But I stayed, because a pathetic part of me thought he was going to apologize for the fight last week. For the tabloid photo of him and that influencer in Miami. For all of it. Instead, he grins at me from the little stage they set up by the infinity pool. He’s in Tom Ford, his hair is perfect, and his father’s watch — the Patek Philippe Dominic wore when he closed his first billion — glints on his wrist. Ethan only wear

I make a study of Dominic the way other people study stock markets. Obsessively, clinically, with color-coded notes and a growing sense that I’m in over my head. He drinks black coffee at 3:00 PM exactly. Not 3:01. Not 2:59. Marcus brings it without being asked, sets it on the corner of Dominic’s desk, leaves without a word. Dominic won’t touch it for twelve minutes. He lets it sit, like he’s testing it. Or himself. He doesn’t have personal photos. Not in his office, not as his phone wallpaper when it lights up on the table. The only hint that he existed before Cole Enterprises is a single framed blueprint on the wall — his first warehouse, dated 23 years ago. No wife. No Ethan. No evidence he’s human. He works through birthdays. I know because his was last Tuesday. No cake, no email chain. Marcus ordered lunch for the floor, but Dominic ate at his desk, reading Q3 projections like they were a novel he couldn’t put down. Ethan showed up that day. Uninvited. With a bottle of

The power dies at 8:17 PM. Not flickers. Not a brownout. Dies. One second I’m arguing with Chicago’s CMO over Slack about font weights — because apparently billion-dollar deals hinge on whether “Meridian” is bold or semibold — and the next, the entire 47th floor goes black. The emergency lights kick in half a second later, bathing everything in that sickly, apocalypse-green glow. My monitor goes dark. The city outside the windows doesn’t. Manhattan keeps glittering like nothing happened, which feels personal. “Goddammit,” I mutter. My laptop battery is at 6%. My phone is at 9%. I’ve been here since 7 AM because the “We’ll keep the lights on” update launches at midnight and I don’t trust anyone else not to break it. “Generator should be online,” Marcus’s voice says from the hallway. He sounds pissed. Marcus always sounds pissed, but now it’s pissed with a purpose. “Stay at your desks. IT’s checking the—” The emergency lights die too. Now it’s just me, the city, and the sou

Dominic doesn’t ask me to go to Venice. He tells me. “Wheels up at 6 AM,” Marcus says, dropping a folder on my desk Tuesday morning. “Venice. D’Angelo account. You’re on the pitch team.” I look up. Dominic’s office door is closed. It’s been closed since the gala. Since Are you in this with me? Since I didn’t answer. “Why me?” I ask. Marcus gives me a look. Really? “Because you speak Italian.” I don’t. I took two semesters in college and can order wine and swear. “Because you closed Chicago,” Marcus corrects himself. “And because Mr. Cole said so.” Mr. Cole. We’re back to that. I pack a bag. I don’t pack expectations. --- Venice. 9:43 AM local time. It’s stupid beautiful. The kind of beautiful that feels like a personal attack when your life is a mess. Canals, stone bridges, light bouncing off water like the whole city is made of glass. The D’Angelo meeting is brutal. Three hours of old men in linen suits talking about “legacy” and “disruption” while I translate

I don’t chase him. That’s the first choice I make that isn’t about Ethan. I wake up on Sienna’s couch with Dominic’s coat clutched to my chest and the internet still calling me a homewrecker. For a second, I think about texting him. Thank you for the coat. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean Venice. I don’t. Because “I’m sorry” doesn’t un-trend a hashtag. And “I didn’t mean it” doesn’t rebuild a board’s trust. So I do the only thing I have left. I start over. --- Week One. I delete social media. All of it. I*******m, T*****r, LinkedIn — gone. Sienna films me doing it, like it’s an exorcism. “Good,” she says. “Now burn your phone.” “Can’t. I need it for job applications.” Job applications. Plural. Fifty-seven by Friday. No one calls back. G****e my name and the first result is still INTERN HONEYPOT. The second is Ethan’s livestream, clipped and captioned and turned into a meme. The third is a think piece: The Ethics of Age-Gap Power Dynamics in Post-MeToo Corporations. I