PERKS OF THE POSITION のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 11 - チャプター 20

VERONICA The silver key card felt colder than it should have as I unlocked the front door to the penthouse Christopher had given me.I moved to the bar and poured myself a bottle of scotch. The whole apartment was luxurious, the furniture was sleek, expensive, untouched. Marble countertops gleamed beneath the faint light filtering in from outside.It should have felt like victory instead, it felt empty and more like a trap I had blindly walked into.The silence settled over me the moment the door clicked shut. I was feeling quite down today but I couldn't point out why.I dropped my handbag onto the kitchen island and slipped off my heels, letting them fall wherever they landed. Their soft thud echoed through the apartment. I wandered from room to room without switching on a single light. The penthouse didn't feel like mine. It felt like I was borrowing someone else's life.I undressed in the dark and climbed into the enormous bed.The silk sheets were cool against my skin, soft eno

VERONICA The next morning, the fifteen percent had already been routed into an offshore account in the Cayman Islands under a shell company I'd named New life. At this point I needed to be smarter because no one else would save me if I lost everything. I sold my old apartment and car then moved the money also to the account as a precautionary backup for myself. I picked up my phone and called my lawyer “Carolina, the payment has been confirmed thank you.” I hung up immediately and exhaled.Collins hadn't wasted a second. Before the markets even opened, he'd buried the payment inside the firm's consultant fees, hiding it so well that only someone who knew exactly where to look would ever find it. I could almost picture him sitting behind his computer, hands trembling as he signed off on the transfer.He was terrified of me and somehow, he couldn't stop feeding that fear. I have somehow become a source of addiction to these men and I'd milk every opportunity I can get from them before

VERONICA The silent, late-night sound of the executive floor was my favorite time to watch the board.It was just past ten in the evening. I sat behind my sleek reception desk, the low glow of my laptop screen illuminating the sharp angles of my face. I was wearing a crisp, tailored white shirt, the top three buttons provocatively undone paired with a skin-tight black pencil skirt, sky-high red stilettos, and a fresh coat of blood-red lipstick. It was an aesthetic of pure, calculated control. Thanks to Carolina’s digital gift, I now possessed the financial routing codes to Collins’s embezzled millions and the classified maritime manifests of Christopher’s cartel laundering operation. I wasn’t just a secretary anymore; I was a ticking time bomb wrapped in silk and red lipstick, waiting for the perfect moment to detonate.Suddenly, the security grid on my secondary monitor flickered.I leaned forward, my eyes narrowing as I focused on the live feed from the private underground parking

VERONICA The leather of the executive chair creaked beneath my weight as I anchored myself onto Collins’s lap, my red stilettos locking him in place.He didn't move. He barely breathed. He just lay back against the cushions, his eyes wide and completely glazed over with a toxic cocktail of terror and pure, animalistic arousal. The streak of blood-red lipstick I’d smeared across his lower lip made him look entirely unmade—a pristine corporate god reduced to a trembling, broken captive in his own office."Twenty-five percent, Collins," I murmured, my voice a low, gravelly vibration against his mouth. "Say the number. Let me hear you commit to your survival.""Twenty-five percent," he choked out, his chest heaving under his rumpled white shirt as his large hands dug desperately into the flesh of my bare thighs. "Every deal. Every acquisition. I’ll clear the transfers myself, Veronica. I’ll bury it in the offshore consultancy accounts. Just... Please don't ruin everything I've worked al

VERONICA The tires of the BMW M4 screeched softly against the pristine concrete of the underground garage as I parked. I shut off the engine, the sudden silence of the car enveloping me like a heavy shroud. For a few seconds, I just sat there in the dim dashboard light, staring at the leather-wrapped steering wheel. My body was humming, a volatile cocktail of pure adrenaline and raw exhaustion vibrating straight through my bones. I had just doused a four-man tactical hit squad in industrial gasoline, extorted my Senior Vice President for a twenty-five percent partnership cut, and ridden him into the leather cushions of his own office chair until he signed over his life.I was winning. I was rewriting the entire architecture of the board, piece by piece.I stepped out of the car, my red stilettos clicking sharply against the concrete as I walked toward the private elevator. The ride up to the eighty-first floor was silent, a smooth, vertical ascent into the clouds that gave me just en