Howdy Pillar

After half a month of nonstop overtime, I secured a contract worth over ten million, pulling the company back from the brink of collapse. My boss, Richard Gray, was overjoyed. At the celebration party, he called me the pillar of the company and announced that he would reward me with a bonus. However, when the end of the month came, and I opened my payslip, I froze. Negative 250 dollars. A negative commission? I actually owed the company 250 dollars? I immediately called the finance department, asking if there was a mistake on my payslip. They replied, "No mistake. This is the cost calculation formula that Mr. Gray personally instructed us to use. He said you'd understand once you saw it." I went straight to Richard for an explanation. He laughed. "The contract that you signed, after factoring in the concessions, upfront resources, and hidden expenses, left the company with a net loss of 150 thousand. Since the loss was due to your personal decisions, you're responsible for five percent. That totals to 7500. "Considering how hard you worked, we deducted it from your base salary first. But your salary wasn't enough, so you still owe the company 250. Don't worry. The company treats its employees well. We'll write that off." Soon after, he awarded 100 thousand dollars to the newly arrived intern. I watched the newcomer, probably connected to Richard, cheerfully treat the entire company to dinner with her bonus, and something inside me just snapped. From that day onward, I did the bare minimum. I clocked in. I clocked out. Nothing more. Later, when a critical project went catastrophically wrong and the company faced a colossal compensation demand, Richard came begging me to fix it. I just smiled and said, "Sorry, Mr. Gray. I've already resigned. If there are any problems, you can ask the intern who got the 100 thousand dollar bonus to handle it."

They called him Father. She called him forbidden. Ayana Marcus thought coming home for Christmas would be simple—a few weeks of family dinners, church services, and small-town nostalgia before returning to her real life in Boston. She didn't expect him. Father Nelson has been her father's best friend for two decades. A priest. A pillar of their tight-knit community. A man who's supposed to be untouchable, unshakeable, holy. But when Ayana returns after four years away—no longer the sheltered girl who left, but a woman who knows her own mind—everything changes. One look across her family's dinner table, and she sees it: the way his dark eyes linger a second too long, the tension in his jaw when she speaks, the white-knuckled grip on his glass when she laughs. Father Nelson isn't just her father's friend anymore. He's a man on the edge of breaking. One stolen kiss beneath the mistletoe shatters two decades of self-control. What begins as a single moment of weakness spirals into a secret affair that threatens to destroy everything—his priesthood, her family, their souls. He tells himself he's corrupting her. She knows she's awakening him. In the cold December nights, between whispered prayers and desperate touches, they discover that some sins taste like salvation. That the line between worship and desire is thinner than either imagined. That love—even forbidden, impossible, unholy love—can be the most sacred thing of all. But in a town where secrets don't stay buried and the church sees everything, their passion will cost them more than they ever imagined. He's twice her age. Her father's best friend. A man of God. She's everything he's denied himself for twenty years. And this December, they'll learn that some gifts are too dangerous to unwrap… But impossible to resist.