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I nod slowly, folding my arms over my chest. I lean against the bookshelf behind me, watching her carefully.
“Tell me whatever you can.”
She takes a deep breath.
“At first, it was just little things. Like he’d get flowers for a bunch of the female staffers as a show of appreciation, but they’d all get lilies and I’d get roses. Or he’d leave little trinkets on my desk.” Her brows knit as she glares into her mug. “I was so stupid.”
“Fumi—”
“I was naive, Gabriel. I thought he was just being nice, you know? I mean, he’s like thirty-five years older than me. It never once occurred to me that he was flirting with me or grooming me or whatever. He was older than my dad, for fuck’s sake! And fucking married!”
Her shoulders shake as she takes a breath.
“He started having me work directly with him, and I was so star-struck I thought it was a promotion. I mean, I was working right alongside the guy who was going to be the next Governor of New York! How fucking amazing would that look on a resume! So, when he had me stay late more and more frequently, I just went along with it, because that’s the job, right? When he started having dinner brought in for just the two of us on those late nights at the office, I thought he was being kind. I felt like his protege or something. When he told me he and his wife were divorcing, but that no one knew, I felt honored that he trusted me enough to confide in me…”
Her mouth twists with nausea as her head shakes slowly side to side.
“God, I was fucking stupid.”
My teeth grind just hearing it. But she has to get it all out, like poison from a wound.
“One night, when it was just the two of us, after we’d finished dinner, I was about to go when he stopped me. I…” She grimaces. “I should have said no. I wanted to. But, I mean, he was a Congressman, and my boss, and he’d been so nice to me, and he was going to be Governor.” Her face darkens as she stares at the floor. “He kissed me, and I froze. I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t say no…”
“Fumi.”
She shivers, looking up at me with haunted eyes. I nod gently for her to keep going, and after a moment she nods back.
“Finally, I pulled away and said I had to go. I went home and freaked out for a while, then decided I had to stop whatever this was. So I did. The next night, same thing: dinner finished, we were alone again. He made a move, and I told him I couldn’t. God, I even blamed the fact that he was married, because I was too scared to tell him it was him.”
The monster inside me is awake and demanding blood.
It wants to kill.
Slowly.
Fumi continues. “I thought he’d lose his cool. But he was totally fine with it. He told me he understood, that he was sorry for making me feel pressured. I mean, he was so good about it. He poured us two glasses of this really expensive scotch and told me he was excited to see where my career would go. We even toasted to it…”
Her whole body shakes violently.
“It—it goes fuzzy after that. The next thing I remember, my shirt was pulled down and I was on my knees in front of him. He was sitting at his desk. And he was…he…”
When she breaks, the roar of the monster inside of me almost drowns out the everything else. I want to scream. I want to destroy all the beauty in the world.
I want to kill, until warm blood trickles through my fingers and the universe knows my rage.
But I don’t. Because this isn’t about me. This is about the woman I’ve fallen for, and the pain that’s shattering her in two.
Fumi flinches as I wrap my arms around her. Then she melts, clinging to me and sobbing into my chest.
“I hated every moment,” she cries. “I hated it so fucking much. And then, when he was done, he told me to stand up, and ‘make myself presentable’. I was still so fucking out of it that I just did what he said. I didn’t go to work the next day, but in the evening the asshole came to my house,” she chokes bitterly. “He wanted to make sure we were ‘on the same page’ about what had happened. When I told him I was going to go to the police, he just left without saying a fucking word. An hour later, there were lawyers at my door threatening to destroy my life if I didn’t sign all of these NDAs, a termination report, and a signed statement full of lies about how I’d tried to shake that fucker down for money.”
She sucks in air, clinging to me tightly.
“And before you ask me why I didn’t go to the police anyway?—”
“I wasn’t going to,” I growl quietly. “You don’t need to explain shit?—”
She barrels on. “I was the daughter of an immigrant, Gabriel. My dad was still trying to cement his citizenship, and Hall’s fucking lawyers told me they’d make sure it was derailed if I said anything. Then later, after more than a year had gone by and my dad did have his citizenship, I just wanted to leave it behind me. Pretend it never happened. I figured if they could screw up someone’s citizenship application, who knew what else they could do…”
