I saved the screenshots in a folder I labeled “Receipts” and then buried it three folders deep so I wouldn’t have to look at it. I still didn’t reply to Mark. I hoped, in the stupid way you hope when you’re young, that silence would bore him into leaving me alone.
It did the opposite.
My boss’s husband started finding excuses to show up at the office whenever Lisa wasn’t there or was busy. He’d stroll in around 3 p.m., when he knew she had her Thursday client meetings across town, and lean against the doorframe of the little kitchen as if he owned the place.
I saved the screenshots in a folder.
“Just dropping off her charger,” he’d say.
Or, “Thought I’d surprise her with lunch.”
He never had a charger, and he never had lunch.
I started checking the parking lot before I left my desk. If I saw his black SUV, I’d wait. Sometimes for 20 minutes. Sometimes, until my shoulders ached from sitting stiffly in my chair.
He never had a charger.
I loved my job and working for Lisa. She’d hired me when my resume had nothing on it but a coffee shop job and a college GPA. My boss had taught me how to write proposals, how to talk to clients, and how to hold my own in a room full of men wearing nicer suits than mine.
Telling her felt like handing her a grenade.
What if she thought I’d flirted with him? What if she chose him and I lost everything? What if I blew up a marriage over messages I could’ve just deleted?
Telling her felt like handing her a grenade.
I drafted a resignation email one night at 11 p.m.
“Lisa, thank you for the opportunity, but I’ve decided to pursue other avenues.”
I deleted it.
I drafted it again the following morning.
“Lisa, effective two weeks from today…”
I deleted that one too.
I drafted a resignation email.
Rachel called on a Sunday. She could hear it in my voice before I said a word.
“Cin, you’re shrinking. I can hear you shrinking through the phone.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You document, and you tell her. In that order.”
I said I would. I meant it, in the way you mean things at 8 p.m. on a Sunday and then don’t mean them at 8 a.m. on a Monday.
She could hear it in my voice.
That Monday, I stayed late to finish a report.
The document on my screen blurred as the sun dropped behind the parking lot trees. I’d promised Lisa I’d have the client summary ready by morning, and I was almost there. Almost.
Above the filing cabinet, the small black dome of a camera blinked with its steady red light, the way it had every day since Lisa walked me through the office on my first morning and mentioned, offhand, that insurance required it. I barely noticed it anymore.
I was almost there.
Then the office door opened.
Mark walked in with that same easy smile, the one that used to seem friendly and now made my skin crawl.
“You’ve been ignoring me for weeks.”
I didn’t look up from the monitor. “I really need to work, Mark. This is due tomorrow.”
He didn’t leave. Instead, he smiled and drifted closer, his hands in his pockets, as casual as if we were old friends catching up.
“Come on. You used to laugh at my jokes.”
Mark walked in.
I saved the document, grabbed my bag from the back of the chair, and stood up.
“I’m heading out. You should go too.”
I moved towards the door. My boss’s husband shifted, not quite blocking me, but close enough that I had to angle around him.
“You’re overreacting, Cindy. I’m just being nice.”
Before I could get past him, his fingers closed around my wrist. Not hard, just enough to stop me.
“You should go too.”
“Please. Just give me five minutes,” Mark begged.
I opened my mouth to tell him to let go. I was so angry that I couldn’t get the words out. My throat felt packed with sand.
Then the office door suddenly opened again.
Lisa stood in the doorway with her laptop bag on her shoulder and a manila envelope tucked under her arm. Her eyes went straight to Mark’s hand on my wrist, then to my face.
I felt the room tilt.
I was so angry.
I couldn’t say a single word.
My boss didn’t yell or gasp. She just closed the door behind her with the same quiet click she used every morning at eight.
“Lisa,” I whispered after finding my voice. “I didn’t… I never…”
“I know, honey.”
She walked toward us, slow and deliberate, as if she’d already rehearsed this. Mark let go of my wrist so fast that his hand snapped back to his side.
My boss didn’t yell or gasp.
