“You should be resting,” he says, lowering his voice, making it sound intimate. His hand brushes her elbow, light enough to be dismissed, deliberate enough to be felt. “I’ve been patient with you, Emma. But we need to talk about what happens next. About your future at the company. How we can help each other.”
His fingers linger too long, and the decision settles into me without emotion.
I’m done waiting.
“I said I’m fine,” she replies, stepping back, but he follows, positioning himself between her and the door with practised ease. His smile softens, like he’s indulging her stupidity, but she isn’t stupid. She knows to trust her gut. To get out.
“I’m just trying to help,” he murmurs as he reaches for her wrist with that careful, calculated pressure men like him rely on. Enough to induce that uneasy feeling that makes a woman question if she is imagining it.
Emma stiffens. Her eyes flash, anger breaking through the discipline, and for a split second, I see the woman she could have become if no one had ever taught her to shrink. The sight hits something deep and feral in my chest.
That’s when I get out of the car and enter her building, catching the door just before it closes fully behind an elderly lady, who didn’t stop to check the door had closed and locked behind her.
I’ve watched this man long enough to know exactly how this ends when no one interrupts, and I’ll be damned if I let him put his hands on Emma.
I glance at my phone, watching as his thumb shifts, pressing into the inside of her wrist like he’s testing how much resistance he’ll get. He thinks they’re alone. He could never account forme. That I can see what’s happening.
“Don’t fight it, Emma,” he says as rage boils my blood.
He has no idea how thoroughly miscalculated this moment is.
I know the rumors he silenced, the rumors he started. The dancers who disappeared quietly. The ones labelled difficult, unstable, replaceable. I know how he waits for injury, for weakness, for the moment a woman’s value drops just low enough to exploit.
“Don’t do this,” she says, her voice hard, making pride bloom in my chest.
Fight, I will her from the stair well as I take the steps two at a time.
He smiles again. “Don’t overreact, Emma.”
I watch her through the camera as his grip tightens, confidence taking root where fear should be.
I burst through the door just as he is dragging her through the door I know leads to her bedroom and I know in this moment that I’m going tofucking kill him.
When Emma’s big brown eyes crash to mine, recognition blooms in them, and she visibly relaxes. She knows who I am, but more than that, she knows she is safe now I’m here.
“Who the fuck are you?” her boss demands as I eat up the small space between us in two long strides.
“I’m your worst fucking nightmare,” I say through clenched teeth as I wrap my fists around his lapels and heave him away from Emma who stands frozen in the door to her room.
“This is none of your business,” he tries to yell, but it comes out as a pathetic little gasp as I smash him back against the hallway wall. The mirror rattles before dropping from its fastenings and shattering on the floor. “She is my girlfriend,” he squeaks.
“No,” I say firmly. “She’s mine. And I don’t take kindly to men touching what’s mine.”
“There must be some mistake,” her boss says now, almost pleading. “It’s nothing we can’t sort out.”
I tighten my mouth into a line because we both know it’s too late for that.
“You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have touched her without her permission. You shouldn’t have tried to drag herinto her room to rape her,” I say instead before turning to Emma and dropping my car keys into the palm of her hand. “Pack up what you need and go wait in my car. I’ll be ten minutes.”
Her boss’s eyes go wide as he shakes his head from side to side almost violently.
“No, Emma. I’m sorry! I’ll leave, okay? Please don’t leave me with him—”
Emma shrugs one shoulder and almost looks sad. “I know what you did to the others,” she says before turning into her room to pack up what she needs. I drag her pathetic excuse of a boss to her bathroom and flip out my knife.
These things are better drawn out when there’s a lesson to be learned.
I wait for the apartment door to close, signalling that Emma has left, before I start.
