The space is tiny. Maybe four feet by six. Shelves of printer paper and toner cartridges line the walls, and the single overhead bulb casts everything in harsh fluorescent white.
Thraka fills the room like a storm cloud fills the sky.
"You cannot kill the VP of Sales," I say, keeping my voice level, professional, like I'm delivering a quarterly report instead of preventing a murder. "Even if he is incompetent."
"He is worse than incompetent." Thraka's chest heaves, his breathing rough and uneven. "He is disrespectful. He mocks you in meetings. He undermines your authority. He challenged me."
"Chad challenges everyone. It's his personality." I press my back against the door, trying to create space between us, butthere isn't any. "He's a jerk with a spray tan and too much hair gel. He's not worth losing your job over."
"My job." Thraka says the word like it's foreign, distasteful. "You care about my job."
"I care about not having to explain to HR why there's a decapitated VP in Conference Room B."
He takes a step closer.
I have nowhere to go.
My shoulder blades press against the door, and I can feel the handle digging into my lower back, and Thraka is right there, radiating heat like a furnace, smelling like leather and something wild I can't quite name.
"He insulted you," Thraka says, his voice dropping lower, that rumble still vibrating in his chest. "In front of the entire department, like you are a child showing off a crayon drawing."
My jaw tightens. "I'm aware."
"And you did nothing."
"Because that's how office politics work. You smile. You nod. You forward the complaint to his superior with a professionally worded email documenting his behavior for future disciplinary review."
"That is weak."
My fingers curl into fists at my sides. "That is strategic."
"It is cowardly."
The word lands like a slap, reverberating in the cramped space between us. The heat of it spreads across my face, followed immediately by a white-hot flare of indignation. Sharp. Immediate. Utterly unprofessional.
I straighten my spine, lifting my chin even though the movement brings me fractionally closer to him. "Excuse me?"
"You let him disrespect you," Thraka says, and his eyes are locked on mine, intense and unrelenting. "You are brilliant. Fierce. You command this office like a general commands anarmy. But you let men like Chad walk over you because of rules. Because of protocols. Because you are afraid of what happens if you break them."
"I'm not afraid. I'm practical. I'm professional. I'm not going to throw away my career because some middle-management douchebag makes a snide comment."
"Why not?" He leans in, and suddenly the closet feels even smaller, the air thicker. "What is the point of all this control if it only makes you smaller?"
"I'm not small."
"No." His gaze drops, just for a second, tracking down my body and back up again, slow and deliberate. "You are not."
My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic percussion that feels entirely too loud in the confined space of the supply closet. The rational part of my brain—the part that color-codes my calendar and triple-checks expense reports—is screaming at me in all caps.
This is inappropriate.
This is wildly, catastrophically, career-endingly inappropriate.
I should open the door. Walk out. File an incident report with HR (the real HR, not Thraka's bizarre interpretation of it as some kind of personnel inventory system). Maintain boundaries. Restore professional distance. Pretend this never happened and go back to my desk where I can stress-eat almonds and update my contingency plans.
Instead, I hear myself say, "You can't solve every problem with violence, Thraka."
"I do not want violence." His voice goes quieter, rougher, and somehow that's worse than the growl. "I want justice. I want honor. I want Chad to understand that insulting you has consequences."
