Page 73 of Wells

No one would question it. Everyone knows I don't work well with others, much less manage anyone. I could put a manager between us, move her desk to another floor, and make the whole thing look like a practical adjustment. Most people would wonder why it took me so long to implement it.

But I left everything exactly where it was.

The thought of walking into my office Monday and not seeing her outside my door made something hard and ugly move through me. She is mine and I want her with me.

I want to keep her where I can see her. I want her in my office, in my car, across from me at dinner, close enough that I do not have to imagine the shape of her mouth through a screen.

I set my bourbon down on the desk without drinking and press my thumb against the edge. The pressure gives me something simple to track for a few seconds before the rest of it comes back.

I pulled an all-nighter Thursday after I closed the call window. Not because I needed proof. I already had enough. I did it because I needed to understand how I missed it.

By three in the morning, I had traced the mask, wig, contacts, and lipstick to an Amazon order Locke Armanelli placed three weeks before Masked Maiden went live. It would have been easy to find if I had been willing to look. One deeper background pass after HR sent Cera’s file across my desk would have been enough. I could have known before the interview. Before the office. Before Florida. Before my desk.

Before I wanted the truth to be impossible.

My throat tightens, and I let go of the desk.

She would see the lie first. Then the trace. Then every moment after it, every look in the office, every careful word, every inch of space I gave her while holding information she didn't have. She would leave, and she would be right to.

I click to open my OnlyFans app on my desktop. My reflection stares back from the black before the login loads.

I won't tell Cera I'm Midnight. I won't tell her I know she is Peoria. That silence is a lie, and I have already decided I can live with it. The asymmetry exists, but I didn't create it. I'm managing it, and this is the best way.

I broke my own rule to trace her, and the information came back before I could decide whether I wanted it. Now I have it and I can't unknow that now.

Midnight has to die.

No goodbye, no staged farewell. A manufactured exit would be active deception, and that turns my stomach in a way the silence doesn't. I won't perform closure when that's the opposite of what's happening here.

The month I already paid will stand as severance. It squares the debt. After that, no calls. No money. No contact.

Vanishing is cleaner. Vanishing is kinder. What she doesn't know can't hurt her.

I exhale and delete the account.

I stand and move to the window. The river reflects the last of the light, a stripe of gold cutting through gray water.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice I don't want to hear reminds me I have done this before. I've paid to make a problem disappear. Cash and silence and distance, the tangle severed cleanly.

I push the thought away.

This is different. That woman tried to extort me. Cera has done nothing wrong. This is not about making her disappear. This is about protecting what we have before the truth destroys it.

I drop my hand and check the time.

There's still two hours before I pick her up for dinner.

I need something else to occupy my mind, so I pull up the financial trail I've been tracking. The screen fills with shell company names, offshore account numbers, trust structures layered so deep I cannot find the floor. The same wall I hit before. The same dead end.

I lean back and light a cigarette. The smoke burns on the way in.

I check Dane's accounts again. Still nothing.

I stub out the cigarette and close out the tab. I know the money will give me more strings to follow, but I don't have enough time to follow each of those now.

The frustration sits low in my gut, not sharp enough to spiral but heavy enough to carry.

I stand and move to the bathroom to get ready for Cera.