Page 88 of Sexting His Assistant

I look toward the hall.

At the employees still speaking in low voices. At the security positioned too visibly by the doors. At Meredith, who stands with the rigid stillness of a woman pretending efficiency is not fear.

Nina steps closer, lowering her voice. “You should’ve acted like a leader.”

The words strike harder than I expect.

I look back at her.

She does not retreat from what she has said.

“You’re very comfortable being obeyed,” she says. “You’re less comfortable letting people be human.”

“That’s not how I run this company.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

There are very few people in the world who would say this to my face.

Fewer still who would survive it.

Nina says it with her chin lifted and her hands curled tight against her own arms, not because she wants to hurt me, but because she thinks I need to hear it.

I feel my temper rise. I feel something else beneath it too. Not shame. I dislike the word. But something close enough that I recognize it by the way it makes me want to become colder.

“You think I should’ve frightened them less,” I say.

“I think you should’ve reassured them more.”

“I reassured them there’s no ongoing threat.”

“You said it like a legal clause.”

“It was a legal clause.”

“Exactly.”

I look at her for a long moment, then say, “You believe I failed them.”

Her mouth opens, then closes. “I think,” she says carefully, “you scared them into silence when you should have made them feel protected.”

Protected.

The word sits between us. A familiar word. A dangerous one.

I think of the garage. My body over hers. Concrete bursting near her head. Her bloodless face in the red emergency light. Her hand pressing against my wound while she told me to go to the hospital in a voice that shook.

“I did protect them,” I say.

Her expression softens slightly. “I know,” she says. “But they don’t.”

And there, finally, is the difference.

It’s not that she is angry I survived and stayed away. Not only that.

She sees what I missed because I was looking for enemies.

I exhale slowly.