Page 22 of Sexting His Assistant

The instant I hit send, something feels wrong.

Not emotionally. Technically.

The message bubble is the wrong color. My stomach drops, and I look at the top of the screen.

Oh my god. It’s not Daniil.

It’s… Luka.

My blood turns to ice.

No.

No, no, no.

I stare at the message in horror, willing it to unsend itself through force of shame alone.

At the head of the table, Luka’s phone lights beside his hand.

He sees it. Because of course he sees it in the middle of a meeting.

His gaze drops once to the screen. Then lifts. And finds me.

Everything inside me stops.

He does not change his expression.

Not even a flicker.

Not in front of the board. Not in front of the consultants. Not with half the company sitting around polished walnut pretending to be serious people while my soul leaves my body in real time.

One of the board members is still talking. I have no idea what he’s saying anymore though. The room has gone distant, distorted, the edges of everything blurred by the thunder of my own pulse.

Luka picks up his phone, looks at the message again, and sets the phone back down. Then he says, in the same calm voice he’s used all morning, “Continue.”

The man across from him stumbles over the next sentence.

I cannot breathe.

My hands are perfectly still on the notebook only because all useful function has abandoned me. Heat climbs my throat, my face, the roots of my hair. I want the floor to open. I want the building to collapse. I want to become a cloud of dust and drift out through the air vent.

Luka doesn’t look at me again for a full two minutes.

It feels deliberate. Maybe even cruel.

Then he asks finance a question, waits for an answer, and finally turns his head just enough for his eyes to meet mine.

Only for a second. There’s no amusement in his face.

No anger either. Something much worse.

And when he speaks, it’s to the room.

But it lands on me.

“We’ll take a ten-minute break,” Luka says.

Chairs shift back. Papers move. People stand.