Page 41 of Prey

Cain doesn’t look at them. He looks past them.

"Everyone who has opened that package," he says, voice carrying without a shout, "close it. Immediately."

A beat, then screens dim, tabs vanish. The sound of mice clicking too fast fills the room.

"And if any copy of that footage leaves this building," he continues, "if any of you forward it, save it, show it to someone who doesn’t work here, Benjamin will see it in your logs. He will flag your credentials. And then I will handle you myself."

He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t have to.

Benjamin’s name ripples through the floor like a small earthquake. Internal risk. The man whose files decide who gets quietly removed from the system.

Cain turns his attention back to me.

"Grey," he says, not loud but very clear, "my office. Now."

It sounds like discipline. Every eye on the floor is on us as he leads me across the room by the wrist. No one pretends to work. No one pretends to be on the phone. They watch the man from the video walk beside his boss, the supposed victim. They watch the victim touch him like he owns him.

My face is burning. My legs feel like they might give out. But his hand is steady.

Inside his office, he closes the door with a soft click that feels like the only real barrier between me and the noise outside.

Chapter 21

Cain

I knew she would do it. I even told myself I was ready.

It still feels different seeing Grey on the company portal, reduced to clips and captions. On my screen earlier, the incident package looked clinical: timestamps, bullet points, red flags. In the open office, it looks like blood in the water.

They wrote it exactly the way she would. Executive safety. Concerning patterns. Subject appears outside Mr. Micheals’ office after hours. Not, board member weaponizes surveillance to satisfy her obsession. Not CEO intentionally lets his secretary stalk him to see how far he’ll go.

Rose framed it as responsible oversight.

I watched the footage before he did. Alone, in my kitchen, with coffee cooling in my hand, as he showered. I saw every clip she chose: the hallway, the lobby, the office. His personal moments turned into warning signs.

Now I’ve watched something worse, the way people looked at him when the video popped up on their screens. A gasp in the corner. A whispered "That’s him." Someone laughing until they saw me and swallowed the sound like poison.

He stands in front of my desk, face pale, shoulders tight, every line of his body tuned to humiliation.

"I told you she’d make it spectacle," I say.

"You didn’t tell me she’d make it training material for the whole company," he replies. His voice is brittle, brittle enough to cut.

I gesture to the chair. "Sit."

He does. Slowly. He looks wrecked. Not the kind from last night, cheeks flushed and eyes glazed while I pushed into him and listened to him fall apart on my sheets. This is a different kind of wreckage. Public, ugly, and mean.

"They saw me," he says. "The whole floor. Maybe the whole building. Not just…at your door. In your office. On your desk." The last word breaks.

"Yes," I say. I won’t lie. He deserves better than that.

"They’re going to see you as a victim," he continues. "And me as something they should have called the police on months ago."

"They already saw me as a problem," I say. "This doesn’t change much for me."

"It changes everything for me," he says. His hands are shaking. He balls them into fists to hide it. It doesn’t help. "They threw out my mug. They moved my chair. HR is framing this like they’re worried I’m going to hurt you."

"HR frames everything like that," I say. My tone comes out harsher than I intended. Not at him. At the memory of their email. Support. Safety. The euphemisms of removal.