From Fiancée to Avenger

I should have known something was wrong the moment Naomi Diaz walked through those glass doors.

She arrived on a Tuesday morning, three weeks before everything fell apart. I was reviewing quarterly projections in my office when Dallas texted me: *Naomi's here! Come meet us in the lobby.* The exclamation point should have been my first warning. Dallas never used exclamation points.

When I stepped off the elevator, I found them standing beneath the bronze company logo, bathed in the cold morning light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows. Naomi looked smaller than I remembered from Dallas's childhood photos—delicate, almost fragile in her cream blouse and navy skirt. Her hair fell in soft waves around her face as she laughed at something Dallas said, one hand resting lightly on his arm.

"Serena!" Dallas's face lit up as he spotted me. "Come meet Naomi. She's joining us as a project coordinator."

Naomi turned, and her smile was warm honey. "It's so wonderful to finally meet you properly. Dallas has told me so much about you." She extended her hand, and when I shook it, her grip was surprisingly firm. "I hope you don't mind me being here. When Dallas mentioned there was an opening, I just couldn't resist. We have so many memories in this city."

"Of course not," I said, forcing my voice to stay pleasant. My other hand drifted to my engagement ring, twisting it once around my finger. "Welcome to the team."

Over the following days, Naomi wove herself into the fabric of our workplace with unsettling ease. She had a gift for appearing whenever Dallas was free, materializing in doorways with coffee or questions about filing systems. During meetings, she'd lean forward with wide, attentive eyes, asking Dallas for clarification on points that seemed obvious to everyone else. "I'm sorry, I'm still learning," she'd say with an apologetic smile. "Could you explain that again?"

And Dallas would explain. Patiently. Thoroughly. While I sat across the conference table, watching my fiancé's attention shift away from me like sand through spread fingers.

The real shift came during lunch hours. Before Naomi, Dallas and I ate together in his office, discussing wedding plans and baby names—I was three months pregnant, just starting to show. After Naomi, Dallas began accepting her invitations to the café downstairs. "She doesn't know anyone here yet," he explained when I questioned it. "It would be rude to say no."

I started finding them there by accident, or what I told myself were accidents. Naomi would be recounting some story from their childhood, her laughter bright and musical, and Dallas would be grinning in a way I hadn't seen in months. Once, I heard her say, "Remember when you saved me from Tommy Peterson? You've always been my hero, Dallas." Her eyes glistened as if holding back tears.

I wanted to remind her that I was the one who'd saved Dallas from his bullies. That I was the one whose family secured his position as heir. But the words stuck in my throat, tasting too much like jealousy.

"You're being paranoid," Dallas told me one evening when I finally voiced my concerns. We were in his apartment, and I'd just mentioned how much time he spent with Naomi. "She's an old friend. She's going through a difficult time. Can't you be more understanding?"

I pressed my hand against my small baby bump, feeling the flutter of life inside me. "I'm trying to understand. But you barely look at me anymore."

"That's not fair." His jaw tightened. "I'm here, aren't I? I'm planning our wedding. I'm excited about the baby. What more do you want?"

What I wanted was for him to notice how Naomi's eyes tracked him across rooms. How her innocent questions always required his personal attention. How she touched his arm just a fraction too long to be casual. But saying these things out loud made me sound bitter, suspicious, small.

So I swallowed my unease and tried to be the understanding fiancée Dallas wanted me to be.

Three weeks after Naomi's arrival, my department's confidential projections appeared in our competitor's quarterly report. My phone rang at dawn—my supervisor's voice tight with barely controlled fury. "Serena, we need to talk. Now."

The meeting was brutal. Fifty thousand dollars in bonuses, gone. My promotion to senior director, indefinitely postponed. Possible demotion pending investigation. I sat in that sterile conference room, my hands shaking in my lap, while they dissected every security protocol I'd followed.

"Someone with access to your files leaked them," my supervisor said. "We need to know who."

I thought of Naomi, who'd been asking unusually specific questions about my projects. Who'd borrowed my laptop once when hers was "acting up." Who'd been so apologetic when she returned it an hour later.

But when I mentioned her name—carefully, without accusation—Dallas exploded. We were in his office, door closed, and his face flushed red with anger. "Are you seriously trying to blame Naomi? She's barely been here three weeks! This is exactly what I was afraid of—you're letting jealousy make you irrational."

"I'm not jealous. I'm telling you—"

"No." He held up his hand. "I won't investigate a loyal friend based on your paranoid suspicions. Naomi would never do something like that."

The certainty in his voice felt like a slap. I left his office with my evidence tucked under my arm, unused and unwanted, while my engagement ring seemed to grow heavier on my finger.