He Chose His Mistress, So I Chose Justice

1: 1

My forty-million-dollar contract had been sitting on the receptionist's desk for a full week, held up by the boss's well-connected niece.

The client's legal team finally ran out of patience and sent over a formal letter, saying they wanted to reassess the terms of the partnership.

I took the printed letter straight to Nathan Matthews, our VP and my boyfriend.

"Are you sure you want to keep covering for her? If this deal falls through, can you carry that?"

He barely glanced at it. "I already talked to Evelyn Randall on Monday. She's just swamped. A director like you hounding the front desk every five minutes, doesn't that look pathetic? I'll go ask her again."

But in the end he came back empty-handed, and Evelyn even posted a jab on her social media feed.

"Some people forget to mail their own contracts, then pin it on the front desk. Shameless."

And my boyfriend, Nathan, actually liked the post.

I decided to stop chasing her. Three days left on the deadline, and I didn't send a single reminder.

Until this morning, when the client's CEO called our boss himself. "Mr. Chavez, do you people not want my account anymore?"

The boss pulled the security footage and called everyone into the conference room.

Evelyn burst into tears, screaming that she was being framed.

I opened my phone and cast it to the screen. "Mr. Chavez, would you rather start with the front desk footage, or listen to a recorded call?"

1.

Half an hour later, Nathan pushed the office door open, hands in his pockets. "She said she'll dig it up for you this afternoon. Just wait a bit longer."

I kept my eyes on him. I wanted an answer. "This afternoon, what time?"

"Why are you in such a rush?"

He circled behind the desk and sat down. "She said she'll find it, so she'll find it. A director standing over the front desk nagging, how do you think that plays if it gets around?"

I pushed the printed letter across to him.

"Come on. The client's legal team sent a formal letter demanding a reassessment of the whole partnership. The contract's about to collapse and you're not worried?"

He glanced at it without picking it up, then let out a little laugh. "Does worrying help?"

"It's a day or two late. What client actually cares? You think a forty-million account is like buying groceries, drop it whenever you feel like it?"

I drew a slow breath. "The contract's been sitting there for a week, Nathan."

For a whole week Evelyn had acted like her one mission in life was to work against me, flat-out refusing to hand over the documents.

"She's the boss's niece. Complaining to me does nothing. She'll just turn around and call the boss, and you'll be the one left looking bad."

He said it like he was soothing a child in a tantrum. "Listen to me, give it one more day, I'll chase it for you."

I was about to press him again when my eyes caught on the collar of his shirt.

On the outside of the collar was a faint mark of dusty-rose lipstick.

When he left the house this morning, that collar had been perfectly clean.

Seeing me go quiet, Nathan came around, slid an arm around my waist, and coaxed, "Don't be mad, okay? I'll make it up to you properly tonight when we get home."

As he leaned in, I caught the smell of milk tea, mixed with a peachy perfume, sweet to the point of cloying.

One whiff was enough to place it, the shop downstairs, the one where the lunch line was always the front-desk girls.

Something inside me caught with a click, stuck halfway, neither up nor down.

Nathan and I had been together over a year now.

The company had no rule against office romance, but Nathan always said it looked bad and suggested we keep it quiet.

I agreed.

At the time I thought he was thinking about our future.

Looking back now, that "looks bad" might have meant something else entirely from the very start.

Evelyn was the boss's niece.

The whole company knew it.

She was only a receptionist, but no one in the entire sales department dared to cross her.

Her food deliveries always somehow made it to her desk, carried over by someone else.

Even on her birthday, one of the department heads had a two-tier cake ordered and delivered to the front desk just for her.

Sales had packages going out or coming in every single day, and all of it depended on her mood.

If she was happy, she handled it that day. If she wasn't, she sat on it for three.

I never bothered kissing up to her. I was slammed every day, who had time for all that maneuvering?

What I never expected was that Nathan would end up tangled up with her.

Once I saw that, Evelyn's baffling hostility toward me started to make a strange kind of sense.

"Fine. I'll wait. You keep chasing it."

I slid the letter back into my folder.

Nathan let out a breath, and his tone turned light at once. "Now you're being reasonable. It's not a big deal, stop blowing everything out of proportion."

"What do you want for dinner? I'll book a table."

"We'll see."

I pushed the door open and left.

At three that afternoon, I went to the break room for water. The door was cracked open, two or three people inside.

Then Evelyn's voice drifted out. "She's just a salesperson, isn't she? Please. Slap 'director' on the title and she thinks she's something."

"Chasing it up every single day, ugh, isn't she exhausting?"

Evelyn's voice went sugary and petulant. "Honestly, Nathan, I don't know how you put up with her. If you ask me, Director Cobb is nothing but a gossipy old busybody."

Hearing me torn apart like that, Nathan didn't say a word in my defense.

Instead he laughed, playing up to her. "She's getting on in years, she's no match for you. Don't fight with her, she's not worth ruining your health over."

Hearing that, I lost all interest in going in.