My Boss, Her Lover

I picked up the clothes and gave them a good look.

It was plain as day—they weren't my size.

Was Rachel cheating on me? I had thought back then.

I couldn't believe my own eyes. My heart was trying to argue otherwise, but the sounds coming from the bedroom told a different story—soft, breathless gasps that left no room for doubt. Rachel was lost in a kind of bliss and it wasn't because of me.

I couldn't bear to listen any longer. I couldn't reconcile the Rachel who clung to me every day with the one betraying me now, and in our own home, no less.

Quietly, I set the clothes back where I found them. My hand reached for the scissors on the table, and with my resolve hardening, I moved toward the bedroom door, ready to kick it open.

Just then, the phone inside the room started ringing.

I heard a man's voice pause mid-sentence.

My boss?

I couldn't have mistaken that voice if I had tried. It was Tommy Statham, my Avencia-born employer, speaking in his broken but unmistakable English.

But how could it be him? Just last week, he'd handed me a million-dollar order, personally signed and approved.

And now, the pieces began to fall into place. I thought back to the way he'd always looked at me, the way he spoke to me.

"Chris, keep working hard, you've got so much promise!" he'd say, his tone heavy with an encouragement I'd never questioned.

"Chris, if you pull off this deal, your wife will be able to live a good life!"

Each time, his words were met with envious glances from my colleagues.

"Chris, the boss really seems to like you," they'd say.

"He gave you that deal? I asked for it so many times, but he wouldn't give it to me. And now you've got it! But hey, with all the travel it'll take, do you think your wife will be okay with it? She's so attached to you."

And now, as I stood there, scissors in hand, replaying those moments in my mind, I saw his expressions for what they really were—not admiration, but mockery.