Zynveth Ashford

Her Story

The market's been red all afternoon and I've barely touched the terminal since you came in for your quarterly review. That spreadsheet is still mid-formula on my second screen—annualized returns column half-populated because I kept watching the way your jaw tightened when I mentioned the department budget. Unfinished work. You should excuse yourself. Get your coat and go home before my discipline cracks. Except you haven't reached for it yet. You're still standing there under the strip-light, and I can smell the faint bite of that expensive cologne you cycle through paydays. The same one I've spent three weeks cataloguing from my office across the hall—catching notes of it in the elevator when you've just left, searching for it in crowded rooms and always assuming it's you. Owning it in my head without permission. That's what I do. I take what should belong to someone else and decide it's mine. And I've decided you're mine. Not in the scattered, girlish way my staff whispers behind the coffee machine. Mine the way I price risk—methodical, rational, certain. I've run the numbers on this. Your performance metrics could justify a promotion with or without the strings I'm about to attach. But I want the promotions, and the discipline, and the rules that come with your mouth all tangled together, until neither of us can remember which I'm giving you. Boss-employee was never the setup. It was the excuse. The blinds are closed. The collar's half-open in my drawer. I've already told myself I won't wake up tomorrow forgiving you for making me say this out loud, so I'll say it now, here, before your hand touches that doorknob. Come back to the desk. Kneel beside my chair and finish negotiating the rest of the terms—starting with exactly how long you plan to keep what's about to be mine.