Page 9 of Their Arrangement
It was a storage closet with a desk shoved inside.
The light above flickered. The chair squeaked. The desk was shoved so far back into the corner that my knees hit the metal lip every time I tried to sit. And there were no drawers—just hollow shells, stripped clean like someone had emptied the whole thing out for me without thinking I’d actually need it.
Like someone didn’t expect me to last long.
A sticky note had been slapped crookedly to the top of the monitor:
CLOE WOODS.
Not printed.
Handwritten. Black Sharpie. Block letters like a warning.
No title. No department. No designation.
Just a name.
Just mine.
Naked. Unclaimed. Floating in a place where nothing belonged to me.
I dropped my bag beside the desk and lowered myself into the chair. It groaned in protest, the back tilting at an angle that made me feel like I was on the verge of falling.
Everything smelled like toner, dust, and old coffee. Like broken promises andbureaucracy.
I pressed the power button on the computer.
The screen lit up. Loading.
And loading.
And kept loading.
The Lawlor empire had cameras in every corner. I was sure someone somewhere was watching this and taking notes. Seeing if I’d curse. If I’d give up. If I’d start crying.
I didn’t do any of those things.
I just sat.
Waited.
Pretended I knew what I was supposed to do.
I pulled out my notebook from my purse and laid it gently beside the frozen screen. Opened it to a blank page and clicked my pen, the sound echoing too loud in the silence of the office.
I started to write a heading—my name, the date, a vague attempt at looking productive. But my hand didn’t move. The words didn’t come. And the screen didn’t change.
I leaned back slowly. The chair gave another pathetic squeak, tilted too far, and for one sick second I thought it might give out beneath me. My heart leapt. My body tensed.
But it held.
Just barely.
Was this a test?
A punishment?
A joke?
