1
Shadows at the Door
“You should take her, Lionel,” Sacha said, voice sharp but smooth — like glass about to crack.
I looked up from the coffee I wasn’t drinking. Outside the office window, the sky was an unbothered blue. The kind of sky that didn’t give a damn whether you were falling apart or not.
“Now?” I said. “She’s too young. And fat.”
Sacha didn’t even blink. She never does. That’s the thing with her — she’s evolved beyond being offended. Above emotion. These days, she talks like a woman who’s already burned the house down and is now just deciding which room to rebuild first.
“She’s not fat, Lionel,” she said, each word deliberate. “She’s curvy. Beautiful. And let’s not forget, I have a man to take care of. This marriage? It’s not working for either of us. So don’t be petty.”
I said nothing. I had no words left for Sacha. Just the usual weight in my chest and the growing hum of something I couldn’t name.
The girl in question — barely out of her twenties, if that — had just entered the building, her laugh dancing in ahead of her like perfume. She didn’t see me, didn’t even look around. She was at ease in a way only the very young or the very foolish can be. Carefree, unaware. A foreign species to me now.
Her presence stung. Not because she was beautiful — she was, painfully so — but because she was untouched. Clean. And the world I lived in? The one Sacha and I built in silence, in debt, in resentment and routine — it was no place for the clean.
I stood, gathered the documents I didn’t care about, and left the room without answering.
The office felt colder than usual. Maybe it was just me. I caught sight of the girl again inside — her laugh, her ease, now shared with two of the junior staff. They were all grinning like life was a joke only they understood.
Something in me twisted. I didn’t want her here. I didn’t want her in the shadows I dragged around. She didn’t belong.
But Sacha always got what she wanted. She was the kind of woman who could convince a wolf it was safe to sleep in a house made of meat. And me? I was tired. Tired of fighting, tired of pretending I didn’t care. Tired of this collapsing thing we still called a marriage.
Still — bringing her in? That wasn’t an option.
I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out my old handkerchief, and wiped the sweat from my forehead. The glass doors ahead of me hissed as they closed. I adjusted my glasses, turned left, and walked the corridor down to my office — deeper into my quiet ruin.
