Chapter 1 - The Contract
The rain hammered against the cracked window as if it wanted to force its way inside. I opened my eyes in the dark of the room and, for a second, wished I hadn’t woken up at all. The smell of mildew and damp clothes rose first. Then came the weight in my chest—that familiar tightness that had been part of me for months. My phone vibrated on the floor beside the thin mattress. I stretched out an arm, grabbed the device with numb fingers, and read the bank message without even flinching.
Another collection notice. Threat of legal action. Interest that was devouring what little I had left.
I lay there staring at the stained ceiling. Twenty-five years old and life already felt over. Résumés sent to dozens of places. Silence. Interviews that ended with polite smiles and a “we’ll be in touch.” No one ever got in touch. Only one message had actually answered: Bezerra Holdings. Final interview. Today, four p.m. Bring documents.
I got up. The cold floor bit into the soles of my feet. In the tiny bathroom the light flickered. I washed my face with freezing water and stared at myself in the cracked mirror. Hollow eyes, pale skin, dark hair pulled back any which way. An ordinary woman. A woman who had lost her job, the decent apartment, her pride. All that remained was debt and shame.
“I don’t have a choice,” I murmured to my reflection in a long sigh.
I put on the only pair of decent trousers that hadn’t gone to the pawnshop yet and the white blouse that was already a little yellowed under the arms. I dragged on dry lipstick. The broken umbrella stayed forgotten behind the door. I stepped out into the rain.
The Bezerra Holdings building cut through the gray sky like a blade of glass and steel. I crossed the flooded avenue, cheap shoes splashing on the sidewalk, and stopped in front of the glass doors. The security guard looked me up and down, his gaze lingering a second too long on my wet clothes and the hair plastered to my face. I showed him the email on my phone. He frowned, dialed a number, and muttered something too low for me to hear. Then he pointed to the elevator at the back.
“Top floor. Straight up.”
The elevator was too quiet. Mirrored. I saw myself reflected from every angle: small, soaked, irrelevant. My stomach turned. When the doors opened, the corridor was wide, lined with dark wood and low lighting. A secretary with a neutral expression led me to a pair of massive wooden double doors and knocked twice before opening them.
“Miss Santana, sir.”
I stepped inside.
The office was enormous. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the city drowning in rain. The air smelled of expensive wood, leather, and something else… something warm, almost animal, that I couldn’t name. In the center stood an absurdly large desk, carved from a single piece of dark wood that looked as if it had been cut from an entire tree. Behind it, with his back to the door, stood a man.
Tall. Broad. His silhouette dominated the space even while motionless. Wide shoulders beneath an impeccable dark suit. Perfectly aligned black hair. He didn’t turn around.
“You’re late,” the voice said. Deep. Controlled. “Sit.”
I swallowed hard and moved forward. The chair in front of the desk looked far too small, almost ridiculous in that room. I sat, damp hands clutching the cheap bag in my lap. Rain lashed the glass. The silence stretched until it hurt.
Only then did he move. Not fully. Just enough for me to see his profile: sharp jaw, straight nose, hard line of a mouth. Dark eyes that assessed me from head to toe without hurry, as if I were a piece of inventory.
“Vera Santana,” he said, checking something on the screen in front of him. “Twenty-five. Unemployed for eight months. Overdue debts. Three collection proceedings underway.” He lifted his gaze. “You need this more than I need you.”
My face burned. Shame rose hot and fast, scorching under the skin.
“I… I can work. I know spreadsheets, scheduling, customer service—”
“I’m not interested in what you know,” he cut in. His voice stayed low, but every word carried weight. “I’m interested in what you’re willing to accept.”
He opened a drawer, took out a thick envelope, and pushed the contract toward me. The paper was heavy, cream-colored, with the company logo embossed.
“Base salary three times the market average. Signing bonus large enough to clear all your debts within sixty days. Health plan, subsidized housing, transport. In exchange: total exclusivity. Unrestricted on-site dedication. Support for unconventional demands from the board. Absolute obedience to company requirements without question. Full confidentiality clause.”
I flipped through the pages. The letters swam. There was so much. So much fine print. Dense corporate language full of terms that sounded vague and threatening at the same time. “Unrestricted on-site dedication.” “Support for unconventional demands.” My heart was racing. I thought of the bank message. The moldy room. The cracked mirror. The way my stomach ached with hunger on the nights the rice ran out.
“I… I need to read it carefully.”
Armando tilted his head. The movement was minimal, almost lazy.
“You have five minutes. Or the offer expires and you go back out into the rain.”
Five minutes. I skimmed the clauses with the urgency of someone drowning. The word “obedience” appeared more than once. The generic terms unsettled me, but desperation spoke louder. The salary. The bonus. The chance to breathe without the constant weight on my chest.
The pen lay on the desk. Black. Heavy. I picked it up. My hand trembled. The tip touched the paper. I signed.
The sound of the pen scratching was dry. Final.
Armando pulled the contract toward himself, checked the signature with a quick glance, and locked it in the drawer. Only then did he truly stand.
The special chair slid back with a smooth hydraulic motion. His entire body came into view.
The air left my lungs in a single rush.
The human torso was powerful, broad, covered by the dark suit that now clearly showed itself incomplete. Below the waist the transition was impossible to process. The equine body emerged muscular, dark, covered in short, glossy coat that clashed brutally with the luxury of the office. Four long, heavy legs. Black, polished hooves that struck the wooden floor with a muffled, final sound. He was enormous. He occupied the space as if the entire room had been built to accommodate him and still came up short. His height forced me to tip my head back painfully just to meet his face. The desk that had seemed absurd before now made sense: it was proportional to him, not to me.
My brain tried to reject the image. Centaur. Monster. Impossible. A hallucination caused by exhaustion, hunger, desperation. But my eyes didn’t lie. The scent I hadn’t been able to name earlier now made nauseating sense: animal heat, warm skin, raw power contained beneath the formality of the suit.
Armando took one step. Then another. His hooves resonated against the wood deliberately, each strike echoing in the silence of the office. He rounded the desk with a calm that seemed calculated to crush me and stopped beside my chair. The size difference was overwhelming. His shadow swallowed me completely. I barely reached the height of his human chest.
Panic rose first. Cold. Sharp. Absolute. My heart slammed so hard it hurt against my ribs. My breathing turned short and uneven. I was locked in a top-floor office with a creature that shouldn’t exist, and the contract I had just signed was still warm in the drawer.
He leaned his human torso forward. Those dark eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that left no room for escape.
“Clause seventeen,” he said, voice low and controlled. “Special nature of the employer. And the part about ‘unrestricted on-site dedication and support for unconventional demands.’ You signed.”
I opened my mouth. No sound came out. My mind screamed that this wasn’t real, that I needed to stand, run for the door, take the elevator down and disappear into the rain. But my body refused to obey. It felt heavy, locked, crushed by his mere presence.
“I… this isn’t… it can’t be possible—”
“It is possible. And it is real.” His large, veined hand settled on the edge of the desk beside my shoulder. He didn’t touch me. Not yet. But the proximity was so extreme I could feel the heat radiating from him. “The contract is signed, Vera Santana. You belong to me now. To the company. And to me.”
I tried to shrink back in the chair. My legs wouldn’t respond properly. His gaze left no escape. That deep voice, the absurd size, the way he filled every inch of air around me… all of it began to transform into something else. A low, traitorous heat that was born not from the visual impact alone, but from pure intimidation. From the certainty that there was no way out. From the tone of someone who already considered me property. Panic still ruled, but beneath it, deep down, something hot and shameful began to pulse.
Armando watched every second of my reaction. The ragged breathing. The way my fingers clenched the bag until the knuckles turned white. The fine tremor I couldn’t control.
“Interesting,” he murmured. There was something almost satisfied in his voice. “The body is already learning.”
He straightened. The movement made my chest tighten again. Hooves struck the floor as he walked to a side door I hadn’t noticed. The door looked ordinary until he approached; then it became clear it had been built to accommodate his height and width. He opened it.
“The suite for trusted staff is next to my office. You start living here today. Your things will be brought tonight. There is no home left for you to return to.”
I remained seated, paralyzed. The signed contract burned in my memory. The monstrous body filled my entire peripheral vision. Fear was still the dominant emotion, but the proximity, the voice, the absolute certainty in the way he spoke of me as property… all of it left a hot, shameful trail I hated recognizing.
Armando looked at me over his shoulder. His voice came out low, final, like a sentence.
“Welcome to your new life, Vera. From now on, you obey.”
He stepped through the side door and left it open.
The corridor beyond was dark. Waiting.
I, Vera, with the contract still fresh in the drawer and my traitorous body beginning to pulse under the weight of panic, realized with cruel clarity that there was nowhere left to run.
