The only thing that saved me was that Zane had not changed at all in the professional field, and I perfectly remembered his way of doing and his reasoning.
He too, after a start filled with distrust and difficulty connected to dealing with me, especially calling me in his office to ask me for documents or anything, had now become very calm and had returned to trusting me like he did before, when we worked together.
"Go back home. I will be here for another couple of hours. Tomorrow the customer will be here, and I have not yet found a storyboard that I liked. I don't really know what to present. "
"Are you sure you don't need me?" I was so convinced that I was going to stay late, that I had dinner delivered to the office.
"Absolutely."
"Ok. Have you already had dinner?"
“I haven't even had the time, but it doesn't matter. I have other things to think about now."
"Okay, see you tomorrow."
"Yup. Bye,” Zane snorted tiredly.
I had told myself a thousand times that Zane was only my boss and that everything we had shared in the past no longer mattered.
Yet when I went to the small kitchen to get my delivery food, I could not help thinking about Zane's tired face and the fact that he really needed to have some dinner. So, I took my bag and went back to him.
The door was open, and I entered without knocking.
"Have you forgotten something?" He asked me a little stiff.
"Since I did not know I did not have to stay, I had Chinese food delivered. I will give it to you, so at least eat something. The meeting with the team might also last until late at night and it is not good to be on an empty stomach."
"There is no need. You can go, Audrey," he tried to get rid of me.
"I say it for you, Zane. You have to be ready tonight. You cannot afford to let this customer go. It is too important for you. Plus, I ordered crab claws!"
Zane did not seem happy at all.
"You don't like crab claws anymore? You once loved them, 'I was trying to understand.
"Oh, no, don't worry. He still likes them," a voice broke out behind me, scaring the living daylights out of me.
I turned and found myself facing Ryan.
Now I understood Zane's attitude. He was not alone.
I tried to apologize with my eyes, but now the damage was done.
"So, I was right. You already knew each other! “Ryan exclaimed triumphantly.
"A long time ago we worked together for a short time," Zane replied dryly.
"I don't understand why keep it secret."
Neither Zane nor I answered.
"Did you have an affair?" Ryan tried to guess, making chills run down my spine.
Zane had been clear: nobody had to know our past.
"I'm leaving," I pretended to be offended by that insinuation, but Ryan stopped me.
"Tell me the truth."
I looked at Zane and realized that I was running the risk of being fired.
"As Zane said, we worked together, but there was nothing else between us, because I was married at the time," I replied, mixing truth and fiction.
"You were? So, you're not anymore?” Seductive Ryan had come forward again. In two weeks, I had noticed several times how he loved to bewitch and get favors from company employees. Not that he slipped into embarrassing or compromising situations, but meanwhile he always tried.
"No," I replied irritably.
"What's the fool who let you go?" Ryan began to flirt, under Zane's fiery gaze.
"And who says it was he who left her?" My ex interposed.
"So, whose fault is it?" Ryan asked.
"Sometimes the person who ends a relationship isn't the real culprit. Often it is the person next to her who leads her to that gesture," I replied, trying to hold back my grief. I had left Zane, but it was he who had no more room for me. However, I would have been a liar not to admit that I too had my faults. Sometimes my silence had been a double-edged sword and the more I stayed in that house, the more past episodes continued to emerge, seen in hindsight with the wisdom of the present.
If I had been more sincere and had not hidden anything from him, would I still be with Zane today? Or would our marriage have ended anyway?
I had left Zane without giving him any more opportunities, dragged by Rick, impulsiveness, and pain.
Now I realized the damage I had done.
My mind had been so clouded by pain and loneliness that I did not think hard enough and did not have the courage to tell Zane the truth.
"I think that when a marriage ends, it is always the fault of both, never one," I added, trying to control the sadness that was tearing my chest.
I looked at Zane for a moment and read the accusation of treason in his eyes. It was obvious that he considered me the one and only guilty of the end of our relationship.
I would have liked to tell him the truth, to tell him what I never said before, but Ryan's presence stopped me.
"But it doesn't matter anymore! It is water under the bridge. Now the only thing that matters is that I am here, and I just want Zane to be satisfied with my work,” I exclaimed, feigning joy and breaking the silence that had been created. "That is all I ask."
"You must have no doubts about this. Zane has never been this relaxed since the time you got here," Ryan replied amused. "Audrey, why don't you stay here tonight too?"
"No!" Said Zane, still gloomy. That speech had put him in an awfully bad mood. "Audrey, you can go. And take away the delivery food."
"No, I'll leave that to you. Remember that I am your personal assistant and it is my job to never let you miss anything. You have a storyboard to think about, not what has happened or happened in the past, " I reminded him, making him realize that I would not allow our working relationship to be affected by the end of our marriage.
Zane understood and nodded.
12
Zane
The choice of storyboard was a disaster.
All I was doing was thinking about the discussion from the night before with Audrey and Ryan. I had not slept at all because of that and had not been as attentive to my job as I should have been.
Ryan also asked me if I was ok because he saw I was upset.
Luckily, I managed to convince him that it was the storyboard's fault and not Audrey's.
That morning had started in the worst way.
Audrey also seemed to have spent a sleepless night, probably spent crying, since her eyes were swollen and red, because of the old demons of our past together.
However, that day she wore a red dress that left her shoulders uncovered and a décolleté so evident that it made it difficult for me to concentrate, with her standing next to me.
Finally, there was the meeting with the president of the car manufacturer, who had reacted rather badly to our proposals, giving me an ultimatum with very tight deadlines, so much so that I had called a new meeting in a few minutes.
"The room is ready for the team meeting," Audrey warned me shortly after. "Everyone is waiting for you."
"I want you to come to the meeting this time," I instinctively decided. In the past, Audrey had often shown that she had excellent ideas and I hoped with all my might that her presence could help me.
"Why?"
I need you.
"An extra brain can be of great help in finding a suitable solution."
"Agreed."
In the meeting room, everyone was very agitated.
The customer asked for something original, sexy but suitable for the family, since the topic was a minivan for large families ...
All the proposals made so far, starting with the car trip with the whole family and leading to the fake theft by the son of the cheerful family, devised to go and have fun with his girlfriend, had always been inappropriate or boring for the customer.
In an instant, my team came up with new ideas that I discarded a priori, without stating it out loud.
I did not know what to do, and Audrey seemed more f
ocused on the client's catalog than on displaying the new storyboards.
"Audrey, do you want to share what you're doing with us?" I reproached her, annoyed by her lack of attention.
"Is that what you want?" She replied, leaving everyone present dumbfounded. Nobody had ever dared to answer me like that.
"Enlighten me up," I hissed sarcastically.
"Okay," she replied with a shrug and a too shrewd and determined look to divert my attention from the fact that she would soon drop a bomb. “These storyboards are terrible. They are all boring, reinterpretations of previously seen advertising and lacking that hook that would excite anyone. "
In a moment, a chorus of protests arose over her brazenness and I had to hold back a laugh and hold back my employees.
"Do you have any idea?"
"Maybe."
“We can't wait to hear your idea. Go on!"
“To start, there is already a fundamental error in those presented. The car is always driven by a man and is seen from the outside as it runs on the winding country roads or in city traffic, where, however, absurdly, there is never traffic. Not very credible!"
She had just dismantled 80% of the work done so far and everyone looked at her very in dismay.
"Go on."
"The customer has created this rather expensive minivan with customizable interiors that, in my opinion, this is exactly what he wants. In addition, he has three daughters. All girls."
"So?"
"I think, he followed the directions of his daughters, he loves very much by what I read on the tabloids."
"So, would you like to give more space to women? Even if men always buy cars and never women?"
"I think, originality would be precisely in revolutionizing the buying approach. I was thinking about a scene with a woman who is a mother, daughter, and worker. An independent woman with a thousand commitments. Instead of dwelling on relaxation and comfort, I would focus on the hectic life of a woman who must divide herself between her various commitments."
"Introducing a routine day," I was beginning to understand.
"Exactly. The woman who brings her children to school, who accompanies her sick mother to a doctor’s appointment, who goes shopping ... All extremely heavy commitments, but facilitated by the equipment and optional features of the car, that warns her when there is traffic, has a screen for children to distract them with cartoons, has easy exit for the elderly or those with walking difficulties, has a luggage compartment door that opens by itself when you arrive with your arms full of groceries ... "
"And where does the sexy part fit in?"
"Let's add a teenage daughter to the family, who goes to make out in her boyfriend's car, but being uncomfortable and with the heating broken, they eventually move to the minivan where they are welcomed by spacious padded seats, heating, background music and so on ... until the mother finally catches them. "
His idea was fantastic, but difficult to implement in thirty seconds of advertising.
However, it would have been enough to accelerate the speed of the film. That would have increased the feeling of frenzy.
"So, folks, I hope you took notes because we just found the right idea. I want the full storyboard on my desk by tomorrow," I exclaimed enthusiastically, to my team who had fallen silent.
I laid my eyes on Audrey and her excited smile blew my heart out of my chest.
I did not like what I was feeling at all.
Looking at her made my heartbeat faster, which would only lead me to maddening pain.
I was familiar with that kind of pain and I knew how much it hurt.
13
Audrey
I was in seventh heaven.
My work at the Thunder Company was going very well.
If at first everyone kept me at a distance, now many of my colleagues had opened up and finally made me feel like one of them.
Even close contact with Zane was starting to become a habit and all that restlessness that I felt every time I entered his office or felt his gaze settle on me, was starting to disappear, leaving room for that same trust and confidence we had the first months at the Kreinberg Company, where we had met and worked for the same team.
Despite this, however, Zane's blue eyes still had the power stop my breathing.
I had become good at hiding my discomfort, but when our eyes collided with each other, I always felt the ground under my feet destabilize and give out on me.
Getting lost in him, in the hardened line of his face, which then softened every time he smiled or was excited about a successful negotiation, made my heartbeat ricochet all over my body.
Sometimes, I felt the desire to get close to him again, to be able to touch him, to smell the scent of his skin...
No! I could not! That would have meant going back in time.
Going back to one of the most beautiful periods of my life, but which then turned into a grief from which I had not yet recovered.
I could not risk having those feelings and emotions again for Zane!
I could not afford the luxury of letting myself be carried away by certain memories, knowing that these would only reopen wounds that had never healed completely.
Zane still had great power over me, and I felt too vulnerable to believe I could let myself relax with him, without risking losing the little inner balance I had left in case he refused.
Those thoughts made my blood tremble and freeze in my veins.
Determined to forget the past and discount my feelings as I had done in those years, I concentrated on my work and went to the archive to get the files that Zane had urgently requested from me that morning.
This time it took quite a long time because the documentation had been filed in the wrong sector.
When I got back to my desk, it was already late, so I rushed to his office, without even knocking.
What I saw was so shocking that everything I held by my hands slipped on the ground, without me even noticing it.
The only thing my eyes kept staring in shock was Trisha’s hand, the woman I had seen the first time I went to Zane’s office, as she ran over my ex-husband's bare chest, who hurriedly removed his tie and buttoned up his shirt as soon as he saw me.
"Zane, the tie! And don’t you knock anymore?" The woman was immediately annoyed.
"Sorry," I sputtered in complete embarrassment.
Only when I saw Trisha's hands detach from Zane's neck was I able to look away and concentrate on the disaster at my feet.
I hurriedly leaned over and picked up all the sheets scattered on the ground.
However, I could not even make sense of what I was doing.
My only active sense was my hearing and was totally focused on the voices of those present.
"Zane, put on the tie I got for you. I assure you it is better than the one you are wearing," Trisha scolded him.
"I don't have time now. I'm busy."
"I haven't seen you for two weeks and you make yourself very scarce on the phone."
"I know and I apologize. I was really busy. I've already explained it to you."
"Ok, but tonight I want you all for me. You promised me."
"Yup."
"Remember: tonight, at seven o'clock. At my home. With the tie I just gave you."
"You bet, Trisha," Zane chuckled slightly, though I had not missed a tinge of nervousness in his voice.
I quickly looked up at the two and again I felt another punch in the stomach.
Zane's mouth was on Trisha's.
They were kissing passionately, while his hands ran down her sides and then ended up embracing her and holding her close.
Although I had thought hundreds of times about the fact that Zane would have had a love life in those four years, in reality I had never really thought about the consequences.
Not even in my imagination had I ever seen Zane kiss another woman like that.
But what completely broke me was myself. Inside me I felt only anger at having just seen my husband in the arms of a
nother woman, and so much pain for what my heart considered a betrayal.
Audrey, remember that you are divorced! Zane is your ex- husband! Ex! You are no longer married, and he owes you nothing. Least of all loyalty!
It was as if my inside was a huge short circuit.
On one side, there was my heart wounded and betrayed, while on the other, my brain kept telling me to pay no attention to what my eyes had seen.
However, something inside me had broken and my thoughts did not reach my heart.
14
Zane
I would have been a liar if I hadn't admitted that I enjoyed deeply seeing the shock on Audrey's face when she found me with my shirt partially unbuttoned and Trisha's greedy and intrusive hands sliding across my chest while I tried to convince her that the tie I was wearing was preferable to the colorful one she had brought me and that she was trying to get me to wear.
I knew that Trisha had the ability to turn any situation into a test of her seductive and often inappropriate talent.
Yet in my most forbidden fantasies it was us who flirted on my desk and the unexpected arrival of Audrey who was shocked and hurt as she witnessed that.
I never thought that could happen.
It was Audrey's wide-eyed eyes and the falling of the papers I had been waiting for, that made me kiss Trisha so ardently.
Yes, I wanted to make Audrey suffer, as she did with me.
Even though we were no longer married and probably no longer interested in her in that respect, I wished with all my strength that she would suffer even a tenth of what I had gone through, after discovering her extramarital relationship with Rick.
I wanted her to taste even for a moment all the bitterness and pain that had swept me away and destroyed me four years earlier.
When Audrey finally finished collecting all the papers and Trisha left, I could not take my eyes off my ex-wife.
She kept her eyes down, away from me, but her red and drawn face made me realize that there was an endless turmoil inside her.
The Sweet Poison of Revenge Page 5