Corner Office
"She stops by the office to bring her husband lunch. Starts talking to the new hire. Keeps finding reasons to come back."
I meet Victoria Sullivan the same way everyone does: with fear.
She sweeps into the office on my third day, carrying a leather bag and a designer lunch container. The entire floor goes quiet. She's the CEO's wife, and everyone knows it.
What they don't know is that I have no idea who she is.
"Is Richard in?" she asks the receptionist.
I'm waiting at the copy machine, invisible in my new-hire invisibility. But when she walks past, she glances my way, and for a moment our eyes meet.
She's maybe forty-six, dressed in a tailored jacket and slacks that cost more than my monthly rent. Silver jewelry, understated. Dark hair with elegant gray streaks. And a body that the expensive clothes can't fully camouflage—full breasts, curved hips, the kind of presence that fills a room.
"You're new," she says.
"Started Monday."
"Good luck." A smile, quick and genuine, then she's gone—past the cubicles, toward the corner office.
I watch her walk away.
I can't stop watching.
Month One
Victoria comes in every Tuesday.
Lunch for Richard, who is too busy to eat with her but not too busy to eat what she brings. She sits in the waiting area outside his office for exactly seven minutes—I've timed it—before he emerges, kisses her cheek, takes the bag, and goes back to work.
She leaves every time looking like she expected nothing else.
The third Tuesday, she stops at my desk.
"Michael, right?"
I'm surprised she remembered. "Yes, ma'am."
"Ma'am." She laughs. "God, that makes me feel ancient. Victoria, please." She glances at my computer screen—a spreadsheet, nothing interesting. "Settling in okay?"
"I think so. Still learning the ropes."
"Richard runs a tight ship. But he rewards hard work." She says it like she's reciting a brochure. "If you need anything—pointers, advice—I used to work in finance myself. Before I became a professional wife."
There's something bitter in that last phrase.
"I might take you up on that."
"Please do." She hands me a card—heavy stock, elegant font. Just her name and a phone number. "I'm serious. This place can chew people up if they're not careful."
She leaves. I stare at the card for a long time.
Month Two
I text her about a budget projection I can't make sense of.
She responds within minutes: Bring it to me. Coffee, Saturday? I'll walk you through it.
We meet at a café downtown. She's in casual clothes—jeans, a flowing blouse—and she looks different. Softer. More herself.
"Let me see," she says, taking the papers. For twenty minutes she explains financial modeling in terms that actually make sense, drawing diagrams on napkins, making connections I'd missed.
"How do you know all this?" I ask.
"I was a CFO before I married Richard." She shrugs. "Then I became his accessory."
"That seems like a waste."
"That seems like a choice I made." Her eyes meet mine. "Choices have consequences. I've spent fifteen years learning that."
I want to ask more. I don't.
We finish our coffee. She insists on paying. At the door, she touches my arm.
"Same time next week? I have a feeling there's more I can teach you."
There is.
Month Three
Our Saturday coffees become a ritual.
Sometimes we talk about work. More often, we talk about everything else. Her childhood in Ohio, working her way through state school. My aimless twenties, bouncing between jobs until this one stuck. Her frustrations with being dismissed. My fears about being mediocre.
"You're not mediocre," she says firmly. "You're twenty-six. You're supposed to be figuring things out."
"What about you? Have you figured things out?"
She's quiet for a moment. "I've figured out what I don't have. Is that the same thing?"
Month Four
She invites me to her house while Richard is traveling.
"I want to show you something," she says. "A project I've been working on."
Her house is enormous—glass and stone, modern art, cold in a way that expensive things often are. She leads me to a study in the back.
"This was supposed to be my office," she says. "When we moved in, I thought I'd work from home, consult, stay in the game." She gestures around. "Now it's where I store the things Richard doesn't want to look at."
The walls are covered with degrees, awards, photographs of her accepting accolades. A shrine to who she used to be.
"Why are you showing me this?"
"Because you look at me like I'm someone." She turns to face me. "Richard looks through me. Has for years. But you—you see me. You ask questions. You listen." She steps closer. "I've been trying to figure out why that matters so much."
"And have you?"
"I think I'm afraid to answer."
Month Five
It happens in her study.
We're looking at old photographs—her at thirty, receiving an award, radiant with ambition. She's standing close, close enough that I can smell her perfume.
"You were beautiful," I say.
"Were?"
"Are." I turn to face her. "You're beautiful."
"Michael—"
"I know." I've been thinking about this moment for weeks. "I know who you are. Who Richard is. I know all the reasons this is a terrible idea."
"Then why—"
"Because I can't stop thinking about you." I reach out, tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "Because watching you sit in that waiting room every week, being ignored, makes me angrier than it should. Because you deserve someone who sees you, and I do. I see you."
She's trembling. "If Richard found out—"
"I'd lose my job. Maybe worse." I hold her gaze. "Is that what you want? For me to walk away?"
She's quiet for a long, terrible moment.
"No," she whispers.
I kiss her.
She tastes like expensive wine and desperation.
Her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer, and I back her against the wall of her forgotten achievements. She's kissing me like she's trying to remember who she is, and I'm kissing her like I want to help her find out.
"Upstairs," she breathes.
"Are you sure?"
"I haven't been sure of anything in fifteen years." She takes my hand. "Except this."
Her bedroom is vast, impersonal. She doesn't turn on the lights.
I undress her slowly, peeling away the expensive layers to find the woman beneath. Her body is full and soft—heavy breasts, curved stomach, hips that flare generous and wide. She tries to cover herself.
"Don't." I catch her hands. "Let me see you."
"I'm not young. I'm not—"
"You're everything." I kneel before her, look up at her in the darkness. "You're everything, Victoria. Let me show you."
I worship her body like she deserves. I learn what makes her gasp, what makes her moan, what makes her cry out with a voice she'd forgotten she had.
When I finally enter her, she clings to me like I'm the only real thing in her life.
Maybe I am.
After, she curls against my chest.
"This can't happen again."
"I know."
"Richard has people. If he even suspected—"
"I know."
"My whole life is built around this marriage. The house. The investments. Twenty years of—"
"Victoria." I tilt her face up to mine. "I know. I'm not asking for promises. I'm not asking for forever. I just—" I kiss her forehead. "I wanted you to feel wanted. Even if it's just once."
She's quiet for a long time.
"What if I want it to be more than once?"
The Next Six Months
We're careful.
Never at the office. Rarely at her house. A hotel downtown with rooms by the hour, where nobody asks questions. Coffee shops in neighborhoods Richard would never visit. A rental car she pays cash for.
It's not enough. It's everything.
She comes alive in those stolen hours. She laughs freely. She talks about leaving—about finally pursuing her own life. She touches me like she can't believe I'm real.
"I love you," she says one afternoon. "I know I'm not supposed to. I know this is messy. But I do."
"I love you too."
"What do we do about it?"
I don't have an answer.
Month Twelve
Richard finds out.
Not about me specifically—just that she's been seeing someone. A private investigator, a credit card slip, the mundane machinery of catching cheaters.
He doesn't confront her. He doesn't yell. He files for divorce and has her served at the house she helped pay for.
She calls me that night, crying.
"It's over. Everything's over."
"No," I say. "One thing is over. Something else is just starting."
Two Years Later
Victoria Sullivan becomes Victoria Chen—she takes back her maiden name. She starts consulting again, and within a year she's busier than she was at twenty-five.
I quit the firm. Take a job at a smaller company where nobody knows my history. Where nobody cares that my partner is twenty years older.
We buy a house together. Not big, not flashy. Just ours.
"Do you ever regret it?" she asks one morning, coffee in hand. "Everything you gave up?"
I look at her—silver hair loose around her shoulders, body soft and warm in her robe, eyes that see me the way I've always wanted to be seen.
"I didn't give up anything," I say. "I just finally found what I was looking for."
She smiles.
The corner office never knew what it was missing.