Two Little Secrets From My Boss

Chapter 148

Maya’s POV

The argument happens at three a.m., in the dark of my room, with a ghost who won't stay buried.

I'm sitting on the floor with my back against the bed, knees drawn to my chest, the flash drive clutched in my hand like a rosary. The moonlight cuts through the curtains in silver ribbons, illuminating nothing, revealing everything.

They're good people, Lora.

I don't say the words aloud. She hears me anyway—my sister, my ghost, the voice that has guided me through five years of grief and rage and singular purpose.

Silence stretches through the darkness. Then her voice comes, sharp as it ever was in life.

Good people don't kill innocent women.

What if you're wrong? I press my forehead to my knees. What if I'm wrong? What if he didn't—

I'm dead, Maya. The words slice through my protests. I'm dead, and someone is responsible. You promised me. You knelt at my grave and you promised.

I know. I know I promised, but...

But what? Her voice turns cold, accusing. You're falling for one of them? You're forgetting me for a man with kind eyes and a pretty smile?

I'm not forgetting you. The denial rises fierce and desperate. I could never forget you.

Then finish it. The command carries the weight of a gravestone. Destroy them. Make him pay. That's what you promised. That's why you're here.

But the children...

What about the children? They have a mother. They have a father. They have every advantage in the world. They'll survive. You survived with far less.

That's not the same.

It's exactly the same. You're making excuses because you're weak. Because you let them get too close. Because you forgot what he took from us.

I haven't forgotten.

Haven't you? When's the last time you visited my grave, Maya? When's the last time you looked at my photograph and felt the rage that's supposed to keep you moving? You're losing yourself. You're losing me. And for what? A family that would destroy you if they knew what you really are?

I press my palms against my eyes until I see stars. The voice fades, but the weight remains—crushing, suffocating, the accumulated burden of five years pressing down on my chest until I can barely breathe.

Five years of transforming myself into someone Lora wouldn't recognize—a weapon, a shadow, a hollow vessel filled with nothing but purpose.

If I'm wrong, if Xander didn't cause her death, then what has all of it been for? What have I become?

A monster. I've become a monster for nothing.

The days that follow blur into a fog of mechanical smiles and hollow efficiency. I move through the household like a ghost myself, performing tasks I no longer remember agreeing to.

The family moves around me—happy, healing, utterly unaware of the serpent in their midst—and every moment of their joy feels like a knife twisting in my chest.

I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see Lora's face—not as she was in life, but as I imagine her in death. Broken. Betrayed. Waiting for justice that I promised and may never deliver.

I can't eat. My clothes hang looser, and I catch Margaret watching me with concern I don't deserve.

"Are you feeling alright, dear?" she asks over breakfast. "You look pale."

"Just tired," I say. The lie comes easily now. "It's been an intense few weeks."

"Make sure you're taking care of yourself. We need you healthy."

You don't need me at all, I think. You need me gone. You just don't know it yet.

I'm unraveling, thread by thread, and I can't stop it.

Archie finds me in the garden at dusk.

The sun is bleeding orange and pink across the horizon, painting the world in colors that feel too beautiful for my current state of mind.

I'm sitting on the stone bench beneath the old oak—Daphne's spot, I've learned—staring at nothing, feeling nothing, trying to remember why any of this matters.

I don't hear him approach. Don't register his presence until he's beside me, close enough that I could reach out and touch him if I let myself.

"You're not okay." His voice is gentle, concerned. "You haven't been okay for days. Talk to me."

"I'm fine."

"Maya." He sits beside me on the bench. "I know what fine looks like on you, and this isn't it. Something's wrong. Something's been wrong since before Salazar was arrested, and it's getting worse."

"It's nothing. Just processing everything that's happened."

"That's not what this is. You look like you haven't slept in days. You're not eating—don't think I haven't noticed." He turns to face me, and I make the mistake of meeting his eyes. "You disappear into your room every chance you get, and when you're present, you're not really here. Whatever this is, whatever you're carrying—you don't have to carry it alone."

The words rise in my throat. Unbidden. Unstoppable.

I'm a liar. I came here to destroy this family. I've been gathering evidence against the man you love like a brother—financial records, private correspondence, everything I need to tear his life apart.

Everything between us is built on deception. Every smile, every conversation, every moment that made you think you knew me—all of it was calculated.

I'm not who you think I am, and if you knew the truth, you'd never look at me the way you're looking at me now.

I open my mouth.

"I'm fine," I whisper instead. "Just tired."

He doesn't believe me. I can see it in his eyes—the doubt, the worry, the desperate need to help me even though I don't deserve it.

His instincts have been screaming at him for weeks. He's seen the gaps, the inconsistencies, all the places where my story doesn't quite hold together.

But he looks at me anyway. Like I'm worth saving. Like whatever I'm hiding couldn't possibly be worse than watching me destroy myself.

"Maya." My name breaks on his lips. "Please."

The word undoes me.

I look at him and something inside me cracks wide open. He's so close. Close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his hazel eyes, the worry etched into the lines around his mouth.

"I can't," I whisper. "Archie, I can't tell you."

"Then don't tell me." His hand rises, hovers near my face like he's asking permission. "Just let me be here. Let me—"

I close the distance before he can finish.

My mouth crashes into his with five weeks of suppressed want behind it. He freezes for one heartbeat—shocked, maybe, or afraid this isn't real—and then his hands are in my hair and he's kissing me back like I'm oxygen and he's been drowning.

The taste of him floods my senses—coffee and something sweeter, something that's just him. His lips are softer than I imagined, but there's nothing soft about the way he kisses me—desperate, demanding, like he's been starving for this as long as I have.

My fingers twist into his hair, pulling him closer. He groans against my mouth, and the sound sends heat flooding through my entire body. His hands slide from my hair to my jaw, tilting my face so he can deepen the kiss, his tongue tracing the seam of my lips until I open for him.

I'm shaking. We both are.

He pulls me onto his lap without breaking the kiss, and I go willingly, straddling him on the stone bench, my knees pressing into cold rock on either side of his hips. His hands find my waist, fingers digging in like he's afraid I'll disappear if he doesn't hold on tight enough.

"Maya." He breathes my name into my mouth. I answer by kissing him harder.

His teeth catch my bottom lip—a gentle scrape that makes me gasp—and then he's trailing fire down my jaw, my throat, the sensitive spot behind my ear that makes my whole body arch into him.

This is wrong. This is so wrong. I'm lying to him with every breath, every touch, every sound I make against his skin.

But I can't stop.

His mouth finds mine again, and the kiss turns slower, deeper. The frantic edge softens into something more devastating—tenderness threaded through the hunger, care woven into the want.

He kisses me like I matter. Like I'm precious. Like I'm someone worth holding onto.

That's what finally breaks me.

I pull back, gasping for air, and realize my cheeks are wet. Tears I didn't feel falling, streaming down my face while I kissed a man who deserves so much better than what I am.

Archie looks wrecked—undone in a way I've never seen him. His careful control has shattered, leaving behind something raw and vulnerable and achingly human.

His thumb brushes a tear from my cheek, and the gentleness of it nearly destroys me. "Maya..."

I can't do this. Everything has changed. Everything is worse.

I turn and walk away before Archie can see me completely fall apart.