Part 3My Younger Boss Still Wants In

Cameron didn't take long to arrive.

Viola immediately dropped her voice, calling him "Boss," before biting her lower lip and staring at her shoes. She played the part of the bullied, innocent victim to perfection.

"There's no need to make things difficult for my girls, Maddie," Cameron said. He frowned slightly, his tone as casual as if we were discussing the weather.

Ah. I knew this scene well.

Before I divorced Cameron, he had said similar things to me more times than I could count.

We were married for three years. When he was promoted to VP of Sales, the boundaries between him and his assistant, Viola, became incredibly blurred.

I had asked him to transfer her.

He thought I was being archaic and ridiculous.

"You sit in a sterile office all day," he had argued. "Sales is out there entertaining clients. We look out for each other. You don't have to be so threatened by a twenty-something girl."

Then came the night he got too drunk at a client dinner. I drove to pick him up. Viola was in the backseat, "taking care" of him. On the ride back, she suddenly let out a sharp, breathless "Ah." When she got out of the car, I saw her short skirt had ridden dangerously high, exposing a flash of pale, bare thigh.

I am a low-energy person.

I didn't have the energy to play detective, and I certainly didn't have the energy to scream and shout. I simply handed him divorce papers.

Cameron had been dripping with sarcasm.

"Maddie, if this is some manipulative tactic to get me to beg, you've miscalculated. I don't respond to threats."

"You're a divorced woman in her thirties. You're rigid, you're boring. If you can find a man who has even half my credentials, I'll get on my knees at the front door of this building and grovel."

The divorce was finalized quickly.

Unfortunately, we still worked for the same conglomerate. I had to see him every day.

He and Viola moved as a unit. He would purposely dote on her in front of me, playing the white knight at every opportunity. His excuse? "She’s my team. Of course I protect my own."

I knew people in the office whispered about me. They marveled at my tolerance. They wondered why I didn't just quit.

If this were five years ago, I would have. I would have felt too humiliated, too suffocated, and I would have run away.

But I was thirty-three now.

Age had gifted me a certain kind of grounded resilience. I had bled to climb the ranks to Director of Finance. Why the hell should I be the one to leave?

They were the ones who should be embarrassed. Not me.

Now, Cameron tilted his head, that familiar mocking smile playing on his lips.

"Whatever issues we have between us, dragging my innocent staff into it is just petty. Don't you think?"

I kept my face perfectly blank. "Enforcing company policy is being petty? The entire financial structure of this corporation was designed just to bully your assistant? Cameron, are you losing your grip on reality?"

He stared at me for a few seconds, then chuckled.

"Fine. We'll let the new CEO make the call at tomorrow's executive meeting. But Maddie..." He lowered his voice, dropping it into a register that was dripping with arrogant certainty. "Trying to use this kind of pathetic stunt to get my attention? Honestly, it's beneath you."