My Right Foot Entered First, So I Was Sacrificed

When I pushed open the office door, my right foot went in first, the way it always did.

Aria Fox sprang up off the sofa, clapping her hands.

Harry, I guessed right again this time. It was the right foot!

I froze where I stood, my fingers instinctively tightening around the proposal I'd pulled three all-nighters to finish.

Aria sidled up next to Harry Gilbert and prodded his arm, urging him on.

"A bet's a bet. No backing out."

"I order you to go shred the file in her hands."

The words had barely left her mouth before Harry stood and pulled the thing out of my grip.

He flipped on the paper shredder. The thin pages hung over the mouth of it.

I clamped a hand down on his arm.

"The partners arrive tomorrow. Don't gamble with the company's interests."

The next second, he let go.

The machine swallowed the file whole and spat it out in shreds.

Harry turned his head to look at me, the coldness in his eyes too thick to melt.

"She's a lively girl. What's wrong with humoring her a little?"

"I promise, this is the last time."

The same thing, again.

I let out a scoff, the hand at my side trembling faintly.

Ever since Aria Fox joined the company, Harry had gone along with her on countless ridiculous bets.

Every time, he took something that mattered to me and destroyed it as the stake, without ever asking.

My newly reissued ID, the medicine I kept for low blood sugar emergencies, the bracelet I'd bought with three months of saved-up salary.

And afterward he'd toss out that airy promise that there wouldn't be a next time.

Which is why, a month ago, I'd already handed in my resignation.

From now on, I would not be the clueless chip in their games anymore.

1.

Harry leaned back into his chair, as if he weren't the one who had just fed my proposal into the shredder.

"Before tomorrow morning, I want to see the latest version on my desk."

"I know you can do it."

That line, again.

When Aria Fox rubbed her feet raw in her heels, he drove her to and from work for a solid month.

When I broke my leg and hobbled around on crutches in a cast, he said I was too slow and told me to take the subway.

The moment Aria Fox so much as sneezed, he booked her an appointment with the top specialist at the hospital.

When I had the flu and my fever hit a hundred and four, half out of my mind, he told me to order some medicine on the food delivery app.

Every single time, he said the same thing to me in the same tone.

"Lena, I know you can handle it."

"Aria isn't like you. She's spoiled and willful and can't hold it together. If I don't keep an eye on her, sooner or later something will go wrong."

I used to think it was trust. Only now do I see it for what it is. He just doesn't care.

I stayed at the office until the small hours before I finally scraped together the latest version of the proposal.

When I walked out the front doors, everything outside was pitch-black. Even the streetlights were dead.

It was too late for anyone to accept a ride request, so I opened up my chat with Harry.

"Are you asleep? Could you come pick me up?"

The message sank like a stone. I waited half an hour and got nothing back.

I figured he must have gone to bed early.

So I turned around, scanned a shared bike, and forced myself to pedal for forty minutes in the freezing wind.

By the time I locked the bike up, my ten fingers were frozen stiff as carrots.

But back home, the light in the study was still on.

I couldn't make out what was being said, only the laughter spilling out.

Harry had it on speaker, and on the other end was Aria Fox.

"Don't you forget what you promised me."

"Relax. I won't forget."

When he saw me, the smile on his face slowly faded.

"I'll hang up now. Get to bed early. If you can't get up tomorrow morning, you don't have to come in. I'll fill in your attendance for you."

I took off my coat and hung my bag on the rack.

Bending down to change my shoes, I remembered a day last month when I'd forgotten to clock in.

When HR came to me about it, Harry happened to be right there.

In front of everyone, he tore the makeup paperwork I'd submitted to shreds.

"A bad memory is no excuse for a mistake."

"This counts as one day of unexcused absence. Consider it a lesson."

The HR rep's gaze lingered on me and then on the wedding ring on his hand.

In the end, all she could manage was a stiff little line.

"Mr. Gilbert really is impartial."

Harry had never once tried to hide our relationship.

On my very first day at the company, he'd announced to everyone that we were husband and wife.

Some employee below wasn't happy about it.

"Another one who got in through the back door."

The voice wasn't loud, but everyone there heard it clearly.

Harry swept his gaze across the room, sharp, and what he said gave no quarter.

"I won't let personal ties affect my judgment."

"If anything, I'll hold Lena Swanson to a higher standard than anyone else."

"At this company, there is only ever a chain of command."

And he meant it.

He handed me the most work, squeezed my project timelines, and dumped every difficult, hard-to-please client on me all at once.

I could only grit my teeth and take it, not daring to breathe a single complaint.

But right now, all of a sudden, I didn't want to take it anymore.

As I turned, Harry was leaning against the doorframe of the study, the look behind his gold-rimmed glasses soft as water.

But what he said sent the warmth I'd only just managed to recover draining right back out of me.

"Aria still doesn't have a solid footing at the company."

"That project you're running right now, just hand it over to her."

I opened my mouth, and my throat, raw from the cold wind, hurt like I was swallowing knives.

"I won't agree to it."

The project was already in its final stages.

Handing it over now would mean everything I'd worked for these past weeks was for nothing.

He let out a short laugh, looking at me the way you'd look at a child who didn't know any better.

"I figured that'd be your reaction."

He opened the refrigerator and took out a chestnut cake.

The familiar logo on top made my eyes sting.

That shop was almost a two-hour drive from the office.

Because I loved it, Harry used to buy me one every week.

After Aria came along, the cakes stopped.

So he still remembered.

He carefully peeled back the packaging for me.

"Aria went all the way to the south side of the city to buy it, to thank you."

My hand froze on the spoon wrapper, and I looked up at him.

"The two of you went together?"

Harry nodded, scooped out a piece, and pushed it into my mouth.

His tone left no room for argument.

"Since you've eaten her thank-you gift, the project's settled, then."

I grabbed a napkin and spat the cake out.

Harry's face darkened.

Before he could speak, I pointed at the notch in the cake.

The moment the packaging came off, I'd noticed the whole chestnut on top was missing.

"Thanking me means feeding me what she left in her mouth?"

Harry didn't see anything wrong with it at all.

"Aria bet me you'd refuse."

"She just ate her winnings early. The result's the same either way."

He set down the spoon and added quietly,

"And it proves it. You really are as selfish as she said."

Selfish.

Those two words pressed down on my shoulders like a mountain.

The cake left in my mouth was so cloyingly sweet it made me feel sick.

I threw the whole cake away right in front of Harry, rinsed my mouth out several times over,

then shut the bathroom door.

Shutting out, too, that line he'd worn thin from saying.

"She lost her brother. Would it kill you to give a little?"

The moment the hot water came down, the exhaustion in my body wrapped around me completely, like a rising tide.

I remembered the first time I'd stopped him from lying in the same hospital bed as Aria. He'd called me selfish then, too.

A year ago, the eldest son of the Fox family had gone off a cliff racing on the winding mountain road.

By the time he reached the hospital, the window to save him had already passed.

Outside the operating room, Aria collapsed against Harry, sobbing.

"Harry, my brother's left me."

Harry's eyes reddened as he patted her back to soothe her.

"He may have left you, but I won't."

"Connor Fox was my best friend. From now on, I'll look after you in his place."

Jonathan and Vivian took his hands too, their mouths full of thanks and relief.

I stepped forward to pat Aria's shoulder, wanting to comfort her, but she slipped away from me without making it obvious.

They held each other so tightly there was no room left for anyone else to get near.

In the end, Aria cried herself into a faint in Harry's arms, her hand still gripping the hem of his shirt so hard no one could pry it loose.

Harry lifted her up, laid her gently on the hospital bed, and then made to lie down beside her.

Something in me went hollow, and I reached out to stop him.

"This isn't really appropriate."

He turned to look at me, brows drawn tight.

"At a time like this, you've still got that man-and-woman nonsense on your mind."

"Lena, don't be so selfish."

The cold in his eyes pinned me where I stood.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aria's eyes darting wildly beneath her lids.

She was faking it.

But I didn't call her out. I even considerately closed the door of the room for the two of them.

The draft in the hallway blew straight through me and left me cold all over.

In that moment, it hit me.

Aria weighed far more in Harry's heart than I had ever imagined.

As I came out of the bathroom, a message popped up on my phone.

"The divorce papers are drawn up and sent to your email."

Harry was standing in the doorway, I didn't know since when.

"Who's messaging you this late?"

I pressed the screen dark, my tone flat.

"Just spam."

The next morning at work, I found that the proposal on my computer had been deleted.

Wiped clean. Not even a copy left in the recycle bin.

When the conference room door opened again, cheerful talk about a successful partnership drifted out.

No surprise there. The project had gone to Gilbert Corp.

Everyone crowded around Aria Fox, asking how she'd cracked such a tough nut.

Aria glanced at me, smug.

"You have to give the client what they want, of course. Figure out how they operate."

"Not like some people, who only know how to grind away and never adapt."

While I'd been running myself ragged tracking down what the client needed, she'd been lounging in Harry Gilbert's office playing games.

While I'd been pulling all-nighters on the proposal, she'd been swiping Harry's card on the most expensive spa treatments.

Harry told me once to go easy on her, and now she actually believed she'd done all of this herself.

I snapped the pen in my hand and shot to my feet.

Harry came striding over from across the room, already furious.

"Lena Swanson!"

He flung a stack of documents in my face.

The sharp edge of the paper cut a thin line across my skin, small but stinging.

"What have you been doing all day? You can't even get a simple data check right."

"This company isn't a place for you to slack off and coast."

I looked at where his finger was pointing. It wasn't even the section I was responsible for.

Harry drew a deep breath and tapped the table with his forefinger.

"Starting today, your position goes to Aria Fox."

"You're demoted to a regular employee. Move your desk out to the main floor."

I looked at him coldly, then suddenly laughed.

So he wasn't just stealing my work. He was using me as a stepping stone to lift Aria up.

This time he'd given her everything.

My heart felt like a hand had closed hard around it.

For once, I nodded, obedient.

"Fine. I'll move right now."

Tomorrow was the day I officially left.

Packing up early meant I'd walk out lighter when the time came.

Harry followed it up, announcing loudly.

"To celebrate landing the project, we're having a celebration dinner tonight at the Marlowe Hotel."

"Aria's already arranged the seating. Everyone knock off early today."

The room burst into cheers.

That evening, all the employees took their assigned seats.

I was a little slow packing up, so by the time I got there the banquet hall was nearly full.

Aria sat right beside Harry, on his right.

Every dish in the bowl in front of her had been picked out for her by Harry himself.

"The bones aren't cleaned out of this fish."

"My fault, I was careless. Eat this piece, there aren't any."

"I want some of that beef."

"There's garlic in it. You won't like it."

I watched for a moment, then followed the name cards to the seat in the farthest corner.

It was the most out-of-the-way spot, and the one furthest from Harry.

By the time the dishes had gone around the table and reached me, only scraps were left.

I set down my chopsticks and drank a few sips of water.

By the end of it, my stomach, which hadn't given me trouble in a long time, was cramping with hunger.

Someone sighed out loud.

"Some people make a pretty pathetic CEO's wife."

"If I were her, I'd have handed over the position ages ago. Clinging to it this long, she's got a hide like a fortress wall."

I gripped the glass tighter, my knuckles going white.

I'd just opened my mouth to say something when a full glass of red wine came pouring down over my head.

One look from Aria, and everyone at the table swallowed the gasp in their throats.

The cold wine ran down my cheek to my collar, soaking the front of my dress.

She leaned close to my ear, her voice pitched so only I could hear.

"Care to make a bet with me?"

I didn't look away.

"Bet what?"

She traded her glass for another and swirled the deep red inside.

"Bet on who Harry checks on first when he gets here. I'm betting it's me."

The words were barely out before she flung the wine into her own face.

Then she let her leg buckle and dropped to the floor.

"Lena, what are you doing?"

Every eye in the room turned to us.

Harry came striding toward the sound.

He pushed through the crowd without sparing me a glance.

He stripped off his suit jacket and draped it over Aria, then took her arm and helped her up.

"What happened here?"

Two clean lines of tears slid down Aria's face. In her hand she clutched a bracelet, snapped into two pieces.

"I only came over to make a little bet with Lena, and she threw wine at me without a word, then shoved me to the ground."

"Harry, what do I do, this was the last thing my brother left me before he died"

The disgust in Harry's eyes nearly took on a shape of its own, and his hand came down hard across the side of my head.

"Apologize."

Blood beaded at the corner of my mouth, and my head rang.

Aria laid her hand on his arm again.

"She lost the bet, and whoever loses has to finish the drinks on the table."

"If Lena can do it, I'll forgive her."

I followed where she pointed.

Ten glasses, lined up in a row.

Every one of them filled to the brim.

She'd had this ready all along.

Harry pushed me toward them.

"Drink."

He didn't ask what the bet was, or why I was soaked in wine.

Aria's words from a moment ago came back to me.

"You've already lost."

I never had a chance of winning this game.

Give in until the end, and she loses a brother while I lose a husband.

My stomach clenched, twist after twist of pain.

Someone started egging me on.

"Come on, drink up. Don't kill the mood on a happy day like this."

Aria softened her voice.

"Maybe Lena can't stand that I took her place."

Harry's voice was cold as ice.

"You went too far today. One of these days I'm taking you to kneel at Connor's grave and apologize."

My shoulders sagged.

My fingers closed around the first glass.

The liquor burned going down, searing all the way through my chest and into my empty stomach.

Like needles.

The second glass.

The third.

"Won't drinking like this kill someone?"

Harry shot the man a glance. His fingers trembled slightly, but his tone stayed hard.

"If anything happens, it's on me."

I drained the last drop and set the glass down.

Then I picked up my bag and forced my way through the crowd.

My two suitcases sat in the corner by the door of the private room.

I wasn't planning to go back today.

As I pushed the door, I turned my head for one look.

They were all clustered around Harry and Aria, the room as lively as if it were their wedding banquet.

"Goodbye for good, Harry."

The door swung slowly shut, cutting off the last look between us for good.