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Sahil's POV

The morning started as usual. Phones rang, keyboards clattered, and the office buzzed with activity.

I thrived in this symphony of productivity.

The silence. The order. I lived it with every second of my life. But right now, something was off. Something was amiss in my day. As I settled into my chair in my office, I noticed the glaring absence of my usual cup of tea, and my belligerent eyes instinctively darted to the glass walls that separated my office from the rest of the floor. The cubicle, wrapped in warm beige shades, was disturbingly quiet, empty, and forlorn.

My assistant was late.

Missing.

This was unlike her. She had never been late a day in her life. The woman was punctual to a fault, always the first one to arrive and often the last to leave. And not having her around disrupted the usual order of my morning routine.

I tried to convince myself she had some legitimate reason, maybe she was caught up in traffic or had a minor emergency. Still, my mind refused to settle.

Where the hell was she?

Had she forgotten that she had office today?

The thought itself was ludicrous. She forgetting her responsibilities was like the sun forgetting to rise.

Minutes stretched into an hour, and as noon approached, my frustration grew with every ticking second.

I had tried calling her phone multiple times, but each time it went coldly unanswered or to the voicemail.

When I couldn't bear it any longer, I pushed my chair back and the leather creaked under the sudden movement.

Marching out of the office, my impatience propelled me to the main floor. The air turned disturbingly silent as I walked through the aisles of desks and cubicles, with every head nervously moving to follow my progress.

It was almost as if they sensed the tension radiating off me, like a storm about to unleash.

"Sir, is everything alright?" My junior assistant caught my gaze and stuttered, breaking the stillness that had settled over the office.

“Alright?” I wanted to laugh, but it came out as a scoff instead. Nothing was alright. My practicality was thrown off balance. All because of one missing woman.

"Do you need something, Sir?"

"Did you check with my assistant, Ms. Kadam?" I stopped and inquired, and my grade-2 employee looked like she wanted to disappear into the floor.

Her fingers fumbled with the papers on her desk looking like a deer caught in headlights, eyes wide, posture stiff.

"I... I'm not sure, sir. I figured she might be off today and didn't bother informing us as she must be busy." She faltered, her voice dropping to a tentative hush.

Fucking unbelievable!

My mind screamed, before turning to the rest of the staff, who were now gawking at me with vigilant, anxious eyes.

My patience was wearing thin, and the last thing I needed was to be surrounded by clueless individuals.

"Does anyone here know where she is? Has anyone heard from her?" I demanded, my voice booming across the office.

There was a chorus of murmurs, heads shaking, and shoulders slumping, but no one said a word. My temper flared some more, the heat of my anger rising to the surface.

Useless. Absolutely useless. Every single one of them. I thought, my frustration reaching its peak. How do these people function in their daily lives?

"Get back to your job then!" I shouted at them, my voice echoing in the silence that followed. They all turned back to their workstations, though I could still feel their eyes on me, their gazes heavy with unease. I spun back to Ms. Kadam, who was cowering in her seat, still waiting for my instructions when she should have taken action herself.

Ms. Kadam hangs out, eats, and chats with her, my mind fumed, and she's expected to know her whereabouts. If she doesn't, she ought to be concerned for her damned co-worker for the effing sake of humanity.

"Call her right now." I growled, my voice low and edged with warning. "And call everyone who might know where she is. I need to know where she is, and I need to know it now." My words were a command, an order that brooked no argument. Ms. Kadam's face went pale as she fumbled with her phone, her hands trembling.  "I don't care if you need to go and get her yourself—she must be here before three. If not, pack up your stuff and consider yourself fired, Ms. Kadam."

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I tried to bury myself in work, my eyes scanning the lines of the report in front of me, but the words blurred together, making it nearly impossible to focus. My mind was a tangled mess, circling endlessly around the worry of where she could be.

Was she in an accident?

Sick?

God forbid, something worse?

The endless possibilities clawed at my mind, each scenario more distressing than the last.

I couldn't bear the idea that something might have happened to her. The silence of not knowing was driving me insane.

Finally, just five minutes before three, the door to my office swung open with a rashness that pulled me out of my haze. Ms. Kadam rushed in, her face alight with sheer relief, as if she had just narrowly avoided some disaster.

What now? Had she found her? Was Pratiksha okay?

"Sir, I got her. I got Ms. Naik." Ms. Kadam panted, and my palpitating heart hammered against my ribcage.

I felt the weight of the morning's anxiety start to lift. Thank God. She was found.

"How is she? Is she fine?" The question escaped my lips before I could even think it through.

I sounded more desperate than I intended, my voice betraying the sheer relief coursing through me. As if her absence had left a gaping void that now, finally, could be filled.

"Yes, sir, she's good, but—" Ms. Kadam's words trailed off, but I was no longer listening.

All my attention had shifted, like a laser honing in on a target, past her and down the corridor.

There she was, Pratiksha Naik, my assistant, my—my indispensable half—walking down the hall, eyes glued to her phone.

The sight of her hit me like a tidal wave.

Relief, anger, confusion—they all collided within me, crashing against the walls of my composure. She looked perfectly fine, lost in her own world, and here I was, wrecked with worry, imagining the worst.

"Mr. Shrivastava—" Ms. Kadam’s voice faded into the background as I surged out of my office, storming down the corridor, my focus zeroed in on Pratiksha, who was still tapping away at her phone.

The audacity after strolling in like she owned the damn place, completely unfazed was something else.

She didn’t realize the havoc she caused by not answering the phone. What was so damn important that she left me in suspense and out of my wits?

"Where the hell have you been?" My voice cut through the office like a whip, raw and unfiltered.

The rage boiling inside me spilled over, scalding my words. The suddenness of my outburst made the onlookers flinch, their gazes darting between us. I could feel the eyes on me, on us, but I didn't care. This was between her and me.

Her eyes slowly rose from her phone, her face a blank slate.

"The office doesn't start at three, if you must remember, Ms. Naik!" I bellowed, my voice harsher than I intended.

The frustration of the entire morning—hell, maybe something else altogether—pumped within me, climbing to a fever pitch.

"I'm sorry for being late, Sir." She replied steadily, almost maddeningly cool. "I had somewhere to be."

Somewhere to be? What the fuck kind of excuse was that?

"Do you think this is a marketplace where you can stroll in at your whim, Ms. Naik?" My voice was rising, but I couldn’t stop. "I depend on you, my whole office depends on you, but you're taking your duties for granted."

Her eyes flickered with something then—anger, maybe, or hurt—but she didn't even bat an eyelid at me and simply handed over the file I had requested the previous day.

"Here's the file you needed. Now I hope it helps your bad day, Mr. Shrivastava." The sight of the file—this most trivial thing at the moment—only stoked the fire of my irritation. Her tone, her words—they cut through me, twisting the knife she seemed to carry just for me.

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I was staring out of the window of my office on the 30th floor, the sprawling cityscape below a distant blur, when the door to my office burst open.

I hadn't heard the knock—heck, I hadn't even heard the footsteps.

But I knew she was here. I could feel her presence immediately, the electric tension that seemed to spark whenever we were in the same room.

"We need to talk."

I barely held myself from rolling my eyes as I turned around to face her, my back stiff with the tension of the hazardous day's events. "You put a full stop to our talk an hour ago if I am still left sane enough today to recall."

I shot back in agitation. Why was she pushing this if she was so hell bent to stay indifferent like a goddamn statue?

Pratiksha didn't fire back right away; instead, she took a long, shuddering breath before looking dead into my eyes.

In all the five years I'd spent with her, I'd never seen her beautiful eyes, in shades of faint brown, clouded with mist. But with everything going down today I couldn’t put my finger on what the hell was going on?

"I wasn't here this morning because my baba had a heart attack last night, Sir." Her words hit me like a freight train, and I was momentarily speechless.

Her father? I felt the blood drain from my face, my thoughts stumbling over each other as I tried to process her words. I'm aware that I should say something, apologize, offer help—anything. But the words remain stuck in my throat, lodged behind my guilt.

"I spent the night at the hospital with him and my mother, and I couldn't make it in time for work." My mouth opened, but no sound came out—just a dry, stunned breath as she held up a hand, silencing me. "I've given this job my all for the last five years. I've barely taken up any leave, even the ones I've the right upon, and I've always put the company's needs before my own. But I'm done today, Sir."

"I'm done because I'm not the one wrong here and is being taken for granted just because I work for you." Her voice quivered, but she wasn't backing down as of now.

"You have no business treating me like shit. I’m not the cause of your bad day, and I refuse to be treated like I am." Her eyes were flashing now, a storm that cast a cold wave over me. "I needed to be with my family today, and instead, I had to rush back here to deal with your tantrums as you're threatening to fire people left and right because I wasn't here to cater to your borderline demands."

I could see the breathlessness in her, the strain of holding it all together. "You can fire me if you want. My life with you as my boss has been hell, and let's not get started on what kind of a hus—" She didn't finish the sentence, but the implication of her words was enough. "I'm not coming back to work until I feel ready, and if you have a problem with that, it's your problem, not mine, Sahil."

She used my name, and it felt like salt on an open wound. Pratiksha had always called me 'Sir' or 'Mr. Shrivastava' no matter where we were, keeping the invisible lines drawn clear and professional, never once crossing them.

But today, she did, and the rawness of it left me distraught. "I'd be glad, in fact, if you fire me from your office because that's the sole string in what you believe is holding us together."

With that, she turned on her heel and walked out of my office, leaving me to stare at the door she'd just slammed shut for me, for the first time in the three years of our marriage.

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Lots of Love,

ANKITA