Somewhere to my right, I heard Héctor exhaling heavily. Muttering under his breath.
Then, I heard nothing. Only my heart hammering in my chest.
There it was. The truth. The real reason why I, among the four other people sitting in this room, had been handpicked to do this damn thing. I was a woman—the only woman in the division, leading a team—and I had the goods, no matter how generous my curves were or not. Perky, cute, female. I was the attractive option, apparently. I was being showcased to our clients as the golden token that proved that InTech was not stuck in the past.
“Lina.” I willed my voice to remain firm and calm, hating that it hadn’t. Hating that I wanted to turn around and let my legs carry me out of the room. “Not sweetheart. My name is Lina.” I sat back on my chair very slowly, clearing my throat and taking one extra moment to rein it in. I have this. I need to have this. “Next time, make sure to use my name, please. And address me with the decency and professionalism you do with everyone else.” My voice reached my ears in a way I didn’t like one bit. Making me feel that weak version of myself that I didn’t want to be. But at least I had managed to get it all out without flipping or running away. “Thanks.”
Sensing how my eyes were starting to feel glassy out of pure outrage and frustration, I blinked a few times, willing that and everything else away from my face. Wishing that the lump in my throat had nothing to do with embarrassment, even when it did. Because how could I not feel embarrassed when I had snapped like that? When—even after what had happened all that time ago, even being that this wasn’t the first time I’d had to deal with this kind of crap—I still didn’t know how?
Gerald rolled his eyes. “Don’t take it so seriously, Lina.” He shot me a condescending look. “I was just joking around. Right, guys?”
He looked over at our colleagues, searching the room for their support.
He didn’t find any.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Héctor deflating in his chair. “Gerald …” he said, sounding tired and discouraged. “Come on, man.”
Keeping my eyes on Gerald and trying to stop my chest from heaving with building helplessness, I refused to look at the other two men, Kabir and Aaron, who remained silent.
They probably thought they were not taking any side, but they were. Their silence was doing exactly that.
“Oh, come on what?” Gerald scoffed. “It’s not like I said anything that’s not true. The girl doesn’t even need to try—”
Before I could muster the courage to stop him, the last person in the room I had expected to speak beat me to it. “We are done here.”
My head snapped in his direction then, finding him looking at Gerald with something so thick and chilling that I could almost feel the air in the room drop a couple of degrees.
Shaking my head, I snagged my gaze off Aaron. He could have said anything in the last ten minutes, and he had chosen not to. He could remain silent for all I cared.
Gerald’s chair scraped against the floor, allowing him to stand up. “Yes, we are certainly done,” he said flatly, gathering his things. “I don’t have time for this either. She knows what to do anyway.”
And with that little pearl, Gerald walked to the door and left the room.
My heart was still hammering in my chest, pummeling in my temples.
Kabir followed suit, standing up and looking at me apologetically. “I am not taking his side, okay?” His eyes moved in Aaron’s direction quickly, returning to me just as fast. “This whole thing came from Jeff; he wants you to do this. Don’t think too much about it. Take it as a compliment.”
Not bothering to answer, I watched him leave the room.
The man who had almost taken me in and treated me as one more of the Díaz clan looked at me and shook his head. He mouthed, Qué pendejo, which plucked a weak smile out of me because even if that wasn’t something we would ever say in Spain, I knew exactly what he meant.
And Héctor was right. What a total asshat Gerald was.
And then there was Aaron. Who hadn’t even bothered to look at me yet. His long fingers methodically gathered his things, and his even longer legs pushed the chair back, making it possible for him to straighten to his full height.
While I glanced at him, still out of sorts by everything that had just gone down, I watched how his gaze bounced from his hands to me. His eyes, which I could tell had sobered up and returned to that aloof semblance, remained on me for a heartbeat and then dismissed me just as quickly.
Just like he always did.
My gaze followed his oddly large and sturdy figure walk to the door and into the hallway, the hammering in my chest somehow speeding up and settling down, all at once.
“Let’s go, mija,” Héctor said, now standing and looking down on me. “I have a bag of chicharrones in my office. Ximena slipped it into my laptop bag the other day, and I’ve been saving it.” He followed that with a wink.
Standing from my chair, I laughed lightly. Héctor’s little girl was getting a bear hug from me the next time I saw her.
“You need to raise that girl’s weekly allowance.” I followed him out, trying my best to return the smile.
Although I couldn’t help but notice that after only a few steps, the corners of my lips wavered, breaking into something that didn’t quite reach my eyes.