WlW Hooked on You 🍻

chapter-8 Valerie's day

Valerie awoke to the dull hum of her phone vibrating on the nightstand, a sound she had grown used to over the years. It was the sound of her livelihood—messages, requests, transactions. She reached over, silencing the alarm, and lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling. The early morning light filtered through the blinds, casting faint shadows across the room. Another day, another round of secrets to deliver.
Eventually, she forced herself out of bed, her movements slow and deliberate. Her wavy black hair fell in a tousled mess around her shoulders, but she didn't bother to fix it as she headed to the bathroom. A splash of cold water on her face did little to shake the weariness that clung to her, but she stared at her reflection anyway. Her mismatched brown and blue eyes looked back at her, a stark contrast to the carefully constructed persona she showed the world. The heart tattoo on the back of her neck peeked out from beneath her hair, a reminder of the parts of herself she kept hidden.Valerie made her way to the kitchen, the silence of the apartment pressing down on her. It was too quiet, but she had grown accustomed to that—silence was safer. She went through the motions of making breakfast, but the smoothie she blended was more out of habit than hunger. She sipped it slowly, her mind already drifting to the tasks ahead.Today, like most days, she had work to do. Her job wasn't conventional, but it paid well. People paid her for secrets—other people's secrets. Valerie had become an expert at digging up dirt, exploiting vulnerabilities, and selling the information to those who needed it. It was a business that thrived on desperation and betrayal, but it was the only thing she felt she was good at. It was how she maintained control, how she kept the world at bay.She moved to the living room, dropped onto the couch, and opened her laptop. The screen lit up with new messages—requests from clients, payments coming through, and a few updates from her informants. She scrolled through them, her expression unreadable, her mind already calculating her next move.One message caught her eye. A client wanted information on a colleague—something they could use to secure a promotion. Valerie had already gathered enough on the target: an affair with a subordinate, some shady financial dealings, nothing too out of the ordinary but damaging enough. She started drafting the email, her fingers moving deftly over the keys as she laid out the details.As she worked, her thoughts kept drifting back to the night before, to Freya, to the way things had unfolded. Valerie had played her part well, as always, but something about it felt different now. Freya's vulnerability had struck a chord she hadn't expected, and it left Valerie feeling unsettled.She shook her head, forcing herself to focus. Emotions had no place in her world—they only complicated things. Valerie finished the email and sent it off, her mind already shifting to the next task. She had more secrets to sell, more lives to disrupt, more power to wield. It was what she did, what she had to do.The hours ticked by in a blur of messages, transactions, and calculated moves. Valerie stayed in the apartment, her sanctuary from the outside world, her refuge from the chaos of emotions she couldn't afford to feel. She ordered some clothes online, more out of a need to fill the void than any real desire for new things. The boots she had been eyeing for weeks would arrive in a few days—a small comfort, something tangible in a life that often felt out of control.But even as she went through the motions, the unease lingered. Valerie couldn't shake the feeling that something had shifted, that the carefully constructed walls she had built around herself were starting to crack. Freya had seen something in her last night, something real, and it scared Valerie more than she wanted to admit.By the time evening rolled around, Valerie was exhausted, though not from the work. She lay down on the couch, staring at the ceiling, her mind a tangle of thoughts she couldn't untangle. The apartment was quiet, too quiet, and the silence felt oppressive now, closing in around her.She had always prided herself on being in control, on being the one with all the answers. But now, with Freya in the picture, with her own emotions starting to slip through the cracks, Valerie wasn't so sure anymore. The secrets she sold, the power she wielded over others, suddenly felt hollow, meaningless.As she lay there in the growing darkness, Valerie felt a rare moment of vulnerability. She had built her life around secrets, around manipulation and control, but now she wasn't sure if she could keep it all together. The uncertainty gnawed at her, a reminder that no matter how much she tried to control others, she couldn't always control herself.For the first time in a long time, Valerie didn't know what her next move would be. And that uncertainty, that fear of losing the control she had clung to for so long, left her feeling more vulnerable than she had ever allowed herself to be.