Unraveled

Chapter 5: Lines in the Sand

Agatha's day was a relentless barrage of phone calls, emails, and fires that constantly needed extinguishing. Being a partner meant she was more of a firefighter than a lawyer these days, managing crises instead of sinking her teeth into the work that used to ignite her. Budgets, briefs, frantic clients—she moved through them all like a machine.

Efficient.

Precise.

But it didn't stop the pull—to the case.

Every time her gaze slipped from the pages in front of her and drifted toward the war room, that's what she repeated to herself. It was Vanguard—the hunt for her white whale—that tugged at her focus, not the woman inside that room.

Her office offered the perfect view of the war room, a constant reminder of the battle waiting for her. Every free second—a breath between calls, a brief pause between emails—her eyes would find their way there. Watching the case take shape, watching the clues unfold, watching the documents mount.

That's what mattered. That's what she was watching.

But the lie tasted bitter on her tongue every time she told it.

When Rio Vidal had first stepped into the war room, Agatha had watched her closely, narrowing her eyes, half-expecting the woman to stand there paralyzed, realizing the sheer magnitude of what Agatha had put on her. But no. Vidal just stood there, taking it all in, a quiet, unsettling calm about her.

She's in over her head. She will soon see, Agatha had thought, almost waiting for her the moment her to crack—to see it.

But then the phone rang, dragging Agatha into yet another client emergency. Irritation simmered as she spent the next twenty minutes navigating someone else's disaster, her attention fracturing. She tried to shove the pull—Vanguard, she forced herself to think—into the background as she dealt with the issue, but it lingered like a shadow at the edge of her mind.

The second the call ended, her eyes snapped back to the war room, instinctive and immediate.

And there was Vidal—now at the table, the first of the boxes spread out before her, a document in hand. She looked calm. Too calm, really. The predatory smirk Agatha had come to expect was gone, but something else had taken its place—something that looked disturbingly like... pleasure.

It was unmistakable in the way Vidal's lips curled, ever so slightly, as she read. Her eyes moved across the page with a slow, deliberate satisfaction, her fingers tracing the edge of the paper like she was savoring every bit of it. Agatha could feel it, that quiet enjoyment, the subtle shift in her expression—so calm, so focused, so utterly immersed in the work.

The pleasure in it was tangible, almost intimate.

And then Nicholas's words from this morning echoed through her mind like a punch to the gut.

"She's really pretty."

The thought jolted her, snapping her out of the moment.

What the hell was that?

Agatha shook her head, a surge of emotion flooding her chest—anger, yes, but something else too, something she refused to name.

Focus, she commanded herself, ripping her gaze from the war room as if it burned her. She tried to steady the sudden quickening of her pulse, tried to shove down whatever it was stirring inside her.

Thankfully, her email dinged, yanking her back to reality. A brief from one of the senior associates she'd been waiting on. She clicked it open, desperate to shift her mind back to something—anything—else.