Kendrick Sterling is standing behind his desk when you walk in, in the same dark tailored suit he wore the night before — the waistcoat, the red tie knotted with precision — his hair slightly unruly at the front, as if someone had just run a hand through it, as if you had. To your left the assistant, Niamh Patel, lowers her eyes to her tablet. To your right the HR director, Marisol Vega, tightens her fingers on a folder and does not meet your eyes at all. He sets the gold pen down and looks straight into your eyes.

His voice is low, controlled, loud enough that everyone in the room hears every word. He lets it sit long enough for the meaning to reach all of them — which pleasure he means. Heat floods your face. A cold knot closes in your stomach. Last night his hands were on your body, his mouth at your ear telling you things that made your knees tremble, and now he stands in the full light of day, in front of witnesses, and he is firing you.

His face is calm, almost tired. You could almost believe he feels awkward, that the whole thing is costing him something. It isn't. He does not look away. He does not blink. One hand rests on the edge of the desk, and he watches you the way a man performs a difficult but necessary duty — no anger, no tenderness, only that controlled, impenetrable calm. The office has gone very quiet.

He pushes two folders across the desk with one finger — one thin, one thick — and he says the rest too low for the room to catch.

Then, quieter still, his thumb finds the corner of the thicker folder and stops it half an inch from your hand. For the first time the calm cracks at the edges into something you recognize from last night.

he says,