I entered my office, slamming the door shut, finally alone after that farce of an interview. I shrugged off my jacket with a dry gesture, tossing it onto the armchair beside the desk, and set my phone on the mahogany surface that echoed in the silence.

I approached the built-in bar cabinet in the wall, opened the door, and pulled out the bottle of Macallan 18-year-old and a heavy crystal glass. I poured two fingers of whiskey, maybe three, and took a long swig.

"Shit," I muttered to myself, feeling the whiskey burn my throat like liquid fire.

Too strong, too intense, but it was exactly what I needed to wash away the taste of that morning, my mother's honeyed tone, her poisonous words, that way of always making me feel one step behind, never enough.

I set the glass on the table and picked up the phone.

I opened the app, the one that didn't ask for names, just bodies lit by flashes, miles separating and desires igniting in the dark. I scrolled through the photos with my thumb: a sculpted torso, perfect abs, too predictable; a guy with doe eyes, too sweet; another with pumped muscles, too showy.

This one's too much, this one's too little.

The usual routine.

I sat in the black leather chair, ergonomic, one of those costing as much as a month's average bonus, set the phone on the armrest with a slow gesture, my fingers lingering a second on the black leather before letting go, as if the day's weight had stuck to my hands.

I sighed, closed my eyes for a second.

And he came back.

The guy from the night before materialized behind my eyelids, sharp, like not even a day had passed.

Last night had been a sudden madness, an electric jolt shooting through me head to toe without warning. That slim body bending under my hands, warm skin arching against my chest, the way he'd surrendered completely, without a shred of resistance, with a low moan that short-circuited my brain.

I'd felt the beast I'd kept chained for too long break free all at once. I'd taken him with a fierce, animal hunger, the kind I hadn't felt in months, maybe years. Every thrust had been raw, possessive, deep; every ragged breath escaping his throat seemed an invitation to push again, harder, until he shook all over.

My hand slipped instinctively between my legs.

I brushed the bulge already pressing against the fabric of my pants.

Fuck.

Just thinking about it was enough.

The door burst open.

I jumped in the chair, pulling my hand away like a teenager caught red-handed.

"Mother!" I exclaimed. "Don't you knock anymore?"

My mother entered without waiting for an invitation, closing the door behind her with precision. She looked around like the office was hers, and in a way it was, family inheritance.

"Do you realize the impression we made today, with your stupid last-minute appearance?"

I looked at her puzzled, heart still pounding for different reasons. "Sorry, mother, what do you mean?"

She pressed on, stepping forward.

"This morning they called me from the office: you hadn't arrived yet. Knowing today were the interviews to find the new lawyer, I had to leave your father at home with the help and come in your place. You know lately he's not well in the head."

I grimaced, trying to hide the irritation.

"What's wrong, afraid he might throw himself off the balcony? It'd be a relief for everyone, right?"

"Don't say idiocies, Andrew," she hissed, her eyes glaring at me.

"Rather, it's time you stopped these nighttime distractions. At this rate you'll make us look ridiculous in front of the whole firm, and the city."

Always the same lecture, always the same venom wrapped in fake maternal concern. As if I didn't already know what she really thinks of me. As if she hadn't looked at me for years with that expression, a walking disappointment, an illness to cure by force, with arranged dinners and "nice girls" seated next to me.

The thought crossed my mind like a cold blade, as I stared at her in silence.

It wasn't new.

It was just the umpteenth echo of everything we never said openly.

"Mother," I said, clenching my fists hard. "If you came here for your usual sermon, please, drop it. What I do in my private life is my business."

She stared at me in silence for a long second, eyes cold as steel, a gaze that would make anyone else tremble.

But not me.

Not anymore.

"No!" She said finally with a cutting voice, like every word was a scalpel.

"I'm not done."

She paused, enjoying my forced silence.

"Tomorrow night the Whitmores are coming to dinner," she announced, like reading an official statement. "Their daughter Evelyn will be there too. You're requested to make an appearance. You'll dine with us. And that's all."

She didn't wait for a reply.

She turned on her heels with military precision, her expensive perfume lingering a moment in the air, and left the office leaving the door open, a gesture to remind me that, in the end, she was always the one deciding who entered and exited my life.

I stayed there, still, like an idiot.

The Whitmores.

Evelyn Whitmore.

Yet another "nice girl" from a good family. Yet another attempt to settle me, like I was a broken piece of furniture to fix with a marriage of convenience.

I stood from the chair abruptly, blood pulsing in my temples like a relentless hammer, rage boiling inside until it made my hands shake.

I crossed the room with heavy steps, the floor resounding under my shoes, and when I reached the door I kicked it hard, fierce, making the frame tremble and echo an aggressive thud in my office silence.

I grabbed the phone from the chair armrest, unlocked it with an almost irritated gesture. Opened the app again, the same screen of anonymous bodies, disposable desires, but this time my thumb stayed suspended on the screen, immobile, like paralyzed.

I closed it all with a sharp gesture, too sharp.

A wave of frustration rose from the center of my chest, scorching, an acidic tide gripping my throat until it almost stole my breath. I clenched my jaw so hard I felt my teeth creak, eyes fixed on the phone like it was guilty of every crack in my existence: the suffocating expectations, the mask I'd worn for years, the void corroding me from inside like slow, inexorable rust.

Then I threw it.

With pure rage.

The phone shot from my hand, spinning in the air like a crazed bullet. It hit the wall with a violent crack, making me flinch inside. It fell to the floor with a thud, the screen exploding in a web of black cracks, glass fragments flying like shards of a shattering life.

I stayed there, motionless, breath coming in jerks from my nostrils, hands still open in the air like they didn't know what to do anymore.

It wasn't just anger at my mother, at her sharp words, at that dinner waiting like a gilded cage.

It was everything together.

The oppressive weight of pretending every single day: the chiseled smile in the office, the perfect composure at family dinners, the iron control over every gesture, every word, every glance, a prison I'd built myself and that now crushed my chest like a boulder.

And then there was that void, always the same, opening after every anonymous encounter. A different guy every time: warm, sweaty, willing bodies that let themselves be taken, that let me take, but in the end dissolved into nothing. Just flesh, just mechanical release, just the silence falling after pleasure, a silence that filled nothing, that instead widened the black hole inside me, night after night, until it made me feel emptied, transparent, nonexistent.

But this time, as I stared at the shiny office floor, my mind inevitably went back to him.

That guy from the previous night.

It hadn't been just sex.

It had been a blaze insinuating into your veins and consuming you from inside, a surge of pure electricity shooting through your whole body, leaving you without oxygen, without defenses, without masks anymore. A connection so brutal and immediate it ripped your chest open, shook you to the bones, like for a whole hour I could finally stop acting, holding back, breathing only halfway.

I ran a hand through my hair, fingers trembling slightly against my scalp. I inhaled deeply, but the air came in jerks, shaky, like my lungs had forgotten the normal rhythm and now struggled to remember it.

I couldn't go on like this.

I knew it with a clarity that burned, that hurt.

But I didn't know how to get out.

Every time I tried to force it on myself, a part of me, the rawest, most desperate, the one that never lied, whispered from the most hidden corner of my chest: "What if it's the only thing that makes you feel truly alive?"

And that voice, low and relentless, drowned out all the others.

It was stronger than reason, stronger than fear, stronger than every promise I'd made myself to survive.