Lorelei

The office was quiet.

Too quiet. The kind of quiet that pressed against your ears like water, thick and suffocating. I sat at my desk, a stack of documents in front of me, my pen poised over the page. The words blurred, faded, reformed. I blinked, trying to focus, but my mind was elsewhere.

Brian's threat. The week he had given me. The impossible choice that loomed over everything.

I shook my head, forcing myself to concentrate. There was work to do. Reports to review, requests to ...