Chapter 2: Sunday Nails
The numbers on the Hastings account were a deliberate lie.
Sheri knew it by Tuesday, just as Lidia had predicted. Not sloppy accounting. Fraud. A three-million-dollar gap hidden across four subsidiaries, cleverly obscured by the accelerated depreciation. She’d built the case file herself, slide by damning slide, in the dead hours after Sean slept. He breathed evenly beside her, a steady, innocent rhythm, while her laptop glowed in the dark, illuminating columns of digits that spelled ruin for Hastings’ CFO.
Now, it was Thursday afternoon. The boardroom air was chilled, smelling of stale coffee and lemon polish. She’d presented her findings with the calm of a surgeon outlining a procedure. The men around the table—all but one—had shifted from skepticism to quiet horror as she spoke. Now, the silence was thick, punitive.
Gerald Hastings, the founder’s grandson, was pale. “This can’t be right, Sheri. There has to be an explanation.”
“The explanation is theft, Gerry.” She didn’t blink. “The schedules are in your packet. Page eight shows the direct wire transfers to the Cayman holding company. It’s not ambiguous.”
He looked at her, his eyes pleading. She felt nothing but a cold, clean clarity. This was the part she was good at: the excision. “The motion to remove Peter Jansen as CFO is on the table. Do I have a second?”
A hand went up. Then another. The vote was unanimous. She didn’t smile. She gathered her papers, the click of her fresh, pale nails against the mahogany a sound of finality. As she left the room, she heard Gerry Hastings whisper, “Jesus, she’s a ice-cold bitch.” It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. It felt, today, like a compliment.
The drive home was automatic. Rain began to speckle the windshield, blurring the twilight. The house, when she entered, was silent. Sean had left a note on the kitchen island: Dinner with Michael and Claire. Back by 9. Lentil soup in the fridge. His precise script. A good husband. A thoughtful man. She balled the note in her fist and dropped it in the bin.
She poured a glass of pinot noir, took it upstairs. The master bedroom felt different tonight. Not a sanctuary, but a cage of her own meticulous design. The wedding photo smirked from the nightstand. She picked it up, tracing the glass over Sean’s young, hopeful face. What had he hoped for? What had she?
The soup remained uneaten. The wine glass emptied. She changed into a silk robe, the fabric cool against her skin. She stood before the full-length mirror, examining the woman there: the sharp chin, the discerning eyes, the body that was still firm, still capable of eliciting gasps and desperate pleas from another woman’s mouth. A successful CFO. A faithful wife. A lie.
The doorbell rang.
It wasn’t Sunday. It was Thursday, 7:17 PM. She knew, with a sudden, gravitational certainty, who it was.
Lidia stood on the porch, the rain darkening the shoulders of her leather jacket. Her hair was down, a mess from the wind. She held no case. “I heard,” she said simply.
Sheri stepped back, letting her in. The door closed. The house swallowed them.
“How?”
“Gerry Hastings’ wife is a client. She was crying in my chair two hours ago. She said you destroyed them.” Lidia’s gaze was direct, unflinching. “I came to see if you were okay.”
Sheri barked a laugh, short and harsh. “Okay? I just ended a man’s career. He’ll probably be indicted. I am perfectly okay.” She turned away, walking toward the stairs, needing to move. “Do you want a drink?”
“I want you.”
Sheri stopped, her hand on the mahogany banister. The words hung in the hallway, simple and devastating. She didn’t turn. She heard the rustle of Lidia’s jacket being shucked, the soft thud of her boots.
Then Lidia’s hands were on her from behind, sliding around her waist, pulling her back against a firm, familiar body. Her lips found the sensitive spot just below Sheri’s ear. “You’re vibrating,” Lidia murmured. “Like a plucked wire.”
Sheri leaned back, letting her head rest on Lidia’s shoulder. She closed her eyes. The professional armor, so solid minutes ago, dissolved into something liquid and hot. “I feel…” she started, but the words wouldn’t come. Empty. Vicious. Alive.
“I know.” Lidia’s hands slipped inside the silk robe, finding bare skin. She palmed Sheri’s breasts, her thumbs circling the nipples until they peaked into hard points. Sheri gasped, her hips pushing back, feeling the press of Lidia’s jeans against her ass.
They didn’t go to the bedroom. The formality of the bed felt wrong. Lidia guided her to the leather sofa in Sean’s study, a room that smelled of his pipe tobacco and old books. In the dim light, Lidia pushed the robe from Sheri’s shoulders. It pooled on the floor.
“Look at you,” Lidia breathed, her eyes traveling over Sheri’s body. “You magnificent, ruthless thing.”
Sheri reached for her, pulling the soft cotton of her shirt up and over her head. She needed roughness, needed to mar the perfection. She kissed Lidia hungrily, biting her lower lip, tasting rain and lip balm. Her hands fumbled with the button of Lidia’s jeans, then yanked them and her underwear down in one rough motion.
“Fuck me,” Sheri growled against her mouth. “Don’t be gentle. I don’t want gentle.”
Lidia didn’t need telling. She turned Sheri around, bending her over the back of the sofa. The cool leather met Sheri’s stomach and breasts. Lidia’s hand came down on her ass, not a playful slap but a sharp, stinging crack that made Sheri jerk and cry out.
“Is this what you need?” Lidia’s voice was low, dark. Her fingers slid through Sheri’s wetness, gathering it, then pushing two inside without preamble. Sheri gasped, accepting the full, stretching intrusion. “To feel something simple? Something raw?”
“Yes.” The word was a sob.
Lidia fucked her with her fingers, hard and deep, the heel of her hand grinding against Sheri’s clit with each thrust. It was brutal, efficient. Sheri pushed back, meeting each drive, the sofa squeaking in protest. The world narrowed to this: the slap of skin, the filthy, wet sounds of her own body, the burning stretch inside her. She was an animal. She was a fraud. She was coming apart.
“I’m gonna come,” she panted, her fists clenching in the leather.
“Not yet.” Lidia withdrew her fingers, ignoring Sheri’s groan of protest. She dropped to her knees on the patterned rug.
Sheri knew what was coming. The secret of secrets. Her thighs trembled in anticipation.
Lidia’s hands spread her open. The cool air of the room touched her most private place, a shocking intimacy. Then Lidia’s tongue, flat and hot, licked a long, slow stripe from her clit to the tight furl of her asshole.
Sheri flinched, a jolt of pure electric sensation rocketing through her.
“Shhh,” Lidia murmured, her breath a hot ghost against the wet skin. “Let me.”
Her tongue circled, insistently, until the muscle relaxed, then she pressed the tip inside. It was a slow, probing violation, exquisitely intimate. Sheri moaned, burying her face in the leather, her entire being focused on that small, scandalous point of contact. Lidia’s tongue worked in and out, a lewd, intimate rhythm, while her thumb found Sheri’s clit and rubbed tight, urgent circles.
The dual sensations—the filthy penetration and the direct, brutal friction on her clit—coalesced into an unbearable pressure. Sheri’s orgasm tore through her with a force that blurred her vision. She screamed, a raw, ragged sound muffled by the sofa, her body seizing, clenching around the nothingness and the everything of Lidia’s tongue.
She collapsed, boneless, shuddering. Lidia stayed with her, gentling now, placing soft kisses on the backs of her thighs until the tremors subsided.
Later, tangled on the sofa in the dark, Lidia traced the faint red mark on Sheri’s ass. “He’ll be home soon.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to go?”
Sheri thought of Sean’s note, his soup, his quiet, patterned life. She thought of the torn lace bodysuit she had found, months ago, hidden in a forgotten corner of his gym bag. She had never mentioned it. She had simply folded it, and placed it back, a secret for a secret.
“No,” Sheri said, her voice hollow in the dark room. “Stay until you have to.”
They lay in silence, listening to the rain. Sheri’s mind, so sharp and certain hours before, was a quiet, numb blank. The victory of the boardroom felt ash-gray and meaningless. The only truth was here, in the ache between her legs and the woman breathing beside her—a truth that could never see the light of day.
At 8:47, Lidia dressed. She kissed Sheri once, softly, on the mouth. “Two weeks,” she said, but it sounded different now. Not a promise, but a sentence.
Sheri listened to her footsteps fade. She put her robe back on, picked up Sean’s empty pipe from his desk, and held its cold bowl in her hand. She looked out the window at their manicured garden, at the rain-drenched lemon tree they’d planted together a decade ago. It was thriving.
Downstairs, the front door opened. Sean’s cheerful voice called out, “Honey? I’m home. The dinner was interminable. You’ll never believe what Michael’s done with his koi pond.”
Sheri placed the pipe back exactly as she found it. She painted her face with a serene, wifely smile, and went downstairs to meet her husband.