Chapter 4: Boardroom Betrayal
The next two days passed in a soft, muted key. Bea remained a hidden, trembling secret against Mark’s skin. He felt her there, a tiny, warm weight curled in the fabric nest of his boxers as he moved through their quiet apartment, making tea, fielding congratulatory calls on her behalf, and washing the single champagne flute. She barely stirred. Sleep was her only state—a deep, restorative crash after the soul-baring effort of the show.
He spoke to her in low murmurs, updates on the world outside. “Anya emailed. Three more pieces sold.” A faint, sleepy pressure against his hip was his only answer. He slept on his back, rigidly still, terrified of rolling over. In the dark, he’d feel the feather-light brush of her fingers against his skin, not in invitation, but in reassurance. I’m here. I’m not gone. It was a silent, profound communion.
On the third morning, as he stood before the mirror tying his tie, he felt her move. It wasn’t the frantic scrambling of before. It was a slow, deliberate stretch. A tiny hand pressed against his lower abdomen, then pushed. She was sitting up.
“Hey,” he whispered, his hands pausing on the silk.
A moment passed. Then he felt a soft, minute stroke against his skin, a single finger drawing a line from his hipbone towards his navel. It was steady. Clear. Herself.
A knot of tension he hadn’t fully acknowledged loosened in his chest. “You back?”
Another stroke. Yes.
“I have to go to work today,” he said, his voice still soft. “Big quarterly review. Abernathy’s running it. It’ll be… long.”
He felt her shift, crawling a small, careful circle. He imagined her testing her limbs, shaking off the deep fatigue. She ventured upwards, a tiny explorer on familiar terrain. Her progress was slow, thoughtful, as she traversed the flat plane of his stomach beneath his dress shirt. She stopped just below his ribcage and tapped twice. A signal.
“You want to… come?” he asked, baffled.
A single, firm press. Yes.
“Bea, it’s a budget meeting. It’s going to be painfully boring. You’ll be trapped in a suit for hours.”
She responded by climbing higher, until she was a small, distinct presence just under his sternum, inside his undershirt. She tapped again, insistently.
He understood. After days of hiding in the dark, the idea of being left alone in the silent apartment was unthinkable. She needed to be with him. Even if it was inside his clothes, in a fluorescent-lit room full of spreadsheets.
He sighed, a surrender. “Okay. But you have to be quiet. Abernathy has ears like a bat and the discretion of a tabloid.”
She tapped an agreeable rhythm against his skin. Deal.
The conference room was a temple to corporate sterility. The air tasted like recycled particles and faint lemon disinfectant. Mark took his usual seat along the side of the long, polished table, placing his notepad and pen just so. Mr. Abernathy sat at the head, his glasses perched on the end of his nose, already frowning at his tablet. The rest of the department—Linda from Accounting, Pete from Logistics, Sarah from Marketing—filed in, the rustle of papers and the click of laptop keys forming a dull orchestra.
“Right, people,” Abernathy began, without looking up. “Let’s try to keep this tight. Finch, you’re on projections first. Let’s see if we can’t avoid the usual… digressions.” He said the last word with a pointed glance at Pete, who was famously long-winded.
Mark nodded, opening his folder. His mind was only half on the numbers. The other half was acutely aware of the small, warm presence nestled against his ribs. Bea was still, a dormant secret.
The meeting droned on. Pete, true to form, took twenty minutes to explain a ten-minute logistics snag. Linda’s voice was a numbing monotone about accruals. Mark presented his figures, his voice steady, automatic. He was a machine built for this: precise, unflappable.
Then, halfway through Sarah’s marketing spend breakdown, he felt it.
A single fingertip, no bigger than a pinhead, pressed into the soft space just above his left hip bone. It wasn’t a tickle. It was a presence. A hello.
He kept his eyes on Sarah’s pie chart, his expression neutral. Internally, his nerves lit up. Bea drew a single, slow circle. Then another, a fraction wider. Her touch was contemplative, almost absent-minded, as if she were doodling on his skin.
He shifted slightly in his chair, crossing his legs. The movement was subtle, just a readjustment. Abernathy glanced at him, then back at his notes.
Her explorations grew bolder. The single finger became a trailing, lazy line that dipped towards the waistband of his trousers, then swept back up along the sensitive trail of hair leading to his navel. His abdominal muscles tightened instinctively. He uncrossed and re-crossed his legs, pulling his chair closer to the table. The polished wood pressed against his belt.
“Something the matter, Finch?” Abernathy’s voice cut through Sarah’s presentation.
All eyes turned to him. Mark cleared his throat. “No, sir. Just… a leg cramp. From the gym.” The lie was smooth, delivered with a practiced, mildly embarrassed smile.
Abernathy grunted, unconvinced. “Well, un-cramp it. I need you focused. Your section on operational efficiencies is next.”
Bea went still. Mark felt her listening, a tiny, alert statue against his side. He willed her to stay quiet, to understand the danger. He picked up his pen, clicking it once, a sharp sound in the quiet room.
As Sarah finished and he gathered his notes to speak, Bea moved again.
This was different. Her touch became purposeful, curious. She traced the lower arch of his rib cage, a ticklish zone she knew intimately from other, less fraught circumstances. A jolt of pure sensation shot through him. He sucked in a quiet breath through his nose, his knuckles whitening on the edge of his notepad.
“As you can see from the last quarter’s data,” Mark began, his voice thankfully steady, “the efficiency gains in supply chain have been offset by…”
Her tiny fingers walked downwards, finding the specific, devastating spot just beside his hip bone where his nerve endings seemed to congregate. She didn’t dig. She simply rested there, a barely-there pressure that screamed through his nervous system. Heat bloomed across his skin under his clothes. He could feel a flush crawling up his neck.
“…warehousing costs, which, as Pete noted, have seen an unforeseen spike due to…” He was losing the thread. Sweat prickled at his temples. He could see Linda watching him, a faint line of confusion between her brows.
Then Bea did the unthinkable.
She skittered, fast and light, across the most vulnerable part of his stomach, a frantic, spider-soft scuttle that was pure, undiluted ticklish agony.
A sharp, choked sound—half cough, half gasp—escaped his lips. He clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late.
Abernathy’s head snapped up. “Finch? You have something to add about the warehousing?”
Mark’s mind went blank. Bea was now applying a gentle, circling pressure right over a particularly sensitive knot of muscle. It was a direct assault. He could feel the laughter building in his chest, a hysterical, trapped bubble. He fought it, clenching his jaw so hard it ached.
“I… no, sir,” he managed, his voice strangled. “Just… a touch of reflux. From my lunch.” It was 10:30 AM.
“See a doctor,” Abernathy said dismissively, but his eyes lingered. They were the eyes of a man who suspected he was being made a fool of, and who hated nothing more.
Pete kicked him lightly under the table. A gesture of solidarity, or curiosity?
Mark tried to focus. He looked down at his notes, but the numbers swam. All he could feel was the intimate, merciless exploration happening beneath his professional facade. Bea was mapping him again, but this wasn’t the deep, connected intimacy of their bedroom. This was playful. This was revenge for bringing her into this sterile hell. This was her.
Her fingers switched tactics, dancing up his side in a rapid, staccato pattern that he remembered from a hundred lost battles on their living room rug. A snort burst from his nose. He disguised it as a sharp, painful-sounding sniffle, grabbing a tissue from the box in the center of the table.
“Bless you,” Sarah said automatically.
He dabbed at his nose, his eyes watering from the effort of suppression. He was a dam about to break. Every muscle in his body was rigid, holding back the torrent of laughter shaking his core. He was going to lose his job. He was going to laugh until he cried in front of his boss, his colleagues, in a budget meeting.
He slid his hand off the table and onto his lap, pressing the heel of his palm hard against the fabric of his trousers, right where he estimated Bea to be. A desperate, silent plea. Stop. Please.
For a beautiful, merciful second, she did.
He breathed out, a slow, shaky exhale. He risked a glance at Abernathy, who was now squinting at him with open suspicion.
Then, beneath the barrier of his palm, he felt it.
A tiny, soft, open-mouthed kiss pressed against his skin, right over the frantic thud of his femoral artery.
The dam shattered.
A loud, helpless bark of laughter exploded from him. It echoed in the silent, tomb-like room. He doubled over, his forehead hitting the edge of the table with a thunk. Laughter, raw and uncontrollable, poured out of him in wheezing, teary waves. He tried to speak, to apologize, but all that came out were hiccupping gasps.
The room was frozen. Linda’s mouth hung open. Pete stared, his pen forgotten. Sarah looked mortified for him.
Mr. Abernathy stood up slowly, his chair scraping back with a deafening screech. His face was a mask of purple, apoplectic fury. “Finch,” he boomed, his voice trembling with rage. “What in God’s name is the matter with you? This is a place of business, not a comedy club! Explain yourself this instant!”
Mark couldn’t. He was gone, lost in a convulsing fit of giggles, each one fueled by the lingering, tender sensation of that impossible kiss and the absurd, catastrophic reality of his situation. Tears streamed down his face.
“My office. NOW!” Abernathy roared, pointing a trembling finger towards the door.
Mark’s laughter died in his throat, strangled by the sheer force of Abernathy’s rage. He straightened up, his face still wet with tears, his ribs aching from the convulsions. Every muscle in his body felt like a tightly coiled spring. Bea, nestled against his hip, had gone perfectly, preternaturally still. The silence in the conference room was absolute, brittle, and thin.
“I—” Mark began, his voice hoarse.
“Not a word,” Abernathy hissed, cutting him off. His jowls trembled. “My office. Now. The rest of you, review the Q3 forecasts. I’ll deal with this… unprofessionalism.”
Mark stood, his chair scraping back. His legs felt like water. He could feel the accusatory stares of his colleagues boring into his back—Pete’s bewildered concern, Linda’s priggish disapproval, Sarah’s empathetic cringe. He kept his eyes fixed on the patterned gray carpet, following Abernathy’s rigid back as they left the room.
The walk down the hallway was an eternity under fluorescent lights. Abernathy’s silence was more terrifying than any shouted lecture. Mark focused on putting one foot in front of the other, on not stumbling, on the frantic, hammering rhythm of his own heart. He was a man marching to his own professional execution.
Then, three doors from Abernathy’s office, he felt a shift.
It was a minute repositioning against his hip, a subtle unfolding. A tiny, warm hand flattened against his skin, fingers splayed. He tried to communicate through tension alone, a psychic scream of don’t you dare. It had no effect.
The hand began to move.
It wasn’t the playful exploration from the meeting. This was deliberate, targeted, and slow. A single fingertip traced a maddeningly leisurely path from the crest of his hip down along the sensitive inner line of his pelvis. It was a direct violation of the unspoken truce he’d begged for with his palm under the table.
He jerked, a full-body spasm that made him skip a step. Abernathy glanced over his shoulder, his eyes narrow slits of suspicion. “Something else funny, Finch? A chuckle in the corridor?”
“No, sir,” Mark gritted out, squeezing his eyes shut for a second. “Just… a nerve. A twinge.”
He felt Bea’s intent like a current in the air. She was punishing him for bringing her here, for subjecting her to the soul-crushing boredom of accruals and pie charts. Or maybe she was reminding him of who he was underneath the tie and the reports. The man who laughed until he cried.
Her fingers found a specific, treacherous spot just below his waistband, a place she’d cataloged during her midnight cartography. She pressed, not hard, but with a precise, unwavering stillness.
A electric jolt of pure, ticklish agony shot up his spine. He sucked in a sharp breath through his nose, his entire body going rigid. He locked his knees to keep from buckling. The involuntary reaction was a violent, stifled shudder that ran through him from scalp to heels.
“For God’s sake, man, control yourself!” Abernathy snapped, stopping in front of his office door. He fumbled with his keycard, his movements angry and clumsy.
Mark was losing the battle. The pressure was unrelenting. He tried to twist his torso subtly, to dislodge her, but the movement only made her dig in, her tiny nail a pinpoint of delicious, unbearable torment. A high-pitched, helpless squeak escaped his lips. He bit down on his tongue, the metallic taste of blood flooding his mouth.
Abernathy got the door open and stormed inside, leaving it gaping. Mark stumbled after him, his professional composure in tatters. As he crossed the threshold, Bea changed tactics.
She skittered.
It was a sudden, frenetic, spider-quick dash across the entire landscape of his lower abdomen. The sensation was lightning in his veins, a wildfire of ticklish nerves igniting all at once.
Mark’s control shattered completely. He grabbed the doorframe with one hand, his knuckles white. His other hand flew to his stomach, pressing hard against the fabric of his shirt and suit jacket. His body folded inward, then snapped back as a wave of uncontrollable convulsions seized him. He didn’t laugh this time. He couldn’t. The air was punched from his lungs in ragged, wheezing gasps.
He squirmed uncontrollably. It was a frantic, desperate dance, there in the doorway of his boss’s office. He twisted, hips jerking sideways. He shuddered, shoulders hunching up towards his ears. His legs jittered, kicking out in small, spastic motions against the carpet. He was a puppet with its strings tangled, jerking on a stage he never wanted.
Abernathy stared from behind his massive oak desk, his anger morphing into stupefied horror. “What in the name of all that is holy is wrong with you? Is this a medical episode? Should I call an ambulance?”
Mark shook his head violently, unable to speak. Tears of mortification and helpless mirth streamed down his face again. He was a grown man, an assistant manager, having what appeared to be a tickle-induced seizure in the workplace. Bea, sensing his utter capitulation, finally relented. The skittering stopped. The pinpoint pressure vanished.
He slumped against the doorframe, heaving for breath, his body twitching with residual shocks. The silence in the office was thick, polluted by his ragged inhalations.
“Sit. Down,” Abernathy said, each word a chunk of ice. He pointed to the stiff leather chair facing his desk.
Mark pushed off the frame, his limbs loose and trembling. He took two wobbling steps forward and collapsed into the chair. It sighed under his weight. He could feel Bea settling again, a smug, quiet warmth against his skin. The little tyrant. The tickle-trator. He was utterly, completely vanquished.
Abernathy sank into his own high-backed chair, steepling his fingers. He studied Mark for a long, uncomfortable minute. “I don’t know what fresh hell that was,” he began, his voice low and dangerous. “But you have precisely thirty seconds to compose a plausible explanation before I suspend you pending a psychiatric evaluation.”
Mark’s mind, usually so orderly, was a blank, wrung-out slate. He looked at the framed pictures on Abernathy’s desk—a grim family, a sailboat—searching for inspiration. Nothing. He opened his mouth, but only a dry click emerged.
Then, a new sensation. Not tickling. A pattern, tapped slowly and deliberately against his skin, just above his hip. It was deliberate. A sequence.
Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
He focused, his breathing slowing. It was simple, a child’s code. A for one tap, B for two…
She was spelling.
T-A-P-E-W-O-R-M.
Tapeworm.
A bizarre, hysterical bubble of hope rose in his chest. It was insane. It was utterly, brilliantly Bea.
He cleared his throat, wiped his face with a shaky hand, and met Abernathy’s gaze. “I am so sorry, sir,” he said, his voice raspy but steadying. “It’s… embarrassing. A medical thing. Not psychiatric.”
Abernathy raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“It’s a… a neurological condition. A rare form of… reflexive myoclonus. Sudden, involuntary muscle spasms.” The words sounded clinical, almost believable. “It’s triggered by stress. Or… gastric distress.” He gestured vaguely towards his midsection. “The, uh, the reflux I mentioned. It’s related.”
“Tapeworms cause neurological ticks?” Abernathy asked, his tone dripping with skepticism.
Mark blinked. He hadn’t said anything about tapeworms. How had—?
Then he remembered. Pete from Logistics. Last month. He’d been off for a week, telling everyone in the breakroom a graphic, TMI story about a parasite he’d picked up on a fishing trip. Abernathy had walked in halfway through the story and been visibly disgusted.
Bea had been there that day, meeting him for lunch. She’d heard it all.
She was weaving the department’s own gossip into his cover story.
“No, sir, not… not a literal worm,” Mark stammered, scrambling. “That’s just… what Pete calls it. A nickname. Because of the… the abdominal connection. It’s a nerve thing. The doctor called it…” He grasped for jargon. “Viscero-somatic reflex arc hypersensitivity.” It was total nonsense, but it sounded impressively bleak.
Abernathy’s eyes narrowed. He looked like a man trying to decide if he was being lied to with unbelievable creativity, or if his previously reliable employee had been invaded by body-snatching parasites. The sheer, outrageous specificity of “tapeworm” seemed to give him pause. It was too weird to be invented on the spot.
He leaned back, the leather of his chair groaning. “You’re seeing a doctor. Today. I want a note. A detailed one.”
“Of course, sir. Immediately after this,” Mark said, his heart hammering against his ribs.
“And if there is one more… outburst,” Abernathy continued, “of any kind, your tenure here will be reconsidered. Is that clear? This is a place of business, not a sideshow.”
“Crystal clear, sir. Again, my profound apologies.”
Abernathy gave one last, disgusted wave of his hand. “Get out. And for God’s sake, see a physician.”
Mark stood, his legs still unsteady. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak again, and turned to leave. As he walked back into the hallway, the door clicking shut behind him, he felt Bea crawl. Not downwards, towards sanctuary, but upwards, beneath his shirt, until she was a small, solid presence right over his heart.
She tapped, once. A single, clear beat against his sternum.
It felt like applause.