Chapter 42: Rarely Wrong
Detective Harris's POV
She'd looked into my eyes, tears welling up, and said, “We had sex in Charlie’s office that night.”
“The next morning, Charlie emailed me.” I remembered how my stomach dropped when she said the most troubling part of the story.
Zoey claimed Charlie had emailed her a file and a video attached to it.
I suddenly felt my jaw tighten again now, even in my memory.
She explained that Charlie had cameras in every corner of his office, and she had never noticed any in all her years working with him. It was as if they had been deliberately placed to make her feel exposed.
The video Charlie sent her came from the camera that had captured her being fucked hard by Thomas.
Zoey explained that she'd just started working newly for Charlie at that time and she'd barely slept two years working with him so she was scared to death thinking he was going to fire her for what she did.
But instead, he didn't fire her, he didn't shout.
It was at that moment I knew something wrong was definitely going to happen.
I remembered how Zoey’s face had suddenly gone pale as she recalled how everything had turned out for her.
She claimed that Charlie had smoked instead. He made comments about her sexual performance, saying he had never known she had such talents hidden beneath her skirts.
He made dirty remarks and suggestions as if he owned her—as if holding that video was all he had ever wanted: to have her to himself, to control her completely.
“Five years later,” Zoey had continued, “he started touching me inappropriately, he started to make flirty suggestions, giving me extra work to do so I could stay up late at the office. He wouldn't go home, he'd sit in his office and just stare at me from afar while I work. He started acting crazy. He wouldn't go directly into saying he wanted to have sex with me, but he'd do things that promoted the idea.”
I remembered the anger that had risen in my chest then when she was narrating this. “I couldn’t say no, I couldn't ask him to stop,” she’d said quietly. “Because that video existed, and I didn't want to ruin my life… so I obeyed.”
Zoey claimed she had obeyed Charlie for seven years, enduring his perverted behavior out of fear—fear of losing her life in one crazy night gone wrong with his best friend.
She explained that she didn’t really know what Charlie was all about… that she wasn’t sure if he was angry because it had been his best friend she slept with, or simply because it had happened in his office, right on his table.
Zoey, after her seventh year working with Charlie, eventually decides to run. She claimed she couldn't bear it anymore so she stole money from his company.
She didn't take little, she stole just enough to leave the state and flee the country.
I remembered how calm she sounded saying it.
Zoey didn't seem to regret that part of her story. This was the only part where she narrated so proudly as if it was the most profitable thing she ever did since her days working with Charlie.
“I thought I was free, but he found out.” Her lips had trembled though.
Zoey explained how Charlie found out about the missing funds and just as she was about to leave for the airport on the day she planned to flee, he suddenly showed up in her house.
“I was scared to death that day, I thought he'd kill me.” She said,
But instead of getting mad, Charlie only laughed and told her to keep all the money she had stolen—on the condition that she promised never to try running away from him again.
I remembered freezing when I heard this. Somehow, it all sounded too fictitious.
It didn’t really seem realistic—but then again, once a perverted man, always a perverted man.
“He said if I tried to leave again… the video would be leaked. And he’d sue me for stealing from his company.” I remembered how Zoey’s eyes watered as she said this. “That’s why I stayed. I couldn’t leave. I dared not.”
I let out a long breath in my chair, nearly forgetting myself in the midst of this long thought.
The story played over and over in my head—every word, every confession, and every single claim, even the ones that didn’t quite add up or sound entirely truthful.
My heart wanted to believe Zoey, but my mind refused to settle. “Something’s still off,” I muttered, staring at the ceiling. My instincts wouldn’t shut up… and instincts like his were rarely wrong.