CHAPTER 1

I AM EMILIO

A haze of residual anesthesia. Thoughts sluggish, tangled like cobwebs. The sterile scent of a hospital clung to the nostrils, mixed with the artificial sweetness of perfume—something thick, plastic-like, almost cloying. Voices echoed in the background, growing clearer as the fog in her mind began to lift.

"Maria! Maria! Wake up, Maria! The surgery has been a success!"

The words took a moment to register, rattling around in Maria’s groggy brain. Surgery? What surgery? Why did her body feel… strange? She tried to move but was met with unfamiliar resistance. A tightness in her chest. A shift in her hips that felt… unnatural.

She opened her eyes. Her vision was indistinct, yet she managed to distinguish faint outlines through the foggy veil.

Standing before her was a man—tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, dressed in an expensive suit. Beside him, draped on his arm like an expensive accessory, was a woman—a vision of synthetic perfection. Her platinum-blonde hair cascaded over unnaturally full, surgically enhanced breasts, the cut of her minidress barely containing them. Every inch of her was sculpted, exaggerated, artificial.

Maria’s gaze darted down to herself. The sheets were pulled down just enough for her to see. Her chest… it was wrong. Where there had once been a flat, unremarkable torso, there were now full, round breasts—perky, firm, impossibly large. Her waist curved inward, unnaturally tight, her hips flaring out in an exaggerated hourglass shape. Her skin was porcelain smooth, shimmering with a glossy sheen.

She barely noticed the tingling between her thighs—her groin was numb, but something inside her whispered that it, too, had been altered.

A strangled sound escaped her throat.

"Wh—what…?"

The bimbo beside the suited man giggled. "Oh, Maria, sweetie! You should totally see yourself! You are, like, smoking hot!"

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Her mind felt like it was working through molasses, struggling to grasp the enormity of what had happened.

"What… happened to me?" Her voice was high-pitched.

The blonde bimbo pouted, as if Maria’s confusion was ruining the fun.

"Oh, baby, don’t be silly! You’re sexy now! You should be happy! We can be bimbo besties! Almost like sisters… Isn’t that what you wanted?"

Had she? Her memories were fragmented. There was a clinic. Papers. Something about a procedure. But her thoughts were flashes of emotions she couldn’t make sense of.

Then, the man’s voice cut through. "She’s still under the effects of the anesthesia."

Maria turned her gaze to him, and something about his presence sent a jolt of fear and desire through her veins. He commanded respect and obedience.

The bimbo beside him giggled again. Maria's eyes widened in shock as she watched her boldly groping the man's crotch. The woman's words slurred together, addled by something—drugs, perhaps, or maybe just the sheer stupidity that seemed to radiate off her in waves.

"I swear, being a bimbo is the best!" she giggled, pressing herself against the man like a cat in heat. "I didn't believe Emilio when he told me, but he's been so generous, so changed since..." She trailed off, her hand still moving obscenely against the man's trousers.

"Emilio?" Maria croaked.

"Yes, babe! Oh, I mean—Daddy!"

Maria’s body went cold. "But I am… Emilio."

For a moment, there was silence.

Then, the man sighed, shaking his head with a look of patronizing pity. "Poor thing. She’s still confused. Nurse, sedate her."

Maria’s eyes widened as a shadow loomed over her. She thrashed against it.

"No, wait! Please, I—"

A sharp prick in her IV line.

A rush of cold.

Her limbs went heavy again, her vision darkening at the edges.

"I… I am… Emi…"

One Year Before…

Emilio was a winner. He had always been a winner. From his early days in college to his meteoric rise in the corporate world, Emilio had been the kind of man who bent the world to his will. He wasn’t the smartest guy in the room, but he didn’t need to be. He had hustle. He had charm. And most importantly, he knew how to manipulate people to get what he wanted.

Now, after years of grinding, backstabbing, and playing the game better than anyone else, he had finally done it—he was being promoted to a senior position and was set to move to the central offices in Austin. Big job. He would be rubbing shoulders with the major players now. No more regional bullshit, no more dealing with small-time contracts. This was petrol money. Six-figure bonuses. Stock options. The kind of future where men like him thrived.

Gloria, his wife, was coming with him. She was everything Emilio had ever wanted in a woman. Not because she was smart—she wasn’t. Not because she was ambitious—she wasn’t. But because she was hot. A spicy Latina with curves that could make a priest rethink his vows. Thick thighs. Wide hips. An ass that looked like it was sculpted for men to grab. And Emilio loved that ass.

The problem was, Gloria didn’t always see things his way. She complained too much, even for a Latina. She had an independent streak that, while kind of sexy at times, was ultimately annoying. Emilio didn’t have time for all that soap opera drama nonsense. He was a man who liked things his way, and he had long since learned how to get Gloria in line when she got a little too… opinionated.

Like with her looks.

She was already beautiful, sure. But Emilio was a man of status now. And a man of status needed a wife who looked like an expensive sports car. He needed a trophy. A prize.

It had started small—convincing her to bleach her hair blonde. She had resisted at first, insisting she loved her natural dark curls, that it was "her identity." But Emilio knew how to push. He made little comments. About how much hotter she looked with lighter hair. How it would make her stand out more. How all the high-status women in Austin had that platinum, sun-kissed look.

When that hadn’t worked, he had helped her along.

One day, after an argument about it, he had taken her AMEX card away. Just like that. Gloria had screamed at him, thrown a tantrum about how it was her money too, how she wasn’t just his doll to dress up.

But Emilio knew better. And like clockwork, a week later, after just a little bit of shopping withdrawal, she had caved. She came home with golden-blonde hair and an attitude, sulking about "selling out." But Emilio had kissed her, groped her, and whispered about how sexy she looked while he rode her pussy doggy style.

And that was all it took. After that, it became a game to him.

The lips were next. That was easier. Just a little Botox, just a little filler. She whined about looking "fake," but Emilio told her it made her look classy. She still grumbled, but she did it.

And now, the big one. The boobs. Emilio had always been a tits guy. He loved Gloria’s ass, but a real man needed the full package. Big, bouncing tits to grab, to squeeze, to show off. He wanted Gloria to walk into a room and make every other man’s wife look like a sack of potatoes.

"I don’t need fake tits, Emilio. My body is perfect as it is."

"Come on, baby. Just imagine how amazing you’ll look."

"No."

"Gloria. Seriously. You’d be even hotter."

"I don’t want to be hotter for other people!"

"It’s for me, baby. Don’t you want to make me happy?"

"You’re happy with me the way I am."

"Of course I am. But imagine how sexy you’ll feel. People will respect you more."

"I’ll do it when you get dick implants."

That had pissed him off. After all he had done for her. The lifestyle. The money. The gifts. The trips. Everything. And she had the audacity to talk back to him like that?

Fine. He would hit her with the nuclear option. The AMEX was the first to go. He let her sweat for a bit, just like before. Cut off the shopping. The spa days. The little indulgences she loved but always pretended she could do without. No more spontaneous luxury gifts and no more expensive date nights.

A month later, Gloria came home with a consultation appointment for a breast augmentation.

"I hope you’re happy," she snapped, throwing the papers at him.

He was. Because it proved what he had always known—people were malleable. You just had to know how to push the right buttons. And he was a master at it, which is why he was going to win in Austin. He was ready for the next level. A big contract was on the table. A huge oil deal. If he played his cards right, he’d be sitting on six figures, climbing higher than ever. He was unstoppable. Nothing and no one could take that away from him.

Or so he thought.

The competition for the job hadn’t been easy, but it hadn’t exactly been hard either. Emilio understood something fundamental about the corporate world—it wasn’t about who was the most qualified. It wasn’t about who had the best resume, or the most experience, or even the sharpest mind. It was about who you knew. It was about who owed you favors. It was about how well you played the game.

The selection process for the new Project Manager position in Austin had been handled by three HR managers. At least, officially. In reality, the decision had been made long before the interviews even began.

The first HR manager, Mike, was an easy win. Emilio had been playing golf with Mike for years, grabbing drinks with him, laughing at his terrible jokes, and making sure to remind him, subtly but effectively, of every single favor Emilio had done for him over the years. That time he covered for him when he botched an important hiring? That time he smoothed things over after Mike got caught flirting a little too much with the wrong intern? Yeah. Mike owed him. And Mike knew he owed him.

The second HR manager, Jason, was even easier. Jason and Emilio had gone to college together. Different programs, sure—Jason had been a psychology major before switching to HR—but they had history. They had stories. Nights of partying. Shared drunken secrets. And, most importantly, Jason had been a screw-up in his early career, bouncing between companies, never really sticking anywhere until Emilio had put in a good word for him with a former boss. Jason knew damn well who he had to thank for his comfortable position. So that was two votes in Emilio’s pocket.

Then, there was the third HR manager. She was the problem. The new hire. A woman who did not play by the old rules.

Her name was Bertha Hargrove—a name that practically begged to be associated with bitterness, resentment, and an unhealthy obsession with HR policy manuals. And she lived up to every expectation. Bertha was fat—not the kind of soft, pampered fat that came from enjoying life, but the aggressive, militant kind that suggested she hated people who were thinner than her. She had that awful, patchy, unnatural blue hair that made her look like some Tumblr refugee who had lost a fight with a bottle of cheap hair dye. And, of course, she was a lesbian.

Emilio had nothing against lesbians in principle—some of them were hot, after all. But Bertha? Bertha was one of those lesbians. The kind who hated men. The kind who saw sexism in every joke, oppression in every policy, and had probably written multiple complaints about office temperature settings being "too cold" because men wore suits and women had to suffer for it.

She was a political signing; that much was obvious. One of those corporate diversity hires brought in to "modernize" things, which was just another way of saying "make everything annoying as hell for the people who actually mattered." Emilio hated her, and she hated Emilio.

In turn, he made sure to joke about her at every opportunity. In the breakroom. At the bar. At golf with Mike.

"She’s got that blue-haired freak energy, you know what I’m saying?" he’d say, laughing.

"Bet she puts ‘they/them’ in her email signature."

"Probably cries every time someone calls her ‘ma’am’ instead of ‘Mx.’"

Mike and Jason always laughed, even if Jason sometimes looked a little nervous about it. But what did it matter? Two votes against one. Bertha could throw a fit all she wanted, but he was getting the job. Of course, Bertha had fought back. She wanted her pick—Maryann.

Maryann was the perfect corporate woman. Young, intelligent, ambitious. One of those high-achieving types who had graduated cum laude, with an Ivy League education and a cutthroat attitude that made her a rising star in the corporate strategy department.

On paper, she deserved the job. But paper didn’t make decisions. Men did. And Maryann? She could work her ass off, she could put in the hours, she could ace every single evaluation—none of it mattered, because the men in charge had already made up their minds.

Ah, Maryann…

Bertha’s gaze lingered on Maryann’s ass every time she walked past. The way her tight pencil skirt clung to those perfectly round cheeks made Bertha wish they could have a private meeting—just Maryann, Bertha, and her strap-on. Her body was a work of art—long, toned legs, a slim waist, and softness in all the right places. God, the things Bertha would do to her.

She adjusted herself in her chair, trying to suppress the throbbing between her thick thighs. It was impossible. Every time Maryann strutted past, all confident and poised, she made Bertha’s mouth dry and her cunt soaking. The way she carried herself, so damn perfect, like she was above everyone else—above her—made Bertha ache to fuck her hard.

Maryann had no idea.

No idea how Bertha watched her. How she imagined pressing her up against the conference room wall, fisting that silky hair. No idea how badly Bertha wanted to bend her over the desk, rip those prim little panties down, and shove her thick fingers inside her pussy. No idea how much she wanted to hear her moan like a bitch, like a lesbian bitch.

Fuck all that tight-lipped professionalism… Bertha wanted to see Maryann’s mascara run as she fucked her face forcing her to suck her dirty pussy. Wanted to slap that perfect ass until it was red, until Maryann cried out. Bertha licked her lips.

Fuck, she needed to get laid—and not just with anyone. She needed Maryann. She needed to hear that Ivy League bitch moaning her name, whimpering, "Yes, Bertha, please—fuck me harder—make me yours," as Bertha turned the company’s perfect golden girl into a cum dripping mess.

Bertha shifted in her chair, crossing her legs tightly as she tried to focus on her work. One day. One day, she’d have her.

Maryann had been insistent. She wanted that promotion. She deserved that promotion. She had gone into the process knowing she was the better candidate. She had the performance metrics, the expertise, the results, but she had underestimated the game.

When the decision was finalized—when she saw Emilio’s name on the announcement—her outrage had been pure poison. She filed complaints. She threatened legal action.

Bertha had loved that, of course. She backed Maryann with everything she had, pushing HR policy, claiming discrimination, trying to force the company’s hand. For a moment, it seemed like she might actually win, but in the end, the system always won.

A compromise was reached. Maryann would not be the project manager. That position belonged to Emilio. But, in order to shut her up and avoid a full-blown legal battle, she would be given a new role.

"Assistant to the Project Manager."

Or, as Emilio liked to say—his secretary with a fancier title.

It was a consolation prize. Oh, the humiliation Maryann must have felt when she read that. A woman like her, someone who had worked her whole life to be taken seriously, now working for a clown like him. She must have hated every second of it. And that made it all the sweeter.

At the end of the day, the world wasn’t fair. It was a man’s world. Maryann could pout, complain, fight, or do whatever she wanted. To be honest, Emilio loved watching her squirm. He knew that working with Maryann wasn’t going to be easy, but he also didn’t care. She was the kind of woman who took herself too seriously, one of those corporate ladder climbers who actually thought hard work and merit mattered. Cute, but naïve.

From the very first day, they had started on the wrong foot, and things didn’t get any better. He was patronizing, condescending, treating her less like a colleague and more like a glorified secretary. He interrupted her in meetings, dismissed her suggestions with a smirk, and made sure she knew that she wasn’t in charge here. And the way he talked about his future in Austin didn’t help either.

Yeah, Maryann heard all of it. Everyone did. It was hard to turn a deaf ear when he so loudly bragged to his colleagues about how much pussy he was going to slay in Austin, about the sports car he was going to buy, and—perhaps most disgusting of all—about the boob job he was planning to get for his wife so he could "finally have a nice pair of tits to fuck."

Maryann wasn’t sure what was more repulsive: how he liked rubbing it or the way the other men laughed along with him. She was stuck with that asshole. Jesus Christ, she couldn’t believe it.

Still, she did what she always did—focused on her work, put her head down, and did her best to excel despite the circumstances. If she worked hard, she told herself, she would be recognized. Results spoke louder than words, and she was determined to let hers scream. If she wanted to be taken seriously in a man’s world, she had to deal with a man’s reality.

Maryann still believed, at least at first, that if she outperformed him, she would get the position. And that she did. She landed a major deal, a supply contract so important that it should have been her moment. But when the time came, Emilio was the one in the room taking credit for it, laughing and shaking hands like he had done all the work.

"Yeah, it was tough, but you know me. I just have a way."

That son of a bitch…

Maryann had never felt so insulted. Watching him bask in the glory of her work, watching the higher-ups nod and smile at him while she sat there like an afterthought—it made something inside her snap. The moment the meeting was over, she stormed out, her hands shaking as she typed up her complaint to HR, detailing every infuriating, unethical thing he had done. It was formal. It was airtight.

And it went completely unanswered.

Days passed. No response. No acknowledgment. No action. She should have known. That was when she realized the system wasn’t broken. It was designed this way. HR wasn’t there to help her. HR was there to protect people like Emilio.

That was the final straw. That was the moment she broke. She had endured his arrogance, his sexism, his sleazy remarks, but this? This was too much.

A few days later, she came into the office with her resignation letter in hand. There was no other option. If the game was rigged, there was no point in playing. She walked straight to her desk, set the letter down, and stared at it for a long moment.

That was when she heard a voice behind her.

"What are you doing, Maryann?"

She turned and found Bertha standing there, arms crossed.

"This is it. I can’t go any further."

Bertha studied her for a long moment. Then, she nodded. "Why don’t we take a minute and talk? I think it’ll help you."

"Help me? How?"

"I need you to meet someone."

"Who?"

"A professional."

"You mean like a shrink?"

"No, not like a psychologist. At least, not that kind of psychologist."

"I don’t think talk and pills are going to—"

"I’m not talking about a medical approach. But I think you need to hear what she has to say. Trust me. This will change your perspective on the issue."

Maryann almost laughed at that. Change her perspective? What kind of nonsense was that? Was Bertha really about to tell her to ‘be the bigger person’? To ‘lean in’?

She didn’t particularly like Bertha. They weren’t friends. She was polite to her, but she had always found the woman to be… odd. The kind of person who lingered at the edges of things, never quite fitting in.

But right now, she was the only person who seemed to care. She opened her mouth to kindly tell her off, but something in Bertha’s expression made her pause. There was something knowing in her eyes.

"Fine. I’ll give you five minutes."

Bertha led her into a small meeting room, closed the door, and pulled out two chairs.

Five minutes turned into ten. Ten turned into thirty. Then an hour. Then two. There were words. There were tears. There were hushed whispers that slowly coalesced into something more.

When they finally stepped out of that room, Maryann wasn’t quitting anymore. Because Emilio wasn’t going to win. Not this time.

Meanwhile, Emilio was leaning back in his chair, checking his phone. Where the hell was Maryann? He wandered out of his office, stretching his arms, and looked around.

"Hey," he said, flagging down one of the interns. "Where’s my girl?"

The intern blinked. "Your… girl?"

"Maryann," Emilio clarified, as if it should have been obvious. "Where is she?"

"She’s in a meeting."

"With whom?"

"An HR manager."

"Oh yeah? Which one?"

"The new one. The lady with the blue hair."

"Wait—Bertha? She’s with Bertha?"

The intern nodded. "They’re meeting with some kind of doctor or something."

Emilio laughed. "What the fuck does a hottie like Maryann have to talk about with a doctor and a fat cow like Bertha?" He shook his head. "Whatever. When they’re done, tell her to move her ass and come to my office. I need her to make some copies."

He turned and walked away.

If only he knew. If only he realized that the world he so comfortably ruled was about to come crashing down around him. He had no idea that the end had already begun.

—

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