I remember watching a video on YouTube called “How to Dismantle a Bomb” and so much of it stuck with me. The first thing was the title. Not disarm or defuse. Dismantle. It wasn’t just about making it harmless. It was about taking it apart, piece by piece, until something that could have caused so much damage was stripped of its power.

The next thing was the precision it required. It’s not like what you see in the movies where there’s a digital clock counting down and you’ve got four seconds to decide to cut the red wire or the blue one. Modern bombs are complex. They have failsafes and backup circuits. A lucky guess won’t do you a bit of good. You’ve got to know exactly what you’re doing, step by step. You can’t make a mistake. That’s the one thing Hollywood gets right. One slip-up and you’re fucked.

I think about that video a lot. But I never thought that I’d put any of it into practice.

Eight months ago the engineering firm I worked for got bought out by some multinational conglomerate. I’m not even really sure who I actually work for now. All I know is that they laid off almost everyone, and those of us who survived were told our jobs were moving to Pittsburgh.

My parents thought it was great. They wiped out their savings to send me to Duquesne University. I was a good Catholic girl back then. They kept telling me what a blessing it was that I was heading back to a city I already knew so well. It wasn’t a goddamn blessing, but they didn’t know that. I never told them what happened. I never told anyone.

I left Pittsburgh the day after graduation and never had any intention of going back. I spent years skipping reunions and making excuses whenever an old friend told me I had to come for a visit. Mom and Dad were convinced the transfer was fate, like God chose Pittsburgh for me. They didn’t realize it was fate fucking with me.

My new office was on the twenty-seventh floor at One Oxford Centre. The rest of the building was full of banks, finance companies, corporate services, all the usual stuff, and law firms. There were lots of lawyers in the building. Like cockroaches.

I’d been there a full month before I saw him. It was first thing in the morning. I was taking the elevator up when I got distracted by my phone and missed my floor. I got off on the twenty-ninth and hit the button to catch the next ride down.

When the doors opened, he was standing right in front of me. We were face to face. I froze and my phone slipped from my hand. He bent down to pick it up and handed it back with a smile.

“There you go,” he said, brushing it off with his hand. “Looks fine, I think. No damage.” He didn’t recognize me at all. I didn’t get much work done that day. It took me nearly an hour just to stop shaking. I couldn’t believe that Devin fucking Martins worked in my building.

“Once the presence of a bomb has been confirmed, the first objective is to obtain as much information as possible while maintaining a safe distance. Remote observation should always be employed during the initial assessment. At some point, closer examination will become necessary. Until that time, personal safety is of paramount importance. Begin with the construction of the casing. Determine how the device was assembled before any attempt is made to dismantle it.”

I looked him up the second I got back to my desk. I was going to start by searching the directories of all the companies on his floor, but I didn’t have to. Baddiel, Proctor & Martins was the first one alphabetically. He wasn’t just a lawyer. He was a named partner.

I clicked on his corporate bio. It was practically the same as every other one I’d ever seen. Visionary leader, trusted counsel, favorable outcomes, blah, blah, blah. I scrolled down a little farther. He was a trustee at St. Mary of Mercy and had been married for the last sixteen years. They had twin girls and a labradoodle. According to the bio, he was a real pillar of the community. What they left out was scumbag. Somehow that didn’t make the final edit.

His LinkedIn was a cut-and-paste of the same. Twitter or X, whatever they’re calling it now, wasn’t much different. It was all dry corporate stuff. The only thing I learned from it was that he was a Trump supporter. Of course he was, the prick.

I learned the most from Facebook. His profile filled in all the gaps. The wife and kids mentioned in the bio had names and faces now. I think most men would have thought his wife Elise was attractive, but to me everything from her tits up looked fake. I also couldn’t help but notice that she had the blank stare of a Stepford wife in most of the pictures. Maybe she knew what he was really like but the money made it easier to ignore.

It’s hard to feel bad for rich kids, but I did. Bridget and Bethany were in their early teens and seemed pretty normal. By the looks of things, they were really into horseback riding and other outdoor activities. Devin’s profile was full of pictures of them, but he was missing from most of them. It was like he was using them as props for an image of a wholesome life.

I wasn’t sure where any of this left me. Before I moved back, I knew that there’d be reminders of him. At the same time, I thought that if I stayed away from Duquesne I’d be able to put him out of my mind. It’d been so long that I hoped he didn’t even live in Pittsburgh anymore. Instead, he was working two floors above me. Any chance I had of avoiding him was gone now.

“Once closer examination has begun, particular attention should be given to any feature that does not conform to the expected pattern. Minor irregularities should not be dismissed simply because they appear insignificant. Record and make note of them. They may be critical.”

I got used to seeing him. It wasn’t every day, but knowing he was there made me look for him. Sometimes he’d be in the lobby or occasionally in the food court. Usually when I saw him, he’d be sitting at the bar in One Social. That’s the cocktail lounge on the ground floor at work. I had to walk past the place on my way out every night, and he was there a couple of times a week, rarely on the same days.

Wednesday night was different, though. It took me a while to catch on because his schedule seemed so irregular, but Wednesday was the one constant. I’d see him around the building during the day, just never in the cocktail lounge after work. At first, I figured he left early on Wednesdays. Then I worked late one night and saw him come through the lobby a little after nine. I stayed until eight the next week just to see if it happened again. It did.

Once I picked up on that, I had to know why. I waited for the following Wednesday and made sure I was the last person to leave the office. The idea was to pop up to the twenty-ninth floor and see if anyone was still there. I wasn’t planning on going all Nancy Drew. I just wanted to figure out why this one day was always so different from the others.

I stood in front of the elevator waiting for one to arrive, then thought about it. If the doors on the twenty-ninth floor opened to a room full of lawyers on conference calls with clients in Tokyo or Seoul, I’d feel like an ass. And if Devin was up to something, I didn’t want the elevator ding letting him know he wasn’t alone. So I took the stairs up, and I felt stupid the whole time. Not for taking the stairs, but for doing any of this at all. Not that it stopped me.

I took my heels off when I got to his floor and left them at the top of the stairs. I cracked the door open just an inch or two and peeked into the office. The whole level was dim. It was only lit by emergency pot lights and whatever came through the windows from outside. I nearly stopped there, but I heard someone talking, just one person, like they were on the phone.

I practically hugged the wall as I made my way down the hall, creeping my way toward the sound. So much for not doing the Nancy Drew routine.

“Once the casing has been examined and pattern irregularities recorded, the next step is a closer inspection of the device itself. Preliminary examination may suggest certain conclusions. Accepting those conclusions without further inspection could be a costly error. A device may present as entirely conventional while concealing an internal arrangement that differs substantially from expectation.”

As I got closer to the voice, I heard it more loudly. It was muffled at first, but unmistakable once I was close enough.

“That’s it, baby. Keep sucking my cock. Use your slutty little mouth on me. Make me come.”

What threw me off was that it was a woman saying it. I followed it back to a corner office. Before getting there, I pulled my phone out and made sure the ringer and flash were both off. I got as close as I could, right next to a pane of floor-to-ceiling glass, and peeked through. I saw Devin stripped naked, down on his knees in front of a woman dressed in black leather. He had his mouth wrapped around a strap-on she was wearing.

“Did I tell you to stop?” she asked in a harsh tone.

He started moving his head again right away, taking the length of it back into his mouth.

“I asked you a question, bitch.”

“No, Mistress.” He could barely speak with the strap-on jabbing at his throat. I took a few pictures of him gagging on it. She patted his head and ran her fingers through his hair.

“That’s it. Show Mistress what an eager cocksucker you are.”

I had it in my head that maybe he was fucking his secretary or some woman from the office looking for a promotion. If that got out, the people in his life would disapprove, but they’d understand. Men like him did it all the time. But this? They’d lose their fucking minds.

He’d built this whole image around himself. Happy family, trophy wife, church trustee, Republican donor. Everything about Devin looked incredibly normal and perfectly boring. He was exactly the kind of guy people in neighborhoods like his wanted living next door. One picture of him on his knees with a thick rubber cock in his mouth would have destroyed all of that.

“You’ve gotten quite good at this, haven’t you?”

He nodded, then quickly wrapped his hand around the shaft of the strap-on and pulled his mouth away. “Yes, Mistress. I think so.” He looked up at her without saying another word. She stared down at him. A smile slowly crept across her face.

“I think you’re finally ready,” she said. “For what we’ve been working toward. On your feet.”

When Devin stood up, his legs were visibly shaking. He took a couple of steps closer to his desk and looked at her like he wasn’t quite sure if he was doing what he was supposed to.

“That’s it,” she said. He took a wide step so that his feet were far apart, then bent over his desk. “Wider.” She kicked at his legs. “That’s it. Now tell me what you want.”

“I want…” He hesitated for a second. “I want you to fuck me in the ass, Mistress.”

“Are you sure? Once I do this, you’ll become the kind of man who’s had a cock in his ass. You don’t get to take that back.”

“I’m sure, Mistress.”

“I’m not convinced.”

“Please, Mistress. I want it.”

“Then beg for it.”

Without thinking, I switched my phone from photo to video and recorded everything. I already had enough pictures to ruin him. I guess a video would be icing on the cake, but I didn’t need it. What I realized was that I wanted to have some kind of a record of her taking something from him that he couldn’t get back.

“Please, Mistress, please fuck my ass.”

She got behind him and slapped the head of her rubber cock against his backside. It made him jump. “Get those cheeks open,” she said. “Nice and wide.”

He reached behind and spread himself open for her. Whatever this was, BDSM or something else, it was pretty new to me. It’s not like I was clueless, but I never understood the appeal. I was starting to now. None of my feelings about Devin changed, but watching him obey her was getting to me.

Even through the glass, I could hear him whimpering. I wasn’t sure if it was anticipation or fear. I zoomed in. The look on Devin’s face, with his head down on his desk while he waited for her, was something I wanted to keep forever.

Out of all of it, what hit me the hardest were the guttural noises he made when she pushed the rubber shaft into him for the first time. It sounded like he was in agony, but the way he kept asking for it… there was something about it he loved too. She worked it gently at first, like she was giving him a chance to get used to it. That didn’t last long, though.

“Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes, Mistress,” he said. “More, please.”

“Hands on the desk.”

He pulled his hands away from his ass and put them on either side of the desk, closing his fingers around the edges so he had something to hold on to. That’s when she really started to fuck him. She gave it to him hard. Up until then, I’d been more focused on Devin, but when I glanced at her, she had a big smile on her face. I couldn’t help watching her more than him. I loved the way she never had to wonder if he’d listen. She said something, and he did it. The more I watched, the more I understood why she was smiling. Every grunt and cry Devin let out just seemed to make her go at him harder.

“Take it, bitch. Do you hear me? Take it!”

“Yes, Mistress. Thank you, Mistress.”

She took a fistful of his hair and pulled his head back. For a second, he almost looked terrified. “Remember this,” she said. “No matter who you think you are, you’ll always be my little bitch.”

Devin’s knees buckled. Neither of them had even touched his cock, but he was coming, shooting a load against the side of his desk.

“You dirty little slut. Did I give you permission to come?”

I had everything I needed, and it looked like their session was about to end. It was a good time for me to get out of there

“Once the examination of the device has been completed, dismantling may begin. No component should be removed without first considering its relationship to the remainder of the device. The objective is controlled disassembly, not immediate destruction.”

I waited a full week. It was hard, but I had to make sure I really wanted to follow through with everything I’d considered. I still had the pictures and video on my phone, so blowing up his life was always an option. But I kept thinking about his daughters. People were cruel. If Devin was publicly humiliated, they’d end up paying part of the price. I knew it would happen, and that didn’t sit right with me.

I showed up unannounced. I didn’t knock. I just walked into his office and sat down across from him. He looked at me with a baffled expression on his face.

“I’m sorry, do we have a meeting? I don’t think I had anything scheduled—”

“I’m Laura Doherty.”

“Apologies, but it doesn’t ring a bell.” He shuffled some papers on his desk, like maybe my name was supposed to be written down somewhere. “I’m sorry, Laura, I just don’t… my secretary has been off, and the temp is—”

“I went to Duquesne.” I was committed now. I was really doing it. “We were classmates.”

He didn’t quite freeze, but he stopped moving the papers around. The expression on his face slowly started to change. “Laura Doherty…” he said it like he was trying to remember, but nothing was coming to him. That’s how little I mattered to him.

“You took my virginity.”

“You’re the woman who dropped her phone.” It was like he missed what I’d just said, and his only memory of me was picking up my phone.

“No. I’m the woman you lied your way into bed with and never spoke to again.”

He sat back in his chair and kept looking at me, trying to remember. I could almost see him working his way backwards through the years, trying to find my face somewhere in the back of his mind.

“I’m not really sure…” He started but trailed off. “Can we maybe…” Another false start.

“It was my first time. I was saving myself for marriage.” I was shaking but couldn’t lose my nerve now. All the shit I’d been holding on to for so long was coming up to the surface. “You convinced me that you loved me.”

“Okay, that’s it,” he said, standing up and motioning to the door. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. Maybe another time, but—”

I held my phone up and pressed play. He turned white and looked like he’d shit himself before dropping back into his chair. “Turn it off,” he said, trying not to yell. “Turn it off!”

“You have time to talk now?”

“Yes. Just turn it off.”

I stopped the video. I loved the panic in his eyes. I’d never had that kind of power over anyone before, but that first rush made me understand how people got addicted to it.

“Look, you want an apology or something? I’m sorry, okay? It was college. There were a lot of girls.”

“You say that like it’s supposed to make me feel better. All it does is make things worse.”

“What do you want from me? Money?” He reached for a drawer. “I’ll write you a cheque right now.”

“You can’t refund my virginity.”

“Why are you here then? What do you want?”

“Wednesday nights.”

“What?”

“That’s what I want from you. Wednesday nights.”

It took him a moment to understand what I meant. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

“Maybe.”

“You think you can just replace her?”

“I think you pay her to pretend she has power over you.” I held up my phone. “I don’t have to pretend. This shit’s real.”

He stared at me blankly and didn’t have anything to say. I thought maybe he was running options through his head, looking for a way out. When he realized they were all dead ends, he just shut down.

“I saw what she did to you. I don’t mean the blow job and the pegging. How she broke you down.”

“And you…” He swallowed hard. “You want to do that?”

“I want to take you apart piece by piece. And when I tell you to do something, I won’t be someone you’re paying for a couple of hours of work. I’ll be the woman you’re never allowed to forget ever again.”

“And if I say no?”

“You’ve been paying for a fantasy. I’m offering you reality.” I watched him. He was still scared, but he wasn’t looking at the phone anymore. He was looking at me. I knew that look. I’d seen it on his face when the dominatrix told him he was ready. The difference was that this time he was looking at me. “You’re not going to say no.”

“Dismantling should continue until the device is no longer capable of producing its destructive effect. Its individual components should be separated and accounted for. Upon completion, reassembly into a functioning explosive device should not be possible.”