The Salaryman's Soul-Sucking Contract

Chapter 16: An Uneasy Truce in the Rain

Chapter 16: An Uneasy Truce in the Rain

The smoke from the breached security door drifted lazily through the makeshift war room, catching the pale glare of emergency strobe lights. Daffa stood frozen, his sneakers glued to the concrete floor, his hands still clutching the straps of his overloaded backpack.

Ten feet away, Clarisse Bautista stopped. The heavy steel door hung off its ruined hinges behind her, but she looked as composed as if she were stepping out of a private elevator onto the executive floor. Her razor-sharp midnight-blue suit was immaculate, her posture rigid, and her dark eyes locked onto Daffa with a terrifying, unreadable intensity.

"You're out of bounds, Clarisse," Daffa said, his voice dropping into a harsh, defensive rasp. He glanced over his shoulder toward the service corridor. Santoso and the junior analysts were already gone, swallowed by the dark recesses of the basement. He was completely alone. "Where's your backup? Or did the Chairman decide to outsource the hit-and-run to his own daughter today?"

Clarisse didn't smile. She took a slow, deliberate step forward, the click of her stiletto heels echoing sharply off the concrete walls. "There is no backup, Daffa. Just you and me."

"Right. Because you're going to arrest me yourself?" Daffa scoffed, taking a tactical half-step back, his mind racing for an exit strategy. "You're a bit late to the party, Ice Queen. The Project Kraken files are already bouncing across three international newsrooms. By the time the market opens on Monday, your family's empire is going to be traded on the open market for scrap metal."

Clarisse stopped just out of arm's reach. Up close, Daffa could see the faint tremor in her hands—the only physical tell betraying the immense pressure holding her together.

"I know," she whispered. Her voice lacked its usual corporate snap; it was raw, stripped of the armor she wore like a second skin. "I know the files are gone. My terminal alerted me the second the handshake went through. That's why I'm here."

Daffa narrowed his eyes, his analytical instincts screaming that this was a psychological trap. "To what? Beg me to call Bloomberg and tell them it was all a clerical error?"

"To tell you that my father has already activated emergency protocol," Clarisse said, her voice dropping to a desperate, urgent pitch. She closed the remaining distance between them, grabbing the lapel of his jacket before he could recoil. "He didn't send security to arrest you, Daffa. He sent them to eliminate the liability. The moment you walked out of that building with the flash drive, you signed your own death warrant."

Daffa let out a dry, humorless laugh, though a cold spike of adrenaline hit his stomach. "And you expect me to believe you? The woman who literally drafted Phase 2: The Scapegoat? You spent weeks setting me up to take the fall for your father's embezzlement, and now you want me to believe you're my guardian angel?"

"I drafted a legal contingency to protect myself from a monster!" Clarisse hissed, her grip tightening on his jacket until her knuckles turned white. "I didn't want him to kill you! Do you think I enjoyed watching you walk out of the Puncak retreat? Do you think I wanted any of this?"

"You had a choice, Clarisse!" Daffa shouted, the frustration and betrayal of the past week finally boiling over. He shrugged her hands off his chest, stepping back. "You always had a choice! You could have walked away from the Bautista Holding Trust years ago. Instead, you chose the money, the power, and the silk suits, while you let your father grind everyone else into dust!"

"You think it's that easy?" Clarisse yelled back, her dark eyes flashing with sudden, wet fury. For a fraction of a second, the immaculate Vice President shattered completely, revealing the terrified, cornered girl beneath. "My father doesn't let people walk away, Daffa! The analyst before you—the one who vanished in Singapore? He tried to resign with a conscience. My father had his accounts frozen, his family threatened, and his life systematically erased in forty-eight hours. I stayed inside the machine so I could break it from the inside out!"

The silence that followed her confession felt heavier than the ruined steel door lying on the floor.

Daffa stared at her, his chest heaving. The anger didn't vanish, but it twisted into something jagged and confusing. "If you wanted to break it, why did you use me as the bait?"

"Because you were the only person in that entire building who wasn't afraid of me," Clarisse whispered, her voice cracking as she looked down at the floor for a single, vulnerable heartbeat before forcing her chin back up. "When you stood up to me in the elevator... when you didn't turn into a puddle of sweat like every other man my father threw at me... I saw a way out. But I was a coward. I tried to play both sides. I tried to save the empire and save you, and I ended up losing everything."

Before Daffa could process the confession, a sharp, metallic screech echoed from the service corridor behind them.

Clang.

Footsteps. Heavy, coordinated, and fast. Bautista security had cleared the loading dock and was looping back through the internal grid. They had less than sixty seconds before the war room was swarmed.

Clarisse’s head snapped toward the noise, her survival instincts kicking back in with terrifying speed. She grabbed Daffa’s arm, her fingers biting into his flesh.

"They're coming through the utility bypass," she said, her voice dropping back into its cold, commanding register. "If they catch you here, you won't make it to a jail cell. We have to move. Now."

"And go where?" Daffa pulled his arm back, though he didn't run. "Your penthouse? Where the walls are bugged and your father's goons have master keys?"

"No," Clarisse said, pulling a heavy, unmarked brass key ring from her blazer pocket. "My personal car is idling in the subterranean VIP bay. The security logs there are encrypted on my private server. It's the only exit they haven't locked down."

Daffa stared at her, weighing the risk of trusting the architect of his betrayal against the absolute certainty of a Bautista interrogation room. It was a terrible bet. But looking at the grim, resolute set of her jaw, he realized he didn't have a choice.

"If you try to double-cross me again, Clarisse," Daffa said quietly, pulling his backpack tight over his shoulders, "I swear I'll leak your personal browsing history to the whole company."

A ghost of a bitter, self-deprecating smile touched her lips. "Fair enough. Run."

They bolted through the debris of the ruined security door, ducking into the dark, labyrinthine service corridors of the Bautista tower. Behind them, muffled shouts echoed down the hallway as security breached the empty conference table, but Daffa and Clarisse were already gone, swallowed by the concrete shadows.

They burst through a heavy fire exit into the subterranean parking garage just as the first heavy drops of a tropical downpour began to lash against the concrete ramp. The air outside was thick, humid, and charged with the static electricity of an impending storm.

Clarisse sprinted toward a sleek, matte-black European sedan tucked away in the furthest, darkest corner of the VIP section. She hit the key fob, and the lights blinked a welcoming amber.

Daffa yanked the passenger door open and threw himself inside just as the heavy echoes of security boots reverberated down the ramp behind them.

Clarisse slid behind the wheel, her fingers flying across the dashboard controls. The engine roared to life with a deep, throaty growl. She slammed the transmission into reverse, spun the wheel with aggressive precision, and floored the accelerator.

The sedan shot backward out of the stall, tires screeching against the wet concrete, just as two uniformed security guards rounded the corner of the garage, flashlights slicing through the gloom.

With a sharp jerk of the steering wheel, Clarisse threw the car into drive and rocketed up the ramp, bursting out of the subterranean garage and straight into the torrential Jakarta downpour.

The rain hit the windshield in a blinding sheet, turning the neon-drenched city streets into a smear of glowing reds and yellows. Clarisse wrestled with the steering wheel, her eyes locked on the road, her face illuminated only by the dashboard lights.

Neither of them spoke. The interior of the car was filled with the rhythmic slapping of the windshield wipers and the heavy, ragged sound of their breathing.

They sped through the gridlocked avenues, cutting across lanes with reckless, desperate abandon, putting as much distance between themselves and the Bautista tower as the horsepower would allow.

Finally, as the neon lights of the central business district gave way to the quieter, rain-slicked residential alleys of South Jakarta, Clarisse eased up on the gas. She pulled the sedan to a quiet curb beneath the dripping canopy of an old mahogany tree, cutting the engine.

The sudden silence inside the car was deafening, broken only by the steady drum of rain pounding against the roof.

Daffa leaned his head back against the leather headrest, staring out at the blurred streetlights through the rain-streaked window. His heart was still hammering against his ribs, his adrenaline slowly draining away to leave a profound, hollow exhaustion.

"So," Daffa said quietly, breaking the silence without looking at her. "What's step two of the master plan, Executive? Now that we've burned your family's empire to the ground and have a small army of corporate mercenaries hunting us down?"

Clarisse kept her hands resting on the steering wheel, her knuckles still pale. She stared straight ahead into the watery dark.

"We don't run, Daffa," she said, her voice steady, cold, and entirely devoid of fear. "We go straight to the federal prosecutor's office. And we hand them the master key."