Evan Brooks arrived just after eight. Which, according to the file, was two hours before anyone else at Clarity Holdings, Inc. usually rolled in—unless there was an espresso giveaway or a cryptocurrency drop. The lobby was tall, glossy, and trying very hard to impress someone’s venture capitalist uncle. Steel beams. Polished stone. A reception desk shaped like a lowercase “c.” It looked like success, the kind you could lease for six figures a month.

Companies like this didn’t get flagged by the IRS unless they got sloppy, and someone here had been very sloppy, three years running. The first two audits somehow had been derailed by the incompetency of his predecessors, but the complaints kept coming. So this time they sent Evan — the guy they brought in when other auditors failed.

He stepped into the elevator with grim efficiency, clutching his briefcase like a legal weapon. His reflection fractured across the brushed steel walls, unimpressed. Clarity Holdings, Inc. — such an innocuous name for a “cutting-edge lifestyle optimization platform.” Which, translated from startup jargon, meant absolutely nothing. Evan figured the name was picked at random by a brand consultant pulling keywords out of a bucket: Transparency, Growth, Holistic, Something Something Synergy.

It was the kind of company that raised $42 million based on a pitch deck featuring one buzzword per slide and a stock photo of someone doing yoga on a mountain. Evan had audited six others just like it. None had indoor swings.

This one did.

The elevator doors opened on the fourth floor—because of course their executive offices weren’t on the top floor, too hierarchical—and Evan stepped into what looked less like a place of business and more like the inside of a reality show about tech interns who forgot to grow up.

There were bean bags strewn between standing desks, a glowing VR rig dangling from the ceiling like a neglected jungle gym, and a whiteboard scrawled with ideas ranging from Dating app but for brunch to Something-something NFTs???. One note had a hopeful circle around it and read, simply: Q4 maybe?

In one corner was a kombucha fridge next to a beer dispenser labeled OUT OF ORDER – AGAIN. Evan spotted a ping-pong table surrounded by four people in matching headbands wearing blazers with '70s tennis shorts, all typing furiously on laptops. He wasn’t sure if it was a meeting or a team-building exercise.

He adjusted his tie and walked forward like a man entering a lion’s den — if the lions were twenty-six-year-olds named Tanner, wore noise-cancelling headphones, and answered every question with, “I’ll have to kick that one up the ladder and get back to you.”

Evan, in his pressed wool blazer and government-issued leather shoes, looked like someone who’d been dropped into a tech cult’s weekend retreat by mistake — or as punishment. Everyone else was in hoodies or bare feet, drinking things out of mason jars, and speaking in a language that mostly consisted of acronyms and irony.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow. He just stood there, stoic, scanning for some indication that this was, in fact, a workplace and not a pop-up adult daycare with venture capital.

A young Asian woman with electric blue hair, oversized glasses, and an aggressively oversized hoodie finally noticed him and waved from across the room like he’d just wandered in off the street. She zig-zagged through a jungle of standing desks and bean bags and met him with a grin that was either genuine or just caffeinated.

“Mr. Brooks? From the IRS? You’re here to see the Head Secretary, right?”

He paused. Eyes narrowing slightly, like he’d just been asked if he wanted his taxes done in crayon. “I’m here to audit your books.”

“Oh, sure,” she said brightly, as if that were an adorable misunderstanding. “But you’ll definitely want to speak with her. Sometimes I think she’s the only one who actually knows what’s going on around here.”

Evan glanced around again — someone was taking a nap in a hammock. Someone else was holding a yoga pose while dictating into a headset. “I was promised a quiet workspace?” he asked, already halfway sure it didn’t exist.

“Follow me,” she said, already turning.

He walked behind as the blue haired girl led him through the kind of workplace that would make his old boss break out in hives — lava lamps, ironic neon signs that said things like Code Hard, Cry Later, a treadmill desk with a half-eaten burrito resting on it, and at least one guy inexplicably wearing chainmail.

They stopped in front of a glass office door with a single sheet of printer paper taped to it. Written in thick Sharpie were the words:
IRS GUY — DO NOT DISTURB

Beneath it, someone had scribbled in blue ink:
He’s already disturbed!

The blue-haired girl giggled like it was the wittiest thing she'd seen all week. “We like to have fun around here.”

Evan gave her a long, flat look. Then he stepped inside.

By 8:35, Evan was seated in what was, shockingly, a tastefully sparse conference room — tinted windows, filtered air, the faintest scent of eucalyptus or possibly printer toner. For a place where someone had spelled "synergy" wrong on the lobby whiteboard, this was... not awful.

The company’s “books” on the other hand, were. They’d been splayed out on the conference table with no rhyme or reason. And by books, they meant notebooks, journals, stacks of Post-it notes, and an assortment of seemingly random documents stapled together like a kid’s school project gone rogue. It looked less like a financial system and more like someone had emptied a filing cabinet blindfolded during an earthquake. Evan had seen messes before. This one needed an exorcism.

There was no order. Nothing was labeled. Half of it looked like it had been fished out of a recycling bin. Just paper. Actual paper. In a tech company. Evan could feel his blood pressure rising just from the texture of it.

With nowhere to start, he thumbed open a red spiral-bound journal, hoping for a ledger — or at least a hint of sentience. Instead, he found aggressively unhelpful scribbles, half-finished lists, and a sad little doodle of what appeared to be a goat wearing a raincoat.

Then he saw it:
Executive Bathhouse Retreat – aromatherapy suite upgrade
$3,200. No name attached. Just a job title: Head Secretary.

Evan narrowed his eyes. That was a red flag dressed up in lavender essential oils.

He flipped a few more pages, and a small bundle of receipts and folded forms slipped out like they were trying to escape. He flattened them on the table.

$7,400 for “entertainment” in Prague.
$1,900 for a “client gift: bespoke lingerie set.”
$11,000 for “taking care of that problem” followed by a little smiley face.

No names. No signatures. Just that same job title: Head Secretary. Whoever she was, she had a very flexible interpretation of what “office supplies” were and no understanding of what was or wasn’t a deductible.

Evan popped his head out the door, spotting the blue-haired girl nursing an oat milk latte.

“Could I get a meeting with the Head Secretary?” he asked.

“She’s in a closed-door sesh with Robert,” she replied cheerfully, expecting him to know who the hell Robert was.

“Well… whenever she’s available.”

“She’ll circle back,” the blue-haired girl said, already half-scrolling on her phone.

Two hours later, he was told she was “in a briefing with the marketing guy.” After lunch, she’d “stepped out for a confidential client matter.” At one point he heard someone say she was “offsite onboarding a new... vibe.”

He knew the runaround when he saw it. IRS auditors practically trained for this kind of evasive nonsense. So he did what any good agent would do: he started asking very pointed questions, in a very calm voice, to increasingly nervous employees.

By noon, he’d spoken to eight different people. None gave her name. All spoke like they were describing a deity or a particularly talented therapist:
“She’s essential.”
“She just gets things done.”
“She’ll explain everything when you meet her.”

It was like trying to book an appointment with a myth.

So Evan returned to the “books” and kept digging. The deeper he went, the worse it got. Numbers that didn’t add up. Vendors that didn’t exist. Reimbursements that led to shell companies. Contracts signed by luminaries such as Mick E. Mouse, I.P. Freely, and Hugh Jass. One contract was signed by a Mr. Tommy Jefferson from Mount Vernon North Carolina. They couldn’t even get the state right.

One memo approved $85,000 in “internal morale expenditures.” Evan figured that meant sushi flown in from Tokyo… or strippers. Japanese, either way.

By 1:30 p.m., Evan had everything he needed. The report basically wrote itself. He had enough on them to recommend a criminal investigation, and enough to know that whoever approved the last two audits had to have been the worst auditors in history.

He could’ve packed up and left — would’ve, under normal circumstances. But the seemingly mythical Head Secretary stuck with him. The whole company was a walking indictment, and half the staff would probably end up in prison — meaning this was his one and only shot to meet the elusive woman.

He needed to meet her. Just to see what kind of person could rack up this many charges and still inspire full-on cult devotion from a group of people who considered “Waffle Wednesday” a sacred day.

Just after 2 p.m., the door to the conference room creaked open, and a guy who looked like he’d just stepped out of a longboarding catalog poked his head in. Maybe twenty-five, definitely high.

He juggled three hacky sacks in one hand like it was something people did at the office.

“Hey, bro-ski,” he said. “We’re aiming to have you outta here by, like, three if you can just, like, sit tight.” Then he disappeared without waiting for an answer.

So Evan stayed put. Polishing off the report. Every sentence he added felt like a career high score.

At 2:21, the door clicked again.

He didn’t look up right away — he was mid-sentence, dictating his findings into his phone. But something changed. A shift in the air. A pause. Like a system rebooting.

Then he glanced up.

There she was.

And she wasn’t what he expected.

Not exactly some fresh-faced intern, but nowhere near the power-suited executive he’d pictured. More like office eye candy with premium styling — the kind of woman you assumed was hired for brand optics, not balance sheets. No wonder the company was in trouble.

She looked... ornamental. Perfect hair, perfect posture, a white blouse playing chicken with its buttons, and a pencil skirt that probably had its own legal team. The glasses were pure misdirection. And the heels? They didn’t just click — they announced.

“Mr. Brooks!” she called in a bright, unapologetically confident voice. “You’ve been looking for me.”

“I’ve been looking for answers,” Evan replied, the words dry on his tongue.

“Then let’s not waste time,” she said with a wink, and walked around to the far side of the table—not to sit across from him, as would be normal—but to plop down beside him, closer than necessary, like they were old friends reviewing brunch options.

She tossed her oversized tote on the table with a thud that rattled his pens.

As she settled, Evan had a flicker of recognition. Something about her—those eyes, that smile—was familiar. Not personally familiar, but culturally familiar, like a song you didn’t know you knew the lyrics to. He couldn’t place it. Not yet. But it was coming.

Trying to stay on task, he tilted his tablet toward her and scrolled through the first few entries in the report. She leaned in, chewing gum—loudly—and nodded as her eyes moved across the text.

“Oh, yup,” she said, grinning. “Nailed that one.”

She flicked to the next page. “Oh yeah, you caught that, too. You’re good.”

Another page. “Whew! All be danged. I thought that one might slip by, but you found it.”

Evan blinked. That was page one.

She didn’t bother looking at the rest.

“Well,” she said brightly, turning to him, “Mr.—uh…Banks was it?”

“Brooks.”

“Right, right, Mr. Brooks.” She nodded with a smile that suggested she’d already forgotten it again. “I meet so many people. Sometimes I mix up names. Comes with being famous, I guess.”

Evan’s brow furrowed. “Famous?”

“Anyway,” she continued, steamrolling his confusion, “looks like you’ve got us dead to rights, huh? Case closed?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “You’re in violation of multiple—”

Before he could finish, she laid a hand gently on his knee.

Evan flinched like he’d just been zapped by the office defibrillator.

And that’s when it hit him.

It wasn’t just the voice, or the hair, or the wildly unregulated cleavage.

It was her.

Zara Zest.

Zara freaking Zest. A name Evan hadn’t thought of in years—and a face he’d never admit to recognizing in public. Porn royalty. Industry legend. Holder of the… well, he didn’t want to finish that thought.

She saw the realization hit him and grinned.

“Yup,” she said. “It’s really me.”

Evan swallowed.

“You’re… Zara Zest.”

She blinked, then gave a proud little nod. “Yup. In the flesh. And silicone.”

Evan’s mouth opened again, this time in disbelief. “You— I mean, you were in—”

“‘Zara Princess Whorrior.’” She beamed. “That one won an award.”

Evan turned pink. “Right.”

She held his gaze, letting the silence do a little slow dance before leaning in with a conspiratorial sparkle.

“So here’s the deal,” she said. “You can take that little file of yours back to IRS… or…”

She gave his knee a pat.

“…you can get your dick sucked by someone who’s actually earned the title Head Secretary.”

Evan opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Zara loved this part. The stunned silence. The moral tug-of-war playing out in real time. At least this one wasn’t pretending he didn’t know who she was. She hated that. Zara hadn’t set the bukkake world record because she didn’t want to be recognized.

“So what’s it gonna be, hero? Career integrity or a story so good no one will ever believe it?”

Evan, to his credit, managed a sentence. “This is… highly… inappropriate.”

“I know, right?” she said, gasping theatrically. “So unprofessional. We definitely shouldn’t do this.”

She mock-shook her head like she was scolding a sitcom side character.

“I mean, the ethical violations alone!” she said, in the tone of someone who’d once delivered that line in pigtails, bent over a teacher’s desk, in the kind of movie Pornhub and OnlyFans made obsolete.

Evan’s brain was short-circuiting. He could already hear the IRS ethics committee pounding on his frontal lobe.

“It’s up to you,” she said sweetly, like she was offering toppings on a sundae. “World-class blowjob from someone who was nominated for Best Oral Performance six years in a row…”

She gave him a beat to imagine that.

“Or—you can walk out of here and face an angry mob of forty tech bros and baristas with coding certificates who are gonna be out of work by next week.”

Evan didn’t move. His body was frozen, but his thoughts were sprinting — ethics, protocol, professional ruin — all colliding with slow-mo flashes of Zara in a dozen dimly lit scenes, and the sudden, pants-down reality of being offered a starring role in Zara Zest: Conference Room Confessions.

She snapped her fingers gently in front of his face.

“Hellooo? Earth to Mr. Banks. You want the blow job or the angry mob?”

“Which will it be?” Zara asked, eyes wide with faux innocence.

“Dick sucked?” she said, beaming, head bobbing in an enthusiastic yes — like she was pitching him a game show prize.

“Or… angry mob?” she added, switching instantly to a cartoonish pout, shaking her head no, bottom lip out like a scolded puppy.

Evan blinked.

“That’s not a real—”

“It’s very real,” she said, nodding solemnly. “I’ve already cast the mob. There’s a guy with a man bun outside who’s dying for a reason to flip a desk.”

“This is insane,” he muttered.

“Of course it is. You think sane people get into tech?”

He tried not to smile.

Zara gave him one more moment.

Then she slid between his knees, slowly and deliberately, her smile never wavering.

He didn’t move, which Zara took as enthusiastic consent. She gave a satisfied little hum — half pleased, half triumphant — and settled between his knees like she was dropping into a yoga pose she’d perfected years ago. The carpet in this office, Evan suddenly noticed, was surprisingly plush.

Her fingers moved with a kind of graceful efficiency, tugging his zipper down with all the delicacy of a woman opening a particularly expensive purse. She did it all without breaking eye contact, which, honestly, should have been illegal.

“This is the part where you exhale,” she said gently, as she reached into his boxers. “You look like someone just found your high school browser history.”

He did, in fact, forget to exhale until that moment. It came out as a wheeze.

Zara laughed under her breath. “There we go.”

When she first took him in her mouth, Evan felt his soul leave his body — and not quietly, either. It practically ran for the elevator. But she eased him into it. That’s what pros do.

Zara paced it perfectly — she didn't have all day, but she didn't want him popping in 10 seconds like when Suzy Ackerman let him touch her boobs under the apple tree. She guessed that's how he first got to second base. Sometimes her mind wandered at the strangest times.

Evan gripped the sides of the chair like he was riding out turbulence. Every stroke, tongue swirl, and glide of her mouth was pure muscle memory — the kind of confidence that came from experience, trophies, and a total lack of modesty.

Every now and then, she tossed out one-liners between sucks like she was working the room — “IRS guys don’t usually smile this much,” or “If you keep auditing my throat, I’m gonna expect to see some liquid assets.” Evan laughed. Then immediately regretted it. Then groaned — for multiple reasons.

He was starting to forget how he'd even gotten here. One moment he’d been highlighting misappropriated funds, and now he was in a Herman Miller chair getting professionally unmade by a woman who carried the first three installments of the Grand Theft Orgasmo franchise.

Evan began to relax, finally working up the courage to look down.

That was his mistake.

The sight of himself in Zara’s mouth — the lips, the eye contact, the casual this is my job and I’m good at it — broke whatever fragile hold he had left on the moment.

If you’d asked him later, he would’ve sworn it lasted at least half an hour, maybe more. Slow. Cinematic. Like the end of a Scorsese movie.

In reality, it was about eleven minutes.

Not bad.

He finished with a strangled gasp — the kind of noise a man makes when he’s trying not to alert HR — and slumped back like someone who’d just declared bankruptcy on his dignity.

Zara pulled back with a soft, satisfied sigh, wiped the corner of her mouth with one finger like she was polishing off a really good cocktail, and stood.

“Solid performance,” she said, smoothing her skirt. “You held out longer than Robert. And way longer than that guy from Legal.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Lawyers, amirite?”

Evan, red-faced and breathless, stared at the ceiling tiles as if they held answers.

“You okay sweety?” she asked. “You look like you just realized TurboTax doesn’t cover this.”

Evan fumbled with his zipper like a man rebooting from a system crash — all blinking lights and no user input.

Zara gave Evan a moment. She knew what he was going through — she’d seen it before.

He looked at her, wanting to say something that matched her wit — or at the very least, something coherent.

What came out was: “That… was…”

Zara grinned. “Legendary?”

Evan nodded in agreement. It was all his brain could manage in the moment.

“Anyway,” she said, adjusting her blouse like she hadn’t just deep-throated a government employee, “about that report?”

“Right,” Evan said, trying to sound professional — like he wasn’t speaking to someone with a tiny drop of his semen drying on her blouse.

“You could submit it,” she said, casually plucking a lint thread from his lapel. “Could be a big win for you. Very satisfying. Paperwork, court dates, maybe even a congressional subcommittee.”

He stared at her.

“Or,” she continued, “you could chalk this place up as a cautionary tale for startups who add ex-adult film stars to their senior leadership. Let Clarity Holdings collapse under its own ego and save the IRS a couple months of headaches.”

“Are you bribing me with... aftercare?”

“I prefer to think of it as strategic post-coital policy realignment.”

He gave her a look. “That’s not a thing.”

“It is now.”

Evan sighed, staring down at the report for what must have been minutes. It was finished — complete, airtight, and ready to bury the company. A career milestone. All he had to do was hit send. But then there was Zara — impossible, disarming, unforgettable.

He looked up, meaning to meet her eyes — and the moment.

Then he froze.

Outside the glass wall, a small crowd had gathered. Blue-haired girl. Juggling guy. At least four others pretending to check their phones while very obviously watching.

The blue-haired girl caught his eye, smiled, and mimed a slow, exaggerated high-five.

Zara gave him a wink and patted his chest. “Welcome to Clarity, Mr. Brooks.” Zara quietly congratulated herself for getting his name right this time.

Evan looked at the report one last time. Then he exhaled — slow, inevitable.

And deleted it.