Yasmin was already perched on a velvet stool in the boutique’s fitting area, one leg crossed over the other, those perfectly toned Pilates legs on display. The Prada L'Homme trail Yasmin leaves behind in the office? It’s suffocating enough to make you question your taste in women—and your salary. But here you are, orbiting her gravity like a masochist in a Zara blazer.

The boutique she drags you into after work is all polished chrome and mirrored walls, the kind of place where a scarf costs a mortgage payment. The boutique is stifling. It reeked of leather and jasmine-scented air freshener, and the sales assistant hovering near Yasmin was practically salivating at the chance to tell her how “divine” she looked in something overpriced.

“You look terrible,” she says, plucking at the sleeve of your blazer like it personally offends her. It’s her version of a compliment, a surgical incision that leaves you reeling just enough to wonder if she’s right.

She holds up a sequined dress that glints under the too-bright lighting, her perfectly shaped brows arching as if to say this could save you. You can’t tell if she’s trying to sabotage you or remake you in her image. She leans closer, her perfume curling around you like a silk noose.

“I heard Goldman’s interested in your pitch,” she says lightly, but there’s something venomous under the honey. You know she’s already scheming how to make sure it crashes and burns—or worse, how to hijack it.

She’s your mirror, all right. Too bad you both hate what you see.