Chapter 15

I didn’t tell Richard about the conversation in the glass conference room. Not because I was hiding it, exactly — more because I didn’t yet know what to call it, and Richard had a way of needing things named before he could strategize around them.

Three days passed. Quiet ones, mostly. I went to work, ran numbers, watched Van Corporation’s stock continue its slow, ugly slide on the screens lining our trading floor, and tried not to think too hard about a man in a glass room saying I want to learn how to be someone who doesn’t need you.

I almost succeeded.

On the fourth day, Patricia called me. My old supervisor at Mercer & Lane, a voice from a life that already felt like it belonged to someone else.

“I saw the press conference,” she said, without preamble, the way she always did. “I wanted to say I’m proud of you. And I wanted to ask if you’d consider coming back to speak to my new hires sometime. About starting over. About what it actually takes.”

“I’d like that,” I said, and meant it, surprised by how much warmth the offer carried after everything else that week had been.

We talked for a few more minutes — easy, uncomplicated, the kind of conversation that didn’t require me to manage anyone’s feelings but my own. After we hung up, I sat at my desk for a while, looking out at the city, feeling something settle that had nothing to do with Julian at all.

I was building a life. Independent of all of it. That fact alone steadied something in my chest that had been unsteady for weeks.

Richard found me there an hour later, his expression carrying a particular stillness I’d learned to recognize as bad news arriving in careful packaging.

“There’s something you should see,” he said, setting a tablet on my desk.

A financial news alert, breaking less than ten minutes ago. I read the headline twice before it fully landed.

Van Corporation Board Votes to Remove Julian Holloway as CEO, Effective Immediately — Interim Chairman to Assume Full Control Pending Fraud Investigation Outcome.

My stomach dropped in a way I hadn’t expected, given everything — given the takeover I’d helped engineer, given the company I’d quietly spent weeks dismantling on Richard’s behalf, given every reason in the world to feel nothing but distant satisfaction at watching the man finally lose everything he’d built on top of work I’d never been credited for.

I didn’t feel satisfaction.

I felt something closer to dread.

“When did this happen,” I asked.

“The vote was finalized twenty minutes ago,” Richard said. “He’s already been escorted out of the building. Security confiscated his badge in front of the remaining staff. It’s… not a dignified exit, from what I’m hearing.”

I thought about a man standing in a glass conference room four days ago, telling me he wanted to learn how to be someone who didn’t need rescuing. I thought about how thoroughly the universe seemed determined to test that promise almost immediately, in the worst possible way, with no warning and no mercy.

“Where is he now,” I asked, before I could stop myself.

Richard studied me for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes. “Does that matter to you?”

I didn’t answer right away, because I genuinely didn’t know.

My phone buzzed on the desk between us before I could decide. I looked down.

Marcus.

“Evelyn,” he said the second I picked up, his voice tight with something I’d never heard from him before — real fear, not professional concern. “I need you to listen to me very carefully, and I need you not to panic, but also I need you to move fast.”

“Marcus, what’s happening?”

“Julian left the building twenty minutes ago,” he said. “He didn’t go home. He didn’t call anyone. I tracked his car using the company app before security disabled his access, and he’s not heading toward his apartment, or his lawyer’s office, or anywhere that makes sense.”

“Where is he going?”

A pause, terrible and long, on the other end.

“The bridge,” Marcus said. “He’s heading toward the George Washington Bridge, Evelyn, and he’s not answering anyone’s calls.”