Romane von Yela-ere

Coffee turns into dinner. Dinner turns into walking. Walking turns into his place. Not the penthouse — he sold that. A brownstone in Brooklyn with books stacked on the floor and a kitchen that smells like someone actually cooks in it. No strategy. No games. Just… quiet. “This is weird,” I say, sitting on his couch. It’s leather, worn. Not corporate. His. “What is?” He hands me tea. Tea, not wine. Not a power move. Just tea because I said I was cold. “Us. Here. Without the building trying to kill us.” He sits next to me. Not touching. But close enough that I can feel the heat of him. “Do you want the building back?” “No.” I laugh. “God, no. I just… I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.” “There is no other shoe,” he says. “Just this. If you want it.” I look at him. Really look. No CEO mask. No armor. Just Dominic. Gray at the temples, lines around his eyes that didn’t come from spreadsheets. Lines that came from grief and from laughing despite it. “I want it,”

I don’t chase him. That’s the first choice I make that isn’t about Ethan. I wake up on Sienna’s couch with Dominic’s coat clutched to my chest and the internet still calling me a homewrecker. For a second, I think about texting him. Thank you for the coat. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean Venice. I don’t. Because “I’m sorry” doesn’t un-trend a hashtag. And “I didn’t mean it” doesn’t rebuild a board’s trust. So I do the only thing I have left. I start over. ---Week One. I delete social media. All of it. Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn — gone. Sienna films me doing it, like it’s an exorcism. “Good,” she says. “Now burn your phone.” “Can’t. I need it for job applications.” Job applications. Plural. Fifty-seven by Friday. No one calls back. Google my name and the first result is still INTERN HONEYPOT. The second is Ethan’s livestream, clipped and captioned and turned into a meme. The third is a think piece: The Ethics of Age-Gap Power Dynamics in Post-MeToo Corporations. I

We fly back from Venice in silence. Not the angry kind. The kind that’s full. Like the air between us is holding its breath. Dominic doesn’t touch me on the plane. He doesn’t have to. His hand rests on the armrest between us, and my pinky is half an inch from his. Neither of us moves. Neither of us needs to. We land at Teterboro. Marcus is waiting. His face tells me everything before he opens his mouth. “We have a problem,” he says. Dominic goes still. “What kind?” “The Ethan kind.” ---It’s not a leak. It’s a flood. Screenshots. My old notes app. Project D: Get Close to DC. Step 1: Internship. Step 2: Trust. Step 3: Make him choose me. I’d deleted it. Or thought I did. iCloud keeps things. Ethan’s always been good at finding the things you thought you deleted. He sent it to Dominic. To the board. To Sienna. To Page Six. The headline is already up: INTERN HONEYPOT TARGETS COLE CEO: “Daddy’s Girl” Revenge Plot Exposed My phone has 47 missed calls. 65 texts. All

Dominic doesn’t ask me to go to Venice. He tells me. “Wheels up at 6 AM,” Marcus says, dropping a folder on my desk Tuesday morning. “Venice. D’Angelo account. You’re on the pitch team.” I look up. Dominic’s office door is closed. It’s been closed since the gala. Since Are you in this with me? Since I didn’t answer. “Why me?” I ask. Marcus gives me a look. Really? “Because you speak Italian.” I don’t. I took two semesters in college and can order wine and swear. “Because you closed Chicago,” Marcus corrects himself. “And because Mr. Cole said so.” Mr. Cole. We’re back to that. I pack a bag. I don’t pack expectations. --- Venice. 9:43 AM local time. It’s stupid beautiful. The kind of beautiful that feels like a personal attack when your life is a mess. Canals, stone bridges, light bouncing off water like the whole city is made of glass. The D’Angelo meeting is brutal. Three hours of old men in linen suits talking about “legacy” and “disruption” while I translat

I don’t see Dominic for three days. Not in the office. Not in meetings. Not in the elevator at 7:00 AM where he usually exists like a very expensive, very pissed-off fixture. Marcus runs the Meridian stand-ups. His eyes linger on me for half a second longer than necessary. He knows. Of course he knows. Marcus knows when the coffee’s stale and when the CFO is lying. He definitely knows his boss made out with the Me during a blackout. I don’t bring it up. He doesn’t either. We talk in data. Safe, sterile, numbers. “Day-one retention is up 31%,” I say, clicking to the next slide. “The ‘lights on’ copy outperformed everything else in A/B testing. Chicago wants to push the full rollout to next week.” Marcus nods. “Mr. Cole will be pleased.” Mr. Cole. Not Dominic. We’re back to surnames and armor. Good. That’s good. That’s what I want. I repeat it until it sounds true. --- Day Four. He’s back. I know before I see him. The air changes. The floor goes quiet in that spec

The power dies at 8:17 PM. Not flickers. Not a brownout. Dies. One second I’m arguing with Chicago’s CMO over Slack about font weights — because apparently billion-dollar deals hinge on whether “Meridian” is bold or semibold — and the next, the entire 47th floor goes black. The emergency lights kick in half a second later, bathing everything in that sickly, apocalypse-green glow. My monitor goes dark. The city outside the windows doesn’t. Manhattan keeps glittering like nothing happened, which feels personal. “Goddammit,” I mutter. My laptop battery is at 6%. My phone is at 9%. I’ve been here since 7 AM because the “We’ll keep the lights on” update launches at midnight and I don’t trust anyone else not to break it. “Generator should be online,” Marcus’s voice says from the hallway. He sounds pissed. Marcus always sounds pissed, but now it’s pissed with a purpose. “Stay at your desks. IT’s checking the—” The emergency lights die too. Now it’s just me, the city, and the so