Beautifully Ruined By Him

I was already shutting my laptop when they blocked the door.

Not one person. Two. Claire from legal and Ryan from the projects team, both standing there like they'd planned exactly where to put their feet. Like they'd been waiting for five o'clock on purpose.

"Nora." Claire’s voice was flat. "We need a minute."

I looked between them. "I was literally just leaving —"

"It won't take long."

What was going on?

By the time they walked me back to the main floor, half the office was still there. End of day stragglers. People who should have been packing up their bags, but weren't. They were watching. Some pretending not to, which was worse.

Sienna was already standing at the front.

She had printed documents in her hand. She always printed things when she wanted them to feel official, real and hard to argue with.

"We've been made aware," she started, loud enough for the whole room, "that confidential details from the Meridian project were leaked to a competitor. The Meridian pitch. The one we've been building for four months."

Wait, the Meridian Project? How did that happen??

"It was traced back to an internal source." She looked at me. Just for a second, then away like she hadn't already decided. "Nora, your login credentials were used to access the files the night they were sent."

"What?" The word came out strange. "That — no. No, that's wrong…."

"The IT report —"

"I don't care what the report says!" My voice cracked on the last word and I hated it. I pressed my nails into my palm and kept going. "I didn't touch those files. Someone used my login. Someone had to have —"

"Do you have any proof of that?"

Silence.

I looked around the room. All those faces I knew. David who sat three desks from mine. Amara who I bought birthday cake for last month. People who knew me, who had worked beside me for months, and not one of them opened their mouth.

"I'm telling you I didn't do it," I said. "Isn't that enough to at least —"

"It's not." Sienna cut me off cleanly. No heat in it. Just a door closing. "Nora, the new CEO is resuming tomorrow. If you cannot come in with something concrete; evidence, documentation, anything that clears your name, then you need to start thinking about clearing your desk."

Wait, what?

"You're firing me?” I couldn't believe what was happening.

"We're giving you until tomorrow."

"That's the same thing. You've already decided!" My voice was shaking now. I could hear it. "You've all already decided and you're standing there with your little printed paper like this is some kind of —" I stopped. Swallowed. My eyes were burning and I was not going to do this in front of all of them. "This is wrong. Whatever you found, whoever put my name on it, this is wrong and I will prove it."

Nobody said anything.

I grabbed my bag off the desk.

“I promise you, I did not do it.”

My hands were shaking so badly I knocked my water bottle over and just left it. I didn't look at anyone on my way to the elevator. I stared at the floor and I breathed through my nose and I kept telling myself, “hold it together, just hold it together until you get outside”.

The elevator doors closed.

Then I pressed my back against the wall and let out the ugliest, most broken sound I had ever heard come out of my own body.

---

The evening air hit me like a slap.

I stood outside the building for maybe thirty seconds before my legs started moving on their own. I didn't have a direction. I just needed to not be standing still.

They were accusing me of confidential breach. Hell, if I wasn't able to prove my innocence, I'd end up leaving my job.

No, no, no.

My phone buzzed.

Mum.

I stared at her name on the screen and pressed decline.

I couldn't. Not right now. She would ask how my day was and I would completely fall apart on a public pavement. I could not do that right now.

I flagged down a cab.

I got in and gave my address and turned my face toward the window and let the tears come properly now that no one I knew could see me. Silent ones. The kind that just kept falling no matter how many times I wiped them away with the back of my hand.

Four months. That was how long the Meridian project ran. Four months of staying late, of skipping lunch, of turning down drinks with friends because I had revisions to finish. My work was in that pitch. My actual work. And now my name was being used to burn it to the ground.

Why would I do that. What would I even get from —

Suddenly something clicked.

The drafts.

I sat up straight, so fast that the cab driver glanced at me in the mirror.

The design drafts. I had saved early versions of the Meridian concept files on Daniel's laptop three weeks ago when mine was being repaired. I'd sent them to myself but never deleted the folder on his drive. Timestamps, original file metadata, version history — all of it sitting there, untouched, exactly as I had built it from the beginning.

That was proof.

That was real, actual proof that I was on that project from day one, working in good faith, not selling anything to anyone.

"Sorry —" I leaned forward. "Can you turn around? I need to go somewhere else first."

---

Daniel's building looked the same as it always did.

I paid the driver and got out and told myself to calm down. My eyes were still swollen. I probably looked like something that had been dragged backwards through a bad week. It didn't matter. I just needed the laptop. I just needed the files and then I could fix this.

The main door was unlocked. I took the stairs.

I've had a key to his place for six months. He gave it to me on a Tuesday, casual, like it was nothing. In case you're ever here before me. I kept it on the same ring as my work lanyard and I never thought about it too much.

I thought about a lot of things I probably should have looked at closer.

I got to his floor and walked down the hall to his door.

I raised my hand to knock.

Then stopped.

I don't know what made me stop. Some part of me that heard it before the rest of me was willing to.

A sound. Low. Coming through the door.

And then another.

I stood completely still in that hallway.

My hand was still raised in the air.

And then a voice— breathless, unmistakable, a voice I had known since I was fifteen years old —

"Daniel —"

The key was already in my hand.