The bell above the bookshop door chimed softly as Ava stepped inside. The scent of old pages and steeped tea wrapped around her like an old friend. The shelves hadn’t changed much in the years since she last came. Still crooked in places. Still filled with poetry and rebellion.
It had been five years since the garden.Five years since she stepped through the glass doors of the Sinclair Wolfe Foundation and whispered to herself, This time, it’s mine.And it had been five years of real, messy, beautiful work.She still had the notebook Grayson had given her on their wedding day. It was half filled now ink bleeding from long nights, hard truths, and the stories of women who once believed they didn’t have a choice.But today wasn’t about any of that.Today was just… her.A rare, quiet moment where she wasn’t Ava Sinclair-Wolfe: CEO, advocate, or headline.She was just a woman craving a story that didn’t belong to heThe bell above the bookshop door chimed softly as Ava stepped inside. The scent of old pages and steeped tea wrapped around her like an old friend. The shelves hadn’t changed much in the years since she last came. Still crooked in places. Still filled with poetry and rebellion.It had been five years since the garden.Five years since she stepped through the glass doors of the Sinclair Wolfe Foundation and whispered to herself, This time, it’s mine.And it had been five years of real, messy, beautiful work.She still had the notebook Grayson had given her on their wedding day. It was half filled now ink bleeding from long nights, hard truths, and the stories of women who once believed they didn’t have a choice.But today wasn’t about any of that.Today was just… her.A rare, quiet moment where she wasn’t Ava Sinclair-Wolfe: CEO, advocate, or headline.She was just a woman craving a story that didn’t belong to he
The room wasn’t a ballroom. It wasn’t even a chapel. It was a garden tucked behind the Sinclair-Wolfe Foundation building quiet, filled with sun-drenched wildflowers, and bordered by trees that didn’t ask for applause. There were no rows of expensive chairs. No string quartet. No designer veil flown in from Paris. But there was laughter. There was sunlight. And there was Ava, standing beneath a wooden arch built by hand and draped in soft linen and eucalyptus. She wasn’t wearing white. She wore soft gold the kind of gold that doesn’t scream royalty but hums with memory. The fabric moved like wind around her legs, and her curls were pinned back with a single silver clip. Grayson stood across from her. He wore no tux. Just a dark blue suit and a look that said: finally. They hadn’t invited hundreds. Just thirty. All of them real. All of them chosen. Luisa sat in the front row, teary eye
The city had quieted into its own kind of hush one only found in the hours between dusk and midnight. And for the first time in days, Ava stood alone on the balcony of the Sinclair Wolfe tower, looking out at the skyline not as a cage, not even as a canvas but as a mirror. Below her, traffic pulsed and life moved forward. But up here, the world waited. And so did she. It had been a week since the tribunal. Since she stood under oath and let the truth cut clean through years of silence. Her words had echoed through the courtroom like dropped stones in deep water. Not angry. Not trembling. Just real. And finally, hers. No one had spoken to Grayson since the verdict. Not even her. Luisa had tried once. Knocked on the glass office door where he sat staring at old photographs and the crumbling scaffolding of a legacy built on omission. But he waved her away with a look Ava knew too well one that said: “I need to fall apart priva
The news broke just after dawn. At first, it was a whisper a shadow passed between watchdog forums and anonymous tip lines. But by sunrise, it had exploded. Someone had leaked a massive archive. Not Ava. Not her foundation. Not a journalist hungry for credit. This time, the leak came from the inside. An anonymous Dropbox link had been emailed to four different investigative bodies. Each recipient confirmed it was clean, untraceable, and precise. Inside the folder: over two hundred documents. NDAs, payoffs, legal silencing mechanisms, offshore wire transfers, and worst of all boardroom meeting minutes dating back decades. But the most damning was a scanned memo, signed and initialed by G. Wolfe Sr., Grayson’s late father. In it, he authorized a “clean up budget” to eliminate reputational threats from female employees. The words were cold. Calculated. A legacy dressed in blood and bureaucracy. By 9 a.m., the internet was ablaze.
The following morning, the Wolfe & Sinclair office felt different: lighter, sharper, alert. Ava noticed it the moment she stepped off the elevator. Olivia’s face carried cautious optimism. Naomi’s presence, along with her sudden return to visibility, had stirred something hope fanning embers of purpose.She passed Naomi’s desk on her way to her office. Naomi worked quietly, phone pressed to one ear, typing on her laptop. Her brow was furrowed, but each tap sounded like progress. Ava offered a brief nod. Naomi returned it determined, poised, already in warrior mode.This meeting with Grayson and Luisa was not planned. She’d called it after Naomi’s departure, wanting all of them in one room before the day went too far off mission.Around the conference table, their team filed in. Grayson took his usual seat beside Ava, while Naomi sat across from her. Maps, documents, and laptops were spread across the table.Luisa, acting as unofficial moderator, b
The bus station felt colder than her memory. A dull November sky draped its gray over metal benches, dull fluorescent lights overhead, and the steady hum of buses arriving and departing. Naomi Wexler stood on the platform, dressed in layers: a faded flannel, a worn coat, a scarf knitted too thinly for the weather. She looked like someone who wanted to blend in and someone who still didn’t.She checked her phone again: one new message.From Ava: Train arrives in 10. I’ll wait inside. No surprises past security.Naomi took a shaky breath, gripping her bag strap. She walked inside the station, past the vendors, past the rows of seats scattered with people lost in their own worlds. She walked straight up to the pay per charge kiosk. Two dollars in her pocket. Enough to power up her phone and send one message.To Ava: At kiosk. Alone.She sent it.Then, she waited.Ava arrived twenty minutes later, late but purposeful. On her