CHAPTER 11: ONE MONTH

"I'm coming," I said.

I did not wait for him to answer. I hung up and stood there with the phone in my hand, my heart beating so hard it hurt.

"Madam?" Mrs. Bell was already at my side. "Should I call Grant?"

"No. Thank you. I'll take a taxi."

I did not know why I said it. Maybe I did not want Damien to know yet. Maybe I wanted to face this alone, the way I faced everything else.

The taxi ride took twenty minutes. I counted every one. I watched the streets go by, the coffee shops, the bus stops, the same old city. Everything looked normal. It felt wrong, like the whole world should have stopped.

The office was on the second floor of a narrow old building, above a flower shop. I had walked up those stairs every morning for three years. Today they felt a hundred steps long.

When I pushed open the glass door, the room went quiet.

My coworkers sat at their desks, frozen, pretending to type. Nobody looked at me. But I knew they had all seen the post. Their faces had the same careful blankness as people at a funeral.

Hannah looked up from her desk. Her eyes were wet. She shook her head, very slightly, as if to say, *I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.*

In the glass meeting room at the back, I saw Mr. Parker. And across from him, a man in a dark gray suit, his legs crossed, a leather folder on his knee.

The lawyer.

Mr. Parker waved me in with a shaking hand. He looked ten years older than he did last week. His glasses were crooked, and his forehead was shiny with sweat.

"Lila," he said. "Please. Sit."

I stayed standing.

The lawyer did not rise. He looked me over slowly, from my plain cotton dress to my old shoes, and gave a small, polite smile. It was the kind of smile that cuts.

"Miss Monroe," he said. "Or should I say, Mrs. Ashford? Forgive me. It is so hard to keep up."

"What do you want?"

"Very little." He opened the folder. "My name is Voss. I represent the interests of Mr. Ryan Ashford and Ashford Group. I am here to inform your employer of a decision."

Mr. Parker flinched.

"Your firm has done excellent work for Ashford Group for six years," Voss went on, in a smooth, flat voice. "It is, I believe, your largest client. Almost half of your income. A pity." He turned a page. "Ashford Group would like to avoid any, how shall I put it, *unpleasant association.* It is a matter of reputation. We are therefore prepared to end all current contracts, effective today."

My boss made a small sound in his throat.

"Unless," said Voss, "the source of the unpleasantness is no longer on your staff."

He did not need to say my name.

The room felt very small. Through the glass wall, I could feel every pair of eyes on my back.

I looked at Mr. Parker. He would not look at me. His hands were folded on the table, and I saw they were trembling.

For three years, this man gave me my first real job. He let me leave early when my grandmother was sick. He once brought a cake to the office on my birthday, because nobody else remembered. And now he sat there, gray and sweating, trying to find the words to throw me out.

"Lila," he whispered. "I'm so sorry. I have fourteen people. Their families. If we lose Ashford..."

"It's okay, Mr. Parker."

"No, it isn't. I..."

"It's okay." I said it gently. It was strange. I was the one being fired, and I was the one comforting him. "I understand."

His eyes filled up. He took off his glasses and rubbed them.

I turned to the lawyer.

"Is there anything else?"

Voss's smile widened. "Mr. Ryan sends his regards. He hopes you will learn that actions have consequences."

I thought of Ryan, sitting in some tall glass office, sending this man to do his dirty work. The same Ryan who cried to me when his father shouted at him. The same Ryan who said *I love you* with his head in my lap.

"Tell him thank you," I said.

Voss blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"For showing me exactly who he is." I looked him straight in the eye, and my voice did not shake. "I'd forgotten for a while. Now I won't."

The smile slid off his face.

I walked out of the glass room and went to my desk. My hands were steady. I did not know where the calm came from. I took an empty box from under the printer and began to fill it. A mug with a chipped handle. A small green plant. A framed drawing of a dress I made in my first month. My pencil case. A little tin of mints.

It took less than two minutes. Three years of my life, in a box that weighed almost nothing.

Nobody spoke. The whole office stood frozen. Then Hannah got up, walked around her desk, and threw both arms around me.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered into my hair. "You didn't deserve this. Not any of it."

"I'll be okay."

"Call me. Please. Whatever you need."

I nodded, because I could not talk. I squeezed her hand. Then I picked up the box and walked toward the door.

Behind me, I heard Voss say, in his cool, quiet voice, "Well. That was efficient."

I did not look back.

The stairs were long and dim. I went down slowly, one step at a time, holding the box against my chest. When I pushed open the street door, the cold air hit my face and I almost cried.

Almost.

I stood on the pavement. Cars drove by. People hurried past with their coffee and their phones. Nobody looked at me. A girl with a box. She could be anyone.

*What now?* I thought. *Where do I go?*

Not home. I did not have one. Not to my parents, who would only say I made it worse. Not even to the big gray house where a man waited, a man who told me plainly I was his wife *on paper.*

I was twenty-five, and I had nowhere to go.

A long black car slid to a stop at the curb.

I knew it at once. The window rolled down.

It was not Grant behind the wheel. It was Grant who held the door open, but the man in the back seat was Damien.

He was in his black suit, his hands folded on his knee. He did not look like a man who had been in a hurry. But I noticed the small crease between his brows, and the tight line of his jaw.

"Get in," he said.

I got in. The box sat on my lap. Neither of us spoke as the car pulled away.

"You knew," I said at last.

"Grant told me an hour ago."

"I could have handled it."

"I am sure you could." He turned his head and looked at me. "You did. I heard."

"How?"

"The lawyer's phone was recording. Voss is careless."

I stared at him. A short, shaky laugh came out of me. "You listened to the whole thing?"

"Every word." His eyes dropped to the box on my knees. To the little green plant with its leaves bent against my chest. Something flickered across his face.

"Do not be sad about that job," he said.

"It was my job."

"It was a poor one." His voice was flat. "I do not understand why you worked for a man who takes orders from my nephew. But get one thing straight, Lila. You are Mrs. Ashford. You do not work a job like that. Not any more."

I opened my mouth. He raised his hand.

"Think about what you love," he said. "Truly love. An office of your own. A flower shop. The biggest boutique in this city. Anything. I do not care. I give you one month to think about it."

I could not speak.

"It is not kindness," he added. "My wife cannot be employed by a contractor of Ashford Group. It is a matter of appearance. That is all."

*That is all.*

But my eyes were burning anyway.

Because in twenty-five years, nobody had ever asked me what I loved. Not my mother. Not my teachers. Not Ryan. Not even me. I had gone where I was pushed, and stayed where I was put. And now a cold man in a black suit, who said he felt nothing, was sitting beside me, telling me I could have the whole world, if I only knew what I wanted.

I did not know. That was the terrible part. I did not know.

"One more thing," Damien said.

I wiped my eyes quickly. "What?"

"Whoever sent that lawyer," he said, very quietly, "will learn what it costs to touch what is mine."

The car turned a corner and began to slow down.

I looked up. We were in front of a huge tower of black glass, so tall it seemed to scrape the sky. Gold letters over the doors read ASHFORD GROUP.

And in the lobby, behind the glass, I saw a familiar figure standing with his hands in his pockets. Waiting.

Smiling.

Ryan hadn't seen the car yet.

He was about to.