Chapter 2

Adrian Pov

The compliance email stayed open on my phone long after the words stopped making sense.

I sat on the edge of the stripped mattress with the dark screen pressed against my knee and tried to breathe past the tight band around my ribs. The apartment felt wrong in every direction. Nathan’s side of the closet hung empty. The second toothbrush was gone from the bathroom. The faint trace of someone else’s cologne still clung to the pillow I had not yet thrown away.

Useful.

The word kept circling.

I forced myself upright and walked to the small desk under the window where I kept my laptop. The joint account notifications were still stacked in my banking app—three transfers, all initiated in the last two days, all larger than anything Nathan and I had ever moved without discussion. The remaining balance sat lower than it should have been after rent and the modest savings I had been building toward a better apartment.

I opened the transfer details. The receiving accounts were unfamiliar. No names I recognized. No memos. Just clean, efficient numbers leaving my life.

My work laptop sat closed beside the desk lamp. I opened it and typed my password out of habit. The screen flashed once and returned a single line of text.

**Access suspended. Contact Internal Compliance.**

I tried again. Same result. I switched to the company web portal on my phone. The login field accepted my credentials and then locked me out with a polite, final message. My employee profile still loaded far enough to show my name, my department, and a bright red banner across the top: *Under Review*.

Four years of careful work. Clean audits. Overtime no one asked me to take. All of it was reduced to a red banner and a mandatory meeting at nine in the morning.

I closed the laptop harder than necessary and stood there with both hands flat on the desk. The citrus cleaner smell was starting to turn sour in my nose. I crossed the apartment, opened every window, and let the cooler evening air push through. It did not help.

My phone buzzed again. Daniel’s name appeared on the screen. I almost ignored it. Habit made me answer.

“Are you free?” my brother’s voice asked. “Mom wants to know if you’re still coming for dinner Sunday.”

I stared at the empty closet. “Something came up.”

Silence stretched on his end. Daniel had always been good at hearing the things I did not say. “You sound off. What happened?”

“Nathan left.”

Another pause, shorter this time. “Left like for a work trip, or left like I need to come over?”

“The second one.”

“Shit.” Soft, immediate. “I’m on my way.”

“Don’t. I need to think.”

“Adrian—”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.” I ended the call before he could argue further and set the phone face down on the desk.

The apartment settled into a heavier quiet. I walked the short length of the living room and back again, counting the small absences. The spare charger Nathan kept by the couch. The running shoes that always blocked the door. The half-finished book on the coffee table that he had claimed he would finish months ago. All gone or never his to begin with.

I returned to the banking app and scrolled further back. Older transfers existed—smaller ones, spaced out over the last eight months. Amounts I had glanced at and accepted because Nathan handled most of the shared expenses and I had trusted the numbers to match the life we were building. They did not look dramatic on their own. Together they formed a quiet, steady drain.

My stomach turned.

I opened the drawer where I kept paper statements and old pay stubs. Everything was still in neat order. Nathan had never needed to touch the physical files. He had only needed access and time.

The compliance email sat at the top of my inbox like a held breath. I read it again. *Irregularities linked to your credentials.* Not Nathan’s. Mine.

I sat down hard on the desk chair. The plastic creaked. Outside, a siren rose and faded somewhere several blocks away. The ordinary noise of the city continued as if nothing in this apartment had changed.

I opened a new note on my phone and began listing every login, every shared device, every time I had let Nathan use my laptop when he was updating. The list grew longer than I wanted to admit. Each entry felt like another small door I had left unlocked.

My hands had started to shake. I pressed them flat against my thighs until the tremor eased.

Tomorrow at nine I would walk into a room full of people who already believed the worst version of the story. I had no proof yet that the transfers were not mine. I had only the hollow space where trust used to live and a growing certainty that Nathan had taken more than the relationship when he walked out.

I locked the phone and set it aside. The dark screen reflected the empty room behind me.

Somewhere in the city Nathan was already spending the money or erasing the trail or both. And in less than twelve hours I would have to stand in front of Blackwood Holdings and explain how my name had ended up on every one of those transactions.

I did not sleep. I sat on the bare mattress with my back against the wall and watched the sky shift from black to a thin, unwilling grey, waiting for morning to arrive and make the damage official.