Clara arrived at the office later than usual. Not because she wanted to avoid Adrian, but because mornings no longer dictated her rhythm. She had learned to move through her life with her own timing, her own purpose. The elevator ride up was uneventful, the hum of machinery and the faint scent of polished metal grounding her in the present.When she stepped onto her floor, the office buzzed as always colleagues rushing between meetings, the soft clicking of keyboards, the murmur of strategy sessions but something had shifted. It wasn’t visible, not yet. Not in the way Adrian had once made the entire floor revolve around him. But it was there.She moved to her desk, set down her bag, and opened her laptop. The screen lit her face in a pale glow as she scanned through emails and reports. A soft knock interrupted her focus. She looked up to find one of Adrian’s senior assistants hesitating at the edge of her space.“Morning, Miss Hayes,” the assistant said, a careful neutrality in her to
Last Updated : 2025-12-24 Read more