The first month at Vantage taught me two things: Ryan Zee was every bit as demanding as he'd promised, and I was better at this job than I'd let myself believe in years.We worked late most nights, not because he demanded it, but because the work demanded it, and something in me had woken up under the pressure, sharp and hungry in a way I hadn't felt since before I met Steph, before I'd learned to make myself smaller to fit inside someone else's life. I forgot, for hours at a stretch, that I was a woman rebuilding herself from wreckage, a woman carrying a secret that grew a little heavier every week. I was simply Camille Astrid, closing deals, outmaneuvering competitors twice my age, watching Ryan's rare approval land on me like sunlight after a long, grey winter.I told myself it meant nothing. I told myself a lot of things, most nights, staring at my ceiling long after I should have been asleep."You flinched," he said one evening, three weeks in, watching me across the conference t
Last Updated : 2026-07-23
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