The Office Between Us
The park bench was old, its weathered wood a faded gray that blended into the quiet melancholy of the afternoon. A few golden leaves, freed by a gentle breeze, drifted down from the acacia tree above and settled on the ground around Isabelle’s worn sneakers. The air was cool, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant rain. It was a world away from the gleaming glass towers of Villareal Holdings, and Isabelle found a strange, unsettling peace in its simplicity. For the past six months, she had been rebuilding her life, brick by painstaking brick, away from the glare of the media. She had a new job at a small, independent bookstore, a quiet existence where she was just Isabelle, a woman who