I checked myself out two days early. The doctor didn't like it. I didn't ask him to.
"Ms. Reed, your lungs need time," he said, clipboard against his chest like a shield.
"My lungs can rest at my desk," I said, and signed the form.
Kelly nearly dropped her tablet when I walked into the office Thursday morning. Bandages still ran up my forearms under my sleeves. I told her I was fine. I told everyone I was fine. I said it so many times the word stopped meaning anything, which was probably the point.
I went straight to HR and pulled Ainara Salazar's complete file.
I'd looked at pieces of it before — a missed deadline here, a client complaint there — and every time, I'd let it go. Because Dawson's girlfriend was off-limits, even when I didn't know she was Dawson's girlfriend. Even when some blind, stupid part of me had wanted to be fair to a twenty-three-year-old with big eyes and a shaky voice.
I wasn't feeling fair anymore.
I sat at my desk with the door closed and read every page.
The corporate card statements were the easiest place to start. Four dinners at Per Se. Two at Carbone. A wine bill at a rooftop bar in Brooklyn that made my stomach turn, because I recognized the date. September. His favorite view. I'd seen the photo on her Instagram with my own eyes, sitting on my own couch, in my own apartment that didn't exist anymore.
She'd billed our clients for her dates with my fiancé.
The misfiled documents came next — a contract sent to the wrong division, twice, costing the account team a week they didn't have. A missed deadline in October that Marcus Webb had quietly absorbed and fixed himself, never once looping me in, never once making it a thing. And then, at the bottom of the stack, the big one. The Hendricks account. Six figures. Lost in August because she'd forgotten to follow up on a signature, then forgotten again, then let it die without telling anyone until it was too late to save.
I read it twice. Then I closed the folder, walked it to my desk drawer, and locked it.
I didn't tell anyone. Not yet.
By Friday, the office had a different rhythm. I felt it the second I stepped off the elevator — a kind of held breath that followed me down the hall. Conversations stopped a half-second too late. Eyes dropped a half-second too fast.
Lena Cho caught up with me by the coffee station, voice pitched low. "You should know people are talking."
"About what."
"About you and Ainara." She glanced over her shoulder like the words might get her in trouble just by leaving her mouth. "She's telling people you've been targeting her. Since she started seeing someone. Some guy. She's making it sound like—" Lena stopped, chose her next words carefully. "Like you're jealous. Like you're using your position to punish her for having a boyfriend."
I poured my coffee. Black, unsweetened. My hand was steady. "Is that what people think?"
"Some of them." Lena's jaw tightened. "It's not what I think."
"Thank you for telling me."
She hesitated, then walked off, and I stood there with my cup going cold in my hand, thinking about how fast a story could grow legs when it had the right kind of tears behind it.
I saw it myself that afternoon, through the glass wall of my office. Ainara, tucked into a corner by the filing cabinets with two junior associates, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue she'd clearly brought for the occasion. One of the associates put a hand on her shoulder. The other one glanced toward my office, and when she caught me watching, she looked away fast, guilty, like she'd been caught reading someone's diary.
By Monday the whispers had a shape. Powerful woman. Young girl. Jealous ex. I heard fragments of it in the elevator, in the break room, in the pause before someone said good morning to me a beat too late.
I let it happen. I watched it happen. And I said nothing, because I already had the file locked in my drawer, and I have never once in my life needed to raise my voice to win an argument I could win with paperwork.
Marcus Webb found me on the twelfth floor Tuesday morning, hovering by the printer like he had something to say and wasn't sure he was allowed to say it. He'd worked for me for six years. Steady. Quiet. The kind of employee who fixes problems before you know they exist and never once asks for credit.
"Ms. Reed." He cleared his throat. "I've been keeping my own file. On the Hendricks account. On some of the — irregularities." He didn't say her name. "I should've brought it to you months ago."
"Why didn't you?"
He looked down at the folder in his hands like it had betrayed him just by existing. "Because I had a feeling about who she was seeing. And I didn't think it was my place." He met my eyes then, and I saw something heavy in his — not guilt exactly, but close to it. The weight of a man who'd watched a fire start and told himself it wasn't his job to call it in.
"It's your place now," I said. "Leave it on my desk."
He nodded and left, and I stood there a long moment, watching Ainara laugh softly at something across the room, watching two more people lean in to comfort her.
Let them talk. Let the story grow.
I had the receipts. And soon, so would everyone else.
