Allison Knapp POV:
"Midtown. The Seagram Building," I told the driver as I slid into the back of a yellow cab. I placed my suitcase on the seat beside me. It felt more like a companion than a piece of luggage.
The familiar architecture of Manhattan slid past the window, a movie I’d seen a thousand times. I didn't look at it. My gaze was fixed forward, through the grubby windshield, toward my future.
I took out my phone again, my fingers moving with purpose. I found Jessica's name and typed a quick message. *I'm fine, just need some space. We'll talk soon.* It was a small comfort for someone I cared about, a polite period at the end of a long sentence.
After I hit send, I switched the phone to silent. I wanted nothing more than to be unreachable. But a moment later, the screen lit up. A new iMessage notification, stubbornly pushing its way to the forefront. The sender was Ciera Mason.
A faint line appeared between my brows. We had never exchanged numbers. We weren't friends. We weren't even friendly colleagues. She would have had to go out of her way to find my contact information, a deliberate act of aggression.
I tapped the notification open. There was a photo and a single line of text.
The photo was taken from inside Jayson's office. Ciera was sitting in his large, leather executive chair, her legs crossed casually. She looked proprietary, at home. She was wearing a man's dress shirt—Jayson's dress shirt, the one he'd worn yesterday—and it was artfully unbuttoned just enough. On the corner of his desk sat two empty wine glasses.
The text below the image was a masterclass in passive aggression: "Allie, so sorry you weren't feeling well last night. Jayson was so worried about you, he had me stay late to help him with the project. He’s such a workaholic!"
"Worried about me?" The words left my lips in a soundless, icy laugh.
Every element was a calculated sting. The shirt, the wine glasses, the feigned concern. She wasn't telling me Jayson was worried. She was telling me who he had spent the night with. She was telling me who he turned to, who he *relied* on.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard. For a split second, a hot, vicious retort burned on the tip of my tongue.
But I let the impulse die. To engage with her would be to descend to her level. It would be giving her exactly what she wanted: a reaction, a fight, a drama she could then report back to Jayson.
Indifference was the only weapon that could truly wound a person like her. It was the ultimate dismissal.
I didn't reply. I didn't delete the message. I simply locked my phone and tossed it into my purse.
The cab driver caught my eye in the rearview mirror. "Rough morning?" he asked, his voice thick with a Brooklyn accent.
I offered him a small, distant smile. "Just closing a chapter."
I turned my head to look out the window again. In the distance, a new skyscraper was piercing the clouds, its steel skeleton still exposed. The lead architect on that project was me. My legacy was being forged in the sky, not in some petty, pathetic power play over a man.
A flicker of the old fire returned to my eyes. I had so much more than they could ever take from me.
The taxi pulled up to the curb in front of the iconic bronze building. I paid the driver, stepped out onto the pavement, and pulled my suitcase behind me. I walked toward the glass doors like a queen returning to her castle, if only to abdicate the throne.
The security guard at the front desk, a man who had greeted me every morning for five years, saw the suitcase and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. He still held the door open for me.
