And I swear to God, if there’s one thing I know in this moment, it’s this:
I didn’t lose her.
I found her.
The only thing that ever mattered.
And this time?
I’m not letting her go.
The air tastes like salt and nerves. Rishi adjusts the mic on the podium while I run through the checklist in my head—presentation, lighting, video snippets cued up.
Big Stream’s final pitch is supposed to begin in less than five minutes. The room is buzzing, execs stretching, murmuring, drinks being refilled.
Asher Cross leans casually against a side table, chatting with Shelby. Maya’s nowhere to be seen.
Rorie’s sitting near the back, laughing at something Jeremy said, her bracelet flashing under the lights. And even though we’re rivals right now, even though we’re supposed to be enemies—I still feel it. That anchor line that never snapped.
“Flash drive,” Rishi mutters beside me. “You got it?”
“Jackson,” I bark. “Grab the drive. It’s in my briefcase.”
He grunts, already moving, the cocky little shit with too much gel in his hair and too much entitlement in his veins.
I turn back to double-check the speaker settings.
Behind me?—
A click. Soft, like a heartbeat skipping.
A screen lights up.
Not our pitch.
Not the title screen we prepped.
Not the luxury resort logo.
The Rorie Report.
Her name—Rorie Adams—sprawls across the center of the massive projection screen in a bold font.
Silence slams down over the room like a dropped anvil. I whip around. My blood goes ice cold.
On the screen:
A scanned page.
Typed evaluations.
Annotations.
Private. Confidential. Personal.
And everyone is reading it.
The first slide sucks the breath from my lungs.
