Discretion. The final insult. Even my professional destruction needs to be invisible, sanitized for the comfort of those who remain.
I rise on legs that feel disconnected from my body, my hands moving with rigid, automatic motions to close my briefcase.
Brynn and Easton flank me as we move toward the door, their own fury and disbelief a palpable energy around us. No one speaks. The airtight strategy we built, the unshakeable case we presented—dismantled in minutes by someone who never planned to engage with facts when corporate expedience was simpler.
The hallway stretches before us, long and exposed. Through glass walls, other executives continue conducting business as usual—shaping futures, making decisions, wielding power while mine simply evaporates. They don't even look up as we pass. Why would they? I'm already invisible.
In the elevator, I catch my reflection in the polished steel doors. The woman who walked into that office is gone. The blazer that felt empowering this morning now feels like acostume for a role I'll never play again. The briefcase in my hand—once a loaded weapon—now weighs nothing at all.
"Sloane," Easton begins, his voice gentle but urgent.
I shake my head, not trusting my voice. Not yet. The numbness spreading through my chest is the only thing keeping me upright. When it wears off, when the shock gives way to the full weight of what just happened, I'll need to be somewhere safe. Somewhere I can fall apart without an audience.
The elevator doors open onto the lobby, revealing the same marble and glass that welcomed us an hour ago. But everything has changed. I'm no longer an employee fighting for justice. I'm a terminated liability being efficiently processed out of the system.
Minneapolis pulses with life beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows—traffic moving, people hurrying to jobs they still have, a world that continues spinning while mine comes to a crashing halt.
I step out into the afternoon sunlight, unemployed and silenced, my career reduced to a severance package and a gag order. The city air tastes different now. Not like possibility, but like exile.
And standing there on the sidewalk, watching my former workplace fade behind tinted glass, I finally understand the lesson Frank Miller just taught me:
Sometimes the system doesn't fail you.
Sometimes it works exactly as it was designed to.
32
Sloane
The knock comes again. Sharp. Insistent.
I remain frozen beneath my blankets, wrapped in fleece and denial. Through the fabric, I can hear movement in the hallway—shuffling feet, whispered consultation. They know I'm in here. My car is in the parking garage. The lights have been on day and night because I lack the energy to turn them off.
"Sloane?" Brynn's voice, muffled but unmistakable. "Come on, we know you're in there. I know you said you wanted to be left alone, but—"
I close my eyes tighter, willing them to disappear. Willing everything to disappear.
"We're worried about you," Easton's deeper voice joins the chorus. "It's been three days. You haven't answered your phone, your emails—"
Three days. Has it really been that long? Time has become elastic, meaningless. Hours blur together into numbness, punctuated only by brief, brutal moments where I remember exactly how I've destroyed everything.
"Sloane, please." Brynn again, and there's something in her voice—a crack of desperation that makes my chest tighten. "We just need to know you're okay. You don't have to talk to us. Just... knock on the wall or something.Give us a sign."
The silence stretches. I can picture them standing there in the hallway, probably holding coffee they brought for me, probably with new evidence or strategies or well-meaning advice about moving forward. They still think this is fixable. They still believe in justice, in truth winning out, in good people being rewarded for their integrity.
Frank Miller cured me of that delusion on Monday morning.
He hadn't even looked at our evidence. The financial irregularities. The pattern of sabotage. The documented proof of Vivian's systematic campaign to destroy careers. None of it mattered. The narrative had already been written: I was the distraction who cost them a major sponsorship. I was the liability who needed to be excised.
"Furthermore, any attempt to publicize these allegations would be considered a violation of your non-disclosure agreement and would result in immediate legal action."
The trap had been sprung. They'd built the trap perfectly—allow me to present my case so they could appear fair and reasonable, then dismiss it while threatening me into silence. Even my righteous anger had been anticipated, planned for, neutralized.
The footsteps in the hallway move closer to my door. I hear Easton's voice, lower now, probably meant to be private but carrying anyway.
"Maybe we should call my mom. Get her down here."
The suggestion is a shock of ice water. Mom, who spent two years catatonic on a kitchen floor after Dad left. Mom, who lost herself so completely in someone else's love that when it vanished, there was nothing left but an empty shell. Mom, who would take one look at me and see her worst fearsconfirmed—that I've inherited her weakness, her inability to survive without external validation.
