I looked at him. My oldest friend. Someone I’d known since we were eight years old building forts in his backyard and planning futures that felt impossibly far away. He’d always been like this—charming and careless and somehow getting away with it because people forgave him for being Jake.
I’d always looked past it because friendship was loyalty, and loyalty meant accepting people’s flaws—even when you disagreed with their choices.
But tonight, sitting here with the knowledge of what I’d done weighing on me, I couldn’t watch him play games with women who didn’t know he was playing.
“I’m leaving,” I said, standing.
“What? We just got here.”
“You just got here. I’ve been here long enough.”
“Archer, come on. Don’t be like that.”
But I was already moving toward the door, needing air, needing to be anywhere but here pretending everything was fine when nothing was fine.
Jake called after me. I didn’t turn around.
Outside the city was loud and bright and completely indifferent to the fact that everything had just fallen apart. I walked without direction, hands shoved deep in my pockets against the cold that wouldn’t leave my chest.
I’d made a reservation at Marea for Friday night. Had been planning what to say to make Gianna laugh, what questions to ask to learn who she was beyond that one perfect night three years ago.
I pulled out my phone. Stared at the reservation confirmation glowing in the dark.
Then I canceled it.
My thumb hovered over her contact information.
I couldn’t sit across from her at dinner knowing what I knew.
CHAPTER 6
Gianna
I was halfwaythrough explaining the displacement pattern when I realized I’d been staring at the same slide for a solid eight seconds without speaking.
Professor Diane cleared her throat. Not loudly. Just enough to pull me back.
“Sorry,” I said, clicking to the next slide. “So as I was saying, the timeline shows coordinated targeting rather than opportunistic acquisition.”
Three other clinic supervisors sat around the conference table, all of them looking various degrees of interested or skeptical. I’d spent the last week preparing this presentation, and all I could think about was the dress hanging in my closet that I’d bought specifically for dinner with Archie.
Dinner he’d canceled yesterday with a text saying he was swamped with work—apologetic but brief. Professional, almost.
Focus, Gianna.
Professor Diane made occasional notes. When I finished, she set down her pen.
“The case is strong,” she said. “The pattern is clear, violations well-documented. But you know what you’re up against.”
“Devlin Holdings has resources to bury us in procedural motions,” I said. “They can delay discovery, file objections to everything, drag this out for years while families are displaced in real-time.”
“Exactly.” Diane looked at me directly. “You can’t win this on procedure alone.”
I knew what she meant. “Internal documents.”
“Internal documents proving the displacement wasn’t accidental, but coordinated corporate strategy.”
“Discovery should yield something,” I said, though I didn’t feel as confident as I sounded.
