TrueNorth HQ occupied a sleek stretch of the thirty-first floor in one of Manhattan’s most prestigious business towers. The view was clinically beautiful—nothing but skyline, glass, and silence, broken only by the soft hum of filtered air and the occasional indignant thud of a pigeon wing against the window.
Fitzwilliam Darcy stood at the floor-to-ceiling pane, coffee cooling in his hand, watching New York move beneath him like data he could no longer interpret.
Behind him, Bingley kicked his chair back on two legs and asked, not for the first time, “So. How’d it go?”
Darcy didn’t turn around. “She walked out.”
The chair thudded back onto all fours.
“Wait. What?”
“She saw me. And left.”
Bingley blinked. “She ghosted you in real life?”
Darcy’s mouth twitched. “Technically, that’s called a ‘walk-out.’ And yes.”
“Was it the glasses? Did you wear the reading glasses?”
“She recognised me, Charles. Not the eyewear.”
A pause. Then Bingley narrowed his eyes. “Hold on. You guys know each other in real life?”
“Yes.” Darcy took a sip of his coffee. “It was Elizabeth Bennet.”
Bingley stared. “No.”
“Yes.”
“You’re telling me the anonymous woman you matched with on TrueNorth—the one who made youlaughthrough messages and had youchecking your phonelike a civilian—that woman wasElizabeth Bennet?”
Darcy nodded once.
Bingley sat back, fully stunned. “Well. Damn.”
There was a beat.
“She didn’t say anything?” Bingley asked.
“Nothing. Just stood up and left. No message. No second glance. Just... gone.”
“And you didn’t stop her?”
“She didn’t want to be stopped.”
Bingley whistled under his breath. “She’s got a talent for exits, I’ll give her that.”
Darcy didn’t smile.
Bingley studied him. “You didn’t do this on purpose, right?”
Darcy looked over. “Do you think I’d manipulate my own algorithm to match with a woman who publicly tried to humiliate me?”
“I mean... not if you said it like that.”
“I didn’t rig anything,” Darcy said. “The match was clean. Anonymous. I followed the same path every user does. The system matched us.”
“And the system doesn’t lie,” Bingley intoned, mock solemn.
