"I always have a choice," I say, and then reach over to my center console and hang up.
The pressure, the expectations… It’s all my life has ever added up to. It always circles back to the same thing.
Everyone wants something from me.
PR teams want control. Sponsors want obedience. Committees want compliance. Families want loyalty… but on their terms.
I’m done explaining myself. I’m done defending the choices I made to survive.
Distance keeps me safe. Not trusting anyone besides Katerina and my teammates out on the ice is how I’ve survived this long.
My phone buzzes again. This time it’s an email confirmation I’ve been looking forward to.
Reservation Confirmed
Private Alpine Chalet—East Ridge
Welcome back, Mr. Popovich.
My usual place.
A one-bedroom chalet tucked deep in the Swiss Alps, where I can lose myself on the slopes and block everything else out over the upcoming two-week bye-week.
Completely isolated from expectations. A familiar place where the mountains and the snow are too pure to ever feel threatening.
The hotel staff knows who I am, and tourists sometimes recognize me out of my ski gear, but all they ever want is a picture or an autograph. Nothing I can’t handle.
I exhale for the first time all day.
Switzerland is where rules hold and where nothing follows me.
Let them panic.
I won’t.
Chapter Two
NATALIA
The conference room is modern, all glass and steel, every chair filled except mine. The memo said, "Emergency meeting. All agents are required to attend."
That means whatever this is… it’s serious.
I take my seat without drawing attention, pulling my laptop from my bag. Around the table, everyone wears the same careful expression—alert but not alarmed. This isn't a brainstorming session or a routine check-in.
This is the kind of meeting where careers subtly change direction, familiar faces disappear from the break room, and parking spot nameplates get blacked out until a new name replaces the old.
I catch sight of Carey Von in my peripheral vision, the rep from the consulting firm that was brought in two months ago to assess efficiency and cut the fat. She sits near the head of the table, perfectly composed in a tailored navy suit, her tablet resting in front of her, full of evidence she's been collecting against each of us.
We have history, Carey and I. We competed for the same internship in our senior year. The kind that guaranteed a pipeline into firms like this one. I got it. She received a formal rejection email.
I earned it. I worked my ass off on that proposal, pulled three all-nighters in a row, and researched every client the firm had ever represented. None of that mattered to Carey because she never believed that I was a better recruit than her.
According to mutual friends—the ones who still talk to both of us—Carey has her own version of events. In her version, I only won because I’m prettier—because Professor Walsh bought my sob story about my dad leaving when I was two and about being raised by a single mother who worked doubles to keep us afloat. Because Walsh either felt sorry for me or wanted to fuck me.
It was never about merit. Never about the work.
She forgets that the intern committee was made up of five professors, three of whom were women. Never in my life has being abandoned by my father at two years old and being raised by a single mother been a flex or given me an advantage.
