Banking app open.
Balance: $127,483.16.
Debt: $0.00.
Credit score: 782.
I should be celebrating.
I should be crying with relief.
I should be doingsomethingother than sitting here in my drafty apartment, surrounded by half-packed cardboard boxes, feeling like someone hollowed me out with a spoon.
But here we are.
The rain hammers against the windows. The old glass rattles in the frames, and I can hear the wind whistling through the gaps around the sill. The broken radiator sits cold and useless in the corner, just like it has for the past three years.
I pull my oversized sweatshirt tighter around my body.
It doesn't help.
Nothing helps.
Because the cold isn't coming from the apartment.
It's coming from inside me.
From the place where Cyprian used to be.
I check my phone again.
No messages.
No calls.
No emergency alerts from Apex Wellness.
Nothing.
I don't know what I was expecting.
He made it very clear that we were done. That I was a security risk. That he had already solved my financial problems and therefore had no further use for me.
"You are free to do whatever you want."
Yeah.
Thanks for that.
I take another sip of the orange juice.
Still tastes like ash.
I set the bottle down and look around the apartment.
Cardboard boxes everywhere. Half my kitchen packed up. My clothes folded into neat stacks on the bed. I don't even know where I'm going. I just know I can't stay here.
Not in this apartment.
