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Robin flinched, looking over.

Sienna had snapped. She was sitting bolt upright, her dark eyes blazing with fierce heat as she glared straight at Zoe. The cool, analytical risk analyst was entirely gone; in her place was a woman vibrating with pure fury.

‘Stop interrogating her!’ Sienna spat, her breath coming in fast, sharp hitches. She gestured wildly toward Robin. ‘Look at her! You’re going too far. You got your clickbait, now leave it the fuck alone!’

Zoe blinked, momentarily caught off guard by the sheer violence of Sienna’s outburst. ‘Sienna, this is live feed—’

‘I don’t give a damn about the live feed!’ Sienna snapped.

Beside her, Robin couldn’t breathe. Her chest felt like it was being crushed under a hydraulic press. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t sit in this chair, wired up like a lab rat, while people watched her heart get dissected in real time.

Robin started yanking off sensors until she was free of the lie detector completely.

‘Robin—’ Zoe started.

Robin shoved her chair back and stood. She didn’t look at Zoe. She didn’t look at the glass booth where Gemma was suddenly waving her hands. She didn’t look at Sienna. She walked straight out of the studio, slamming the heavy soundproof door behind her.

Forty-Five

Sienna watched as Robin walked out. She yanked her own wires off and bolted out of her chair.

‘Sienna, wait!’ Zoe called out. ‘We’re still live!’

Sienna ignored her. She yanked the studio door open and sprinted down the hallway after the retreating figure of Robin Croft.

Robin stepped into the elevator, and the doors began to close. Through the shrinking gap, Sienna caught a glimpse of her. She was leaning back against the rear mirror of the lift, her head thrown back, her eyes closed tight as if trying to shut out the entire world.

‘Robin! Wait!’ Sienna shouted.

She surged forward, extending her arm to intercept the elevator’s optical sensor.

But before she could reach the closing doors, a hand clamped down hard on her shoulder.

‘Sienna, stop,’ Gemma said.

Sienna spun around, wrenching her shoulder out of Gemma’s grip. ‘Let go of me.’

‘You need to turn right back around and get into that studio,’ Gemma ordered, stepping directly into Sienna’s path to block the lift call button. ‘Pip has held the stream on a delay. We have eight minutes left on our broadcast slot, and the online engagement is breaking every metric Violet Audio has ever set. We need you back to wrap up the show.’

‘I am not going back in there,’ Sienna snapped, taking a step closer, her dark eyes flashing.

‘You have a contract, Sienna!’ Gemma insisted, her tone hardening as she held her ground. ‘If you walk off this set right now—if you leave Zoe hanging on air—you are in breach of your talent agreement. And you know what that means.’

Sienna looked at Gemma. The risk analyst inside Sienna, the woman who had spent her entire adult life weighing options, measuring consequences, and protecting her future, suddenly went dead quiet.

‘I quit,’ Sienna said.

Gemma’s jaw went slack. ‘What?’

‘I quit, Gemma. Shove it up your arse.’

Sienna didn’t wait for a response. She turned away from the lifts, grabbed the heavy bar of the stairwell door, and shoved it open. The heavy fire door slammed behind her with a deafening bang as she took the concrete stairs three at a time. Her knees jarred with every landing, but she didn’t slow down.

She hit the ground floor, shoved through the exit doors, through reception, and burst out the main doors into the drizzly city street.

Sienna’s head snapped left, then right, her eyes frantically scanning the pavement.

Fifty yards down the street, threading through a crowd of commuters huddled under umbrellas, was a familiar yellow leather jacket. Robin was walking fast, her head down, her shoulders hunched up against her ears.