The very first time the intern participated in a major project bid, she used AI to generate the entire proposal—and the first time I tried to stop her, it cost me my career, my reputation, and eventually my life.
Chapter 3
At 6:40 that evening, I stepped from the elevator onto the twenty-seventh floor.
I had already forwarded Brandon’s message to my attorney and to building security. My phone was recording audio inside my coat pocket, and the terrace security cameras were active.
In my first life, I had come upstairs believing my fiancé wanted to save our marriage.
This time, I came knowing exactly what kind of man was waiting.
Rain misted across the terrace.
Brandon stood near the railing with his jacket gone and his tie hanging loose. He held a half-empty glass of whiskey.
“You came.”
“Where are my documents?”
He laughed.
“There aren’t any documents.”
“I assumed not.”
His smile vanished.
The city glittered below us.
“The board suspended me,” he said. “They’re taking my shares. Evercore is threatening lawsuits. Harold wants the prosecutors involved.”
“You authorized the breach.”
“You set me up.”
“No. I stopped protecting you from your own decisions.”
He stepped toward me.
“You’ve always done this.”
“Done what?”
“Made me feel stupid.”
I stared at him.
For years, I had mistaken resentment for insecurity and arrogance for confidence. I had thought love meant encouraging someone until they became comfortable beside your competence.
Sometimes, though, a person does not want to grow beside you.
He wants you to shrink.
“You challenged everything,” Brandon said. “Compliance. Budgets. Security. Every shortcut I suggested, you had a reason we couldn’t take it.”
“Because some shortcuts lead off cliffs.”
His eyes hardened.
“You humiliated me in front of Arthur Sterling.”
“You did that yourself.”
“You’re taking the contract.”
“I earned the contract.”
That sentence changed something in him.
He moved closer.
“You think you’re walking out of here and building your own agency while I lose everything?”
“Yes.”
His mouth twisted.
“What if you don’t?”
The wind lifted my hair.
I knew those eyes.
I had seen them once before.
“What are you going to do, Brandon?”
He glanced toward the railing.
Then he smiled.
“A tragedy would solve a lot of problems.”
My skin turned cold.
He continued quietly.
“Disgraced project director overwhelmed by guilt after catastrophic data leak. Her fiancé tries to stop her, but she jumps.”
There it was.
A confession to something he had already done to me in a life only I remembered.
“You were going to say you tried to save me?”
“Who would question it?”
He lunged.
This time, I was not surprised.
I moved sideways, and his hands struck my shoulder instead of my chest. He slipped on the rain-slick stone and staggered into a patio chair.
I ran toward the terrace door.
He caught the back of my coat.
Fabric tore.
“Chloe!”
I twisted free.
He grabbed my wrist.
For one horrifying heartbeat, everything was identical to my first death.
The rain.
The railing.
His hand.
The fury in his face.
But I was not the woman who had trusted him anymore.
I drove my knee into his thigh, wrenching my wrist sideways until his grip broke. Brandon stumbled and fell hard onto one knee.
He stared up at me in disbelief.
“You—”
The terrace doors burst open.
Two security officers rushed out, followed moments later by Chicago police.
“Hands where we can see them!”
Brandon froze.
One officer forced him facedown and cuffed him.
He began shouting that it was a misunderstanding.
Then he saw the security camera mounted above the terrace entrance.
His face collapsed.
“Chloe,” he whispered. “Please.”
I looked at the man I had once planned to spend my life with.
In another life, I had begged him to believe me.
I had begged him not to ruin my career.
I had probably begged him during those final seconds before I fell.
Now he was the one pleading.
“We were going to get married,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You loved me.”
“Yes.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“Doesn’t that mean anything?”
“It means I know exactly what I lost.”
The officer lifted him to his feet.
I stepped aside.
“And exactly what I didn’t.”
They took him away.
Six weeks later, Apex Creative filed for bankruptcy protection under the weight of lawsuits, canceled contracts, and legal claims connected to the Evercore breach. Daisy lost her internship, and an investigation by her university later uncovered extensive academic misconduct in work she had submitted as her own.
Brandon faced charges related to the data breach and the attack on the terrace.
None of it made me happy.
That surprised me.
In my first life, revenge would have sounded like justice.
In my second, justice felt quieter.
It felt like sleeping through the night.
It felt like answering my phone without fear.
It felt like walking into a conference room without wondering who would steal my work or ask me to apologize for being competent.
Most of all, it felt like building something no one could take credit for but me.
I founded Forge Strategy and Design with four former colleagues who resigned from Apex voluntarily.
Our first client was Evercore Industries.
