Page 172 of Game Misconduct

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The silence around me is heavy, suffocating. The kind of silence that makes you feel the emptiness in your own skin.

I should be downstairs, shaking hands and making smiles.

I should be plotting something for Dean’s removal. Prepping press statements. Watching warmups from the catwalk with a face made of steel.

Instead, I’m here. Alone. Making PowerPoint poison out of the only thing I ever let myself want.

My phone buzzes on the desk.

I don’t check it.

I just press my fingers to my eyes and will myself not to fall apart.

Not yet.

Not until I know there’s nothing left to salvage.

I don’t know why I’m doing this.

Maybe because it’s the only place I can bleed where no one will see. Maybe because the slideshow hurts less than walking into a rink filled with whispers and cameras and Maddox’s face on every damn poster.

Or maybe because if I control the narrative—at least in here—then I can pretend for five minutes that I still have power.

I click back to the beginning of the presentation.

The first slide loads again, that haunting headshot staring back at me.

I drag the image into the trash bin.

The empty gray box where his photo used to be feels like a hollowed-out organ.

Good.

Let it match the rest of me.

My nails tap against the keys—agitated and erratic. I scroll down to the slide that used to say“Long-Term Viability.”I retitle it:

Unrecoverable Losses

The words blur.

I blink hard and tighten my grip on the mouse, like squeezing plastic can ground me.

He didn’t even flinch.

He said it in front of the entire boardroom like it didn’t cost him a piece of his soul.

“It’s over.”

NotI’m sorry.

NotI had to.

Not evenThis is killing me, too.

Just final. Brutal. Irrevocable.

The sharp, clean kind of truth you don’t walk back from.

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