Page 3 of Trail of Betrayal
Behind me, the waiter clears our plates. I glance down at the crumbs of dessert we never finished and wonder if anything was ever real. The thread of possibility he left behind coils tight in my chest.
I stand, leave a tip on the table, and slip out into the cool air. The streets are half-lit, cars passing in silent ribbons of light. He’s gone, but I can still taste the memory of his kiss.
I walk the few blocks home, replaying his farewell and that quick smile into the phone. When I reach my door, I pause, hand on the doorknob, and let the night settle around me. The watch on my wrist has stopped ticking, perhaps joining me in this waiting game. I step inside, the door clicking shut behind me, and all I have is the echo of his departure and the question of who was really on the other end of that line.
Chapter 2
The office feels different at night—not because of the dark, but because of the silence. In the glass shell of Dane & Associates, the fluorescents hum; one stutters, a tiny, stubborn heartbeat. I count the flickers: one every five seconds. In an hour, that’s seven hundred and twenty. I keep track of numbers like that. They make loneliness measurable—the arithmetic of being alone.
My office sits past the bullpen and the glass-walled conference room. On my monitor, the campaign deck glows:Bedder: Own Your Sleep.Lawrence’s voice echoes from earlier, pitching the concept with that lopsided, boyish grin. In his mouth, even insomnia sounds seductive. I scroll through slides until my brain throbs in demographics, conversion charts, mockups for the Adweek spread. Everything is seamless. On-brand. On-message. On-point. But the back of my mind won’t shut up about the phone calls, the way his jaw flexed every time the screen lit up, the microsecond of guilt he could never quite erase.
To minimize distractions, I turn my phone facedown beside my keyboard.
I glance at my watch. 9:13 p.m. My father gave it to me before his cancer turned time into a cruel joke—a Tag Heuer, heavy and cold against my wrist, the band leaving an angry circle when I take it off. I twist it once, twice, a small ritual to tame the things I can’t control.
Outside the windows, the city glitters with a thousand lit apartments. They’re snow globes of other people’s private lives. Across the street, a startup suite looks like a frat for optimism: beanbags, open desks, the ghost of a Red Bull haze. They’re gone. I’m the only idiot still at my desk.
I flip through the creative brief for tomorrow’s meeting. There’s a typo in the second paragraph: “obsessed,” one too many s’s. Small things matter. I delete it, feel the tiny satisfaction of correction. My mind keeps snapping back to Lawrence, to the way his fingers fidgeted at dinner. Maybe we’re both just looking for something to play with while the world refuses to make sense.
A sound stirs in the hallway. At first I think it’s the HVAC kicking on, but then it comes again—a dull, rhythmic thud, a series of soft collisions. The cleaning crew doesn’t arrive until midnight. The pattern is wrong. Too human. I check the minute hand: the second ticked forward by only two thin lines.
I close my laptop and stand. My heels echo on the hardwood, a metronome I try to match with my breath. My reflection trails me in the glass—pale, stretched—the kind of woman who might haunt her own office out of spite. I leave my door cracked; it feels safer, like I’m not fully committing to whatever this is.
The corridor is cold. Motion sensors wake as I pass, a relay of buzzing lights. The bullpen is empty: immaculate desks, neat kingdoms of paperclips. The thumping grows. Urgent.
I move closer, heart pounding in a rhythm both familiar and wrong. I’ve been on this floor after hours a hundred times, buttonight the silence feels intentional. My palm slicks against my watchband. I try to arrange facts like dominoes.
Lawrence said he was working late. His calendar is blocked.
The only other person who stays past seven is Isabella Thompson from Client Management.
Lawrence hates Isabella.
The last time I saw them together, they couldn’t stop scowling.
The thumping stops. I’m four feet from the conference room; the door’s closed except for a narrow slice of light. Through the frosted glass, movement suggests itself. A shadow paces like an animal in a cage.
A breathy laugh. A strained voice. Then Lawrence—low and rough. “Don’t.”
Another voice, sharp and female. “You’re the one who—”
A crash. Something hits the wall. My body locks. My manicured nails bite crescents into my palms until the half-moons throb. I should leave. Announce myself. Do anything but stand here. But the awful need to know pins me in place.
Inside, he says, “Don’t make this worse.”
“You never wanted to make it better.”
Her tone is venom, and something else. Tall, composed, dark hair severe, lips drawn tight. I’ve seen her freeze a boardroom with one raised brow. What could make her lose control?
Another thud, louder. A glass skitters. Adrenaline tastes metallic on my tongue. I inch closer. There’s a thin triangle of light where the door meets the frame; my reflection looks like a ghost inside it. For a second I expect to find myself on the other side of the glass, trapped.
I breathe slow, palms flat to the wall. Each impact vibrates through the drywall. One. Two. Three. The sounds quicken. Anger becomes breath, rhythm, skin.
My pulse spikes. Curiosity and dread coil until they’re the same thing. I tilt my head and peer through the gap. Flashes—her hand, his shoulder, movement too frantic for an argument.
A sound breaks from him, half curse, half groan. “You’re so much better than Veronica.”
My name lands like a slap—not lust, but contempt, proof I’ve been pulled into this without consent. For a second I can’t tell if it’s real or a hallucination. The syllables twist through the air again, warped by pleasure, like blasphemy.
