My husband locked me out of the gala he was hosting while he took his mistress instead. “The lights give her a migraine,” he lied to the press. As he stood on stage, I walked in, and the entire room stood up. I looked at him and said, “This is my party, Julian.” His face went pale as he realized who I really was…

REASON: N/A

I stared at the pixels. I didn’t gasp. I didn’t weep. The air in my lungs didn’t hitch. Instead, the world seemed to sharpen. The hum of the cicadas grew distinct; the wind in the oaks sounded like a whisper of warning.

Julian was announcing the Sterling merger tonight. It was the deal of the decade, the move that would cement him as a billionaire and a titan of industry. And he didn’t want me there.

He imagined me standing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, holding a glass of water like a foreign object, smiling that polite, small smile he loathed. He imagined me diluting his brand. He wanted the world to see a predator, a king, and kings do not bring peasant girls to the coronation.

I swiped the notification away.

Julian thought he was cutting dead weight. He thought he was pruning a branch that marred the aesthetic of his life.

He had no idea he was hacking at the root.

I opened a separate application on my phone. It looked like a calculator, but when I keyed in a specific sequence—3-1-4-1-5-9—the screen dissolved into a biometric scanner. I pressed my thumb against the glass.

ACCESS GRANTED.
WELCOME, DIRECTOR.