"Miles, he fired me. I think that’s pretty final."
"It’s not final." He pushed off the wall and fell into step beside me. "Trust me. I’ll talk to Jace,"
The rest of the elevator ride was silent. I stared at our reflections in the metal doors. I looked like I hadn’t slept for two days, which was accurate, because I hadn’t. Not really. I’d spentthe rest of the weekend replaying the club scene on a loop, each replay more humiliating than the last, my brain helpfully adding details I’d missed in real time. The way his face looked when I cupped my own chest. The exact pitch of my voice when I told him his ego was a city. The sound of my vomit hitting custom tailoring.
The doors opened to the executive floor. And there he was.
Jace Hunter, standing in the corridor outside his office like he'd been summoned by the specific frequency of my bad luck, looking exactly as he always did—as if disorder was something that happened to other people. His office door was open behind him, and I could see the interior from here.
Every surface, every angle, exactly where it had been on my last day. Monitors glowing with dashboards I couldn't read from this distance. Nothing had shifted. Nothing ever did in that room, except the Rubik's cube on the corner of the desk—the only object that looked like it belonged to a person rather than a corporation.
He looked at me the way you’d look at a stain you thought you’d cleaned but that kept reappearing.
"I thought I was clear," he said, voice cool, stripped of anything resembling patience.
"Crystal clear," I replied. "I’m here to pack my things. You don’t have to worry about sharing air with me for much longer."
"Then pack quickly," he cut in.
"You don’t have to be rude about it," I shot back.
"I’m not being rude," he said flatly. "I’m being efficient."
"Those are the same thing when you do them," I muttered.
Miles stepped between us, holding up both hands.
"Okay. Both of you. Breathe." He looked at Jace. "She’s not leaving."
Jace’s eyes moved to his brother. "Excuse me?"
"The contract." Miles reached into his bag and pulled out a folder. He held it up like a lawyer presenting exhibit A, which, given that he was a PR executive and not a lawyer, was either impressive or deeply calculated. Probably both. "Three-month probation clause. Termination during the probation period requires documented cause, reviewed by HR and approved by legal. A verbal firing in a nightclub corridor at midnight does not meet the threshold."
I stared at Miles. "You put that in the contract?"
"I draft all executive employment agreements. It’s standard language." He said it with a straight face, but his eyes were doing that thing where they looked just a little too pleased with themselves.
Jace took the folder. Opened it. His eyes cut down the page. His expression didn't change, but I watched his grip on the paper tighten until the edges bent inward.
"You engineered this," he said to Miles.
"I followed company policy."
"You wrote the company policy."
"Which is why it's so well written." Miles smiled—slow, wide, every tooth on full display and aimed directly at his brother. "You can involve legal if you want. But the process takes weeks, generates questions from the board, pulls focus from the Meridian launch, and in the meantime, she stays. So maybe we skip the part where you make this harder than it needs to be."
Meridian. I'd seen the name on documents during my first week. Hunter Interactive's biggest upcoming release, an open-world RPG that the gaming press had been losing their minds over for two years—a title that could make or break a studio's decade, and one a CEO couldn't afford to be distracted from by a legal dispute over a nightclub firing.
Miles knew exactly what card he was playing.
Jace looked at the contract, then at us. I could see him running calculations behind those gray eyes, searching for the exit in a room his brother had carefully designed to have none.
Then he turned to me.
"The suit," he said.
"What about it?"
