The meeting was about the Ethereal Vanguard film adaptation. Final casting confirmations. Production timeline. Budget approvals.
The cast was Meridian's choice, their big announcement. The door opened for the final arrival and every posture in the conference room changed at once. Attention redirected. Energy reorganized around the person in the doorway.
I didn’t look up from my notes. I was mid-sentence, writing a budget figure.
Then I heard his voice.
The conference room, the notebook, the pen in my hand—all of it receded like a tide pulling back, leaving me exposed on a shore I’d been running from.
My pen stopped moving. My hand went still on the page.
I looked up.
Tobias Hart was standing in the doorway of the conference room at Hunter Interactive, and my body time-traveled to Charlotte.
He looked exactly the same. Tall, golden, polished to a shine that existed specifically for consumption, the kind of face that belonged on magazine covers because it had been designed for them. His smile was on, the one the world loved. I'd seen it turn on and off like a switch, watched him scream at me in a kitchen and answer a phone call thirty seconds later sounding like the kindest man alive. The transition was seamless. Practiced. The work of years spent perfecting the gap between who he was and who he performed.
He shook hands around the table. Producers. Executives. Everyone charmed, everyone impressed, the A-list actor gracing their conference room with his golden presence. Nobody in this room knew what I knew. They saw an award-winning leading man, a philanthropist, a feminist ally who wore the right pins and said the right things on the right days.
I saw the man who ran over a kindergarten teacher and paid to make it disappear. Who isolated me from everyone I loved until I had no one left to tell.
He sat down across from me.
Our eyes met for half a second. His smile didn’t change. Nothing on his face acknowledged that the woman taking notes across the table was the same woman who’d run from her old life because of him.
I sat through the meeting on autopilot. Wrote notes I wouldn’t remember. My handwriting deteriorated halfway through because my hand was shaking and I pressed the pen harder to compensate. Jace was presenting something about the narrative direction. His voice was steady. Professional. I tried to focus on the sound of it, the accent, the cadence.
The meeting ended. I excused myself before the handshakes. Told Jace I needed to prepare the follow-up documents.
I walked out of the conference room like a person who was fine.
The corridor was empty. I pressed my back flat against the wall and breathed. One. Two. Three. Four.
Footsteps. I knew the sound before I saw him.
He stopped across from me and leaned against the opposite wall. Hands in his pockets. A wide smile on his face as he looked at me.
"Well. This is a surprise. Little Anna Wilson, playing assistant to the freak show. Or, according to the news, it’s more than that."
I didn’t move.
"The man’s a walking punchline, Anna. And you’ve attached yourself to him. Downgraded from me to a germaphobe with a cleaning addiction." He smiled wider. "The trajectory is honestly impressive. Downward, but impressive."
The old choreography started in my body. The instinct to fold inward, to make myself small so the loud man felt bigger. My shoulders wanted to curve. My eyes wanted to drop. My voice wanted to disappear. Every muscle remembered the steps Tobias had taught me over fourteen months of careful, patient destruction.
I didn’t dance to it.
"Jace Hunter is worth ten of you." I don’t know where the confidence came from. The cabin, maybe. The mountain air. The man who drew my face in charcoal and asked if I was sure before he touched me.
I stared at him. "Calling him a freak is rich coming from a man who ran over a woman and paid her family to shut up about it. The real freak in this corridor is the one who sleeps fine at night knowing a kindergarten teacher had to learn how to walk again because he couldn’t be bothered to call a car service."
The smile stayed on his face but his eyes went flat. Dead. He moved off the wall and stepped toward me. The corridor was empty. His voice dropped to something only I could hear.
"You still have that mouth." He was close now. Too close. "That was always the problem with you, Anna. You never learned when to shut it. I tried to teach you. The lesson clearly didn’t take."
"Step back."
He grabbed my wrist. His grip was hard enough to bruise and I gasped and pulled.
