Page 37 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

Valentina Garcia.

My first client.

Her family’s restaurant, Garcia’s Hearth, had been the first real chance anyone had given me. She’d trusted me when the agency was little more than a name, a handful of ideas, and a dream I was stubborn enough to chase. She’d taken a chance on me when she had every reason to choose someone established.

I’d never forgotten that.

When Naija didn’t answer, I glanced up. She had gone still, her gaze fixed on the tablet.

“Naija?”

She lowered the tablet a fraction, her expression becoming carefully blank. “Uh… she’s not really with us anymore.”

My smile disappeared. “What does that mean?”

Naija hesitated.

That was enough to make my stomach tighten.

“It was Garcia’s Hearth’s fiftieth anniversary gala last month,” she said eventually. “Their biggest event of the year. She specifically asked for you to lead the campaign.”

I waited.

“You were… unavailable.” Her voice softened. “So you assigned Mateo instead.”

I frowned.

“She wasn’t happy about it. There was a tense conversation afterward, and…” Naija’s gaze dropped briefly before returning to mine. “You told us to drop her as a client.”

The room seemed to shrink around me.

“I dropped her?”

Naija gave me an apologetic look. “You were stretched incredibly thin at the time. You had more work than you could handle, and you couldn’t take on another major personal project.”

I barely heard her.

“I dropped Valentina Garcia?”

My voice sounded strange even to me.

My first client.

The woman who had trusted me before my agency had a reputation, before I had a portfolio worth bragging about, before anyone knew my name.

I’d just thrown her away.

The thought twisted my stomach into a painful knot.

“What the hell was I doing,” I asked, my voice tightening as I looked at Naija, “that was more important than her?”

A knock interrupted us, and Cassian stepped inside, carrying a bowl of meticulously cut fruit.

He hadn’t entered my room all week without someone else present—Felicity, Dr. Reed, a nurse, anyone who could keep us from being alone together. Still, Felicity had mentioned that he was practically camped outside my door.

I was fairly certain the hospital had rules against that sort of thing.

His gaze moved over me before settling on the half-packed bag beside my chair. His brow furrowed as he placed the bowl on the bedside table. “What are you doing?”