The boardroom was silent. Deathly silent.
Amara stood before the projection screen, her palms sweaty, voice barely holding steady as she walked the room through the marketing strategy. Her mind raced with doubts. Liam was seated at the back, watching with a look she couldn't read.
He shouldn't be here.
He shouldn't even have been involved.
But she'd brought him in.
And now she was paying for it.
Her voice cracked. "As you can see, the campaign is structured around seasonal engagement—"
"Excuse me," interrupted one of the execs. "Is this the revised version? This doesn't align with the client's brief."
The blood drained from her face.
Amara looked at the screen. Wrong file.
Her pitch—the one she had stayed up all night preparing—was gone. Replaced with a messy, outdated version that didn't reflect any of the client's demands.
And the only person who'd touched her laptop this morning was… him.
She turned her head slowly toward Liam.
He raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"You touched my laptop."
He looked amused. "I just closed the lid. How was I supposed to know your files would go nuclear?"
Heat flared behind her eyes. "You deleted it."
"Didn't even open it."
The room was filled with awkward shifting, exchanged glances, and the kind of silence that screamed failure. Amara felt her chest tighten.
Afterward, her boss pulled her aside.
"You're talented, Amara. But we can't afford this kind of carelessness. Take the rest of the week off. We'll be in touch."
Take the week off was corporate speak for: Start packing.
---
She didn't cry until she got home.
Not because she was weak. But because she was tired. Tired of fighting so hard in a world that didn't seem to want her to win.
She stared at the mirror. Her reflection looked nothing like the woman who had stepped off a plane two years ago with ambition and fire in her eyes.
Then her phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
> "I didn't mean to mess up your pitch. For what it's worth, you've got presence. Even if your file didn't."
No name. But she knew who it was.
Liam Aragon.
She wanted to throw the phone across the room. Instead, she typed back:
> "Stay out of my life."