After His Mistress Broke My Mother's Bracelet, He Lost Everything

The office building still had my name on the visitor log. Security waved me through without looking up. I took the elevator to the fifteenth floor, where Kason's company occupied the entire west wing. The glass doors still read MENDOZA VENTURES in letters I'd helped him pick out three years ago. He'd wanted gold. I'd suggested silver. He'd gone with gold anyway.

I pushed through into the lobby. Heads turned. Whispers moved like wind through tall grass. I kept my eyes forward and walked toward what used to be my workspace — the corner office Kason had given me when he still thought keeping me close meant something.

The door was open.

Braelyn was sitting on the desk. My desk. She had her phone in one hand and a latte in the other. She was wearing a cream cashmere sweater I recognized from my closet. It fit her better. She looked up and smiled.

"Oh," she said. "You."

I stopped in the doorway. Behind me, I felt the office go quiet. Keyboards stopped clicking. Conversations died mid-sentence. Everyone was watching.

"I'm here for my things," I said.

Braelyn tilted her head. "Your things?"

"Personal items. I left them in the drawer."

She slid off the desk and crossed to the filing cabinet. She opened the bottom drawer with a little too much force. Inside was a cardboard box. My box. She pulled it out and set it on the desk between us.

"This stuff?" She poked through it with one finger. "Old notebooks. A coffee mug. This ugly bracelet."

She picked up the jade bracelet.

My mother's bracelet.

It caught the light as she dangled it from two fingers. The green stone was smooth and cool, worn soft by decades of wear. My mother had given it to me the week before she died. She'd pressed it into my palm and told me it would keep me safe.

"Please put that down," I said.

Braelyn's smile widened. "Why? Is it special?"

"Yes."

"Hmm." She turned it over, examining it. "It's kind of cheap-looking, honestly. Like something you'd get at a street fair."

Behind me, someone inhaled sharply.

"Braelyn," I said. My voice was very even. "Put it down."

She met my eyes. Then she opened her hand.

The bracelet hit the marble floor. The sound was small and final. The jade cracked clean through. Pieces skittered across the white stone like water breaking.

"Oops," Braelyn said. She wasn't smiling anymore. She was watching me. Waiting.

The office was completely silent.

I knelt. I picked up the pieces one by one. The largest fragment still had the clasp attached. The smallest was no bigger than a thumbnail. I gathered them all into my palm and closed my fingers around them. The edges were sharp. They bit into my skin.

I stood up. I looked at Braelyn. She was still waiting for me to cry, or scream, or beg.

I picked up the cardboard box. I turned and walked out.

No one said a word.

The elevator doors closed behind me. I was alone. I looked down at my hand. Blood was seeping between my fingers where the jade had cut me. I opened my palm. The pieces sat there, small and broken and irreplaceable.

I took out my phone.

The call connected on the first ring.

"Julianna," said the voice on the other end. Calm. Professional. Ready.

"Initiate full withdrawal," I said. "Every covert position in Mendoza Ventures. All shell entities. All credit facilities. All capital injections. I want everything pulled within twenty-four hours."

A pause. Not hesitation. Confirmation.

"Understood. Effective immediately?"

"Yes."

"Consider it done."

I hung up. I pressed my thumb against the largest piece of jade. The pain was clean and sharp and clarifying.

The elevator doors opened. I walked through the lobby, past security, out into the cold November air. I didn't look back.

Forty-eight hours later, Kason's company was dying.

I heard about it in pieces. A frantic call from Marcus Hale to my father's office, intercepted by an assistant who knew better than to put it through. A vendor contract that collapsed when payment guarantees evaporated overnight. Two anchor investors demanding emergency meetings, their confidence shattered by the sudden disappearance of the liquidity they'd been promised.

Kason traced the withdrawal to Pinnacle Capital. Of course he did. He wasn't stupid. Just blind.

He showed up at the Fifth Avenue headquarters at nine in the morning. He made it as far as the lobby before security stopped him. He was shouting. Demanding to see whoever had authorized the pull. Demanding answers. Demanding his money back.

It wasn't his money. It never had been.

They called my father. My father called me.

"He's here," Dad said. "Do you want me to handle it?"

I looked down at my hand. I'd bandaged the cuts, but I could still feel them. Small and sharp and permanent.

"No," I said. "Let him up."

There was a pause. Then my father's voice, quiet and almost sad.

"Are you sure?"

I closed my eyes. I saw Braelyn's smile. I saw the bracelet falling. I saw ten years of my life shattering on a marble floor.

"I'm sure," I said.

"Then I'll meet you there."

I hung up. I stood. I straightened my jacket.

And I went to face the man I'd built from nothing.