Which entrance I used.
Whether Adrian kept private security upstairs.
What time executive meetings usually ended.
I had thought he was being controlling.
Now I understood he had been planning.
“He thinks I’m leaving,” I whispered.
Adrian looked at me carefully.
“Are you?”
My first instinct was to say no.
Then I touched the bruise beneath my jaw.
“I was trying to.”
“Trying isn’t nothing.”
I looked toward the windows.
Chicago stretched below us, gray and enormous.
For years, Daniel had made the world feel small enough to fit inside our apartment.
Work.
Home.
Work.
Home.
Every route controlled.
Every excuse prepared.
Adrian opened another page.
“Do you have somewhere Daniel doesn’t know about?”
I shook my head.
“Family?”
“My parents are gone.
I don’t have anyone nearby.”
He nodded once.
“Then we create distance without telling him where.”
Not we as in possession.
We as in resources.
Within forty minutes, a female attorney who worked with Romano Holdings joined us, along with the company’s head of security.
Adrian introduced them, then stepped back and let them speak directly to me.
No one demanded a decision.
The attorney explained what could be documented, what could support a protective order, and why photographs of injuries and medical records mattered.
The security chief explained that Daniel’s hired surveillance had already created a paper trail.
I listened with my arms wrapped around myself.
Every few minutes, the same thought returned.
Daniel will know.
As if Daniel knowing automatically meant Daniel winning.
My phone vibrated on the table.
His name appeared on the screen.
Daniel.
I flinched so sharply Adrian noticed.
The phone stopped.
Then vibrated again.
A message appeared.
Where are you?
Another followed.
Meeting should’ve ended by now.
Then another.
Don’t make me come there.
The attorney looked at me.
“May I photograph those messages?”
My thumb hovered over the phone.
For years, I had deleted Daniel’s worst messages because seeing them made me ashamed.
