Elara learned early that exhaustion had layers.
There was the surface kind — sore feet, stiff fingers, eyes that burned when she blinked too long. And then there was the deeper kind, the kind that settled behind the ribs and made breathing feel like work. That exhaustion did not go away with sleep, because sleep itself had become another task to manage, another small window she tried to stretch wider than it would allow.
She woke at 4:17 a.m., the alarm unnecessary. The city outside the window was still dark, the streetlights humming faintly like tired sentinels. For a moment, she lay still on the thin mattress, counting the sounds she knew by heart: the neighbor's plumbing, a distant truck, the uneven breathing of the man beside her.
Marcus lay on his back, one arm flung carelessly across the pillow, his face smooth with rest. Even asleep, he looked untouched by strain. Elara watched him the way one might watch a stranger on a bus — without expectation, without intimacy.
She slipped out of bed quietly.
The floor was cold. She dressed without turning on the light, fingers moving automatically through a routine she had perfected. The sweater she pulled on had once been soft. Now it carried the faint smell of cleaning chemicals no matter how many times she washed it.
In the kitchen, she poured herself half a cup of coffee — the last of it. She would buy more later, after her second shift, if there was anything left in her account.
She checked her phone.
Three reminders. Five shifts. One unpaid bill blinking red.
She closed the app before the panic could fully bloom.
---
Her first job was cleaning offices downtown. The building rose like a glass promise she had never been invited to believe in. Inside, everything gleamed — marble floors, silent elevators, framed mission statements about innovation and growth.
Elara pushed her cart down the hallway, the wheels squeaking faintly.
"Morning," said Nina, already scrubbing fingerprints from a conference table.
"Morning."
Nina was a decade older, sharper, louder. She had stopped pretending the work didn't wear her down.
"They cut Carla's hours," Nina said without looking up. "Said she wasn't 'efficient enough.'"
Elara's chest tightened. Carla had been there six years.
"Did they say why?"
Nina snorted. "They never do. They just smile and say budgets changed."
Elara nodded. Budgets always changed — just never in her favor.
As she wiped down a glass wall, she caught her reflection layered over the city outside. For a moment, she imagined herself on the other side of the glass, walking confidently, belonging somewhere. The thought felt foreign, almost embarrassing.
---
Marcus's world existed parallel to hers, close enough to touch but never overlapping.
By nine a.m., he was already in meetings, coffee in hand, voice relaxed as he spoke about projections and quarterly goals. His company valued ambition. It rewarded visibility. It celebrated men who knew how to talk.
"Good call on the Zurich account," said Ethan Hale, clapping Marcus lightly on the shoulder as they left a conference room. "You've got the board's attention."
Marcus smiled. "Just doing my job."
Ethan raised an eyebrow. "You always say that. Promotion's coming. You ready?"
"Yeah," Marcus said easily. "I am."
He didn't think about Elara then. Not because he hated her — but because she existed in the background of his life, like furniture he had grown used to stepping around.
---
By the time Elara clocked out of her first shift, her hands were already trembling with fatigue. She washed them in the restroom sink, watching the water bead over cracked skin.
In the mirror, her face looked thinner than she remembered. Her eyes seemed older.
She thought, briefly, of the apartment — the empty walls, the mismatched dishes, the way she always folded Marcus's clothes more carefully than her own.
She pushed the thought away and headed to her second job.
---
This is only Part One of Chapter One.
What happens next in this chapter:
Her café job and the women who notice things she doesn't say
Marcus's growing emotional distance
Workplace politics tightening around Elara
The first subtle inconsistencies in Marcus's behavior
Seeds planted — not yet understood