The world around me the garden, the marble, the shimmering glass of the Lincoln Willow tower, suddenly felt like a stage set that was being pulled down.
Tiana. The girl from the garage. The "incompetent" staff member who had looked at a multi-millionaire with nothing but silence.
She wasn't a ghost. She was here.
Marcus was still talking, his mouth moving in a blur of boasts and complaints, Henderson still trying to pull him away toward the elevators. But I was no longer listening.
I looked at my hands. For the first time in my life, they weren't steady.
The Achilles heel wasn't a business deal or a family secret. It was a person. A person I had dismissed, a person I had pretended not to hear, and a person who was currently working in the very building I called my kingdom.
"Mr. Thorne," I said, cutting through his noise with a sharp, lethal clarity. "I suggest you go to your meeting. And I suggest you keep your mouth shut regarding the staff. If I hear another word about 'incompetence,' I'll personally review your portfolio. And trust me, you don't want a Lahman looking at your books that closely."
Marcus's face went pale. He stuttered, looked at Henderson, and hurried away toward the lobby, his ego deflating with every step.
I stood alone in the garden, the scent of rain and Tiana Longman still hanging in the air like a promise—or a threat.
My life was perfect. I had Ashley. I had my father's pride. I had Alisha's adoration.
But Tiana Longman was in the building. And the gnawing in my heart told me that by the end of the day, "perfect" wouldn't be enough.
The chaos of Lincoln Willow Legal felt like a fever dream compared to the deliberate, quiet rhythm of a Saturday morning.
In my small apartment, the air didn't smell like industrial floor wax or the suffocating musk of men who owned the world. It smelled like lavender detergent and the steam rising from a chipped ceramic mug.
I pulled a wicker basket of laundry toward the window. The sunlight hit the floor in pale, dusty rectangles.
Ever since Mom died, the silence in my life had changed. It used to be heavy, a vacuum where her laughter and the sound of her humming used to be.
But over the last three years, I had curated it. I had turned the silence into a shield.
I moved to my favorite corner, where a custom hanging shelf swung gently from the ceiling. It was my sanctuary within a sanctuary. I climbed in, tucking my legs under a threadbare throw blanket, and reached for a worn copy of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Justice. Revenge. The slow burn of a life reclaimed.
I traced the spine, but my mind drifted to the parking garage. Amir Lahman. I had seen him, of course. It was impossible not to. He was the sun that the entire firm orbited, a man so polished he practically glowed with the friction of his own success.
When I'd whispered "Good morning," it hadn't been an act of submission. It was a test. I wanted to see if the son of the man who broke my father had any soul left behind those expensive eyes.
He hadn't even looked at me. He had walked past like I was air. And yet, for a second, I saw his step falter. Just a fraction of a beat.
"Tiana? You're staring at that shelf again. It's creepy."
I looked up. Reigna Davies was leaning against the doorframe, a box of donuts in one hand and her laptop bag in the other.
Reigna was my tether to the world of the living. We had met in a cutthroat paralegal program, and she was the only one who didn't care that my last name used to mean something.
"I'm not staring. I'm thinking," I said, swinging my legs down.
"You're brooding," Reigna corrected, tossing a glazed donut onto my lap. "You've been different since you started that archive project at Lincoln Willow. I told you, working for the enemy is a bad vibe. It's like a Greek tragedy waiting to happen."
"It's not a tragedy, Rei. It's a paycheck. And a vantage point."
"Vantage point for what? You're a ghost in that building." She sat on the edge of my bed, her expression softening. "I know you miss the way things were. I know you miss her. But don't let the Lahmans take your present just because they took your past."
I didn't answer. Reigna didn't know the full extent of the gnawing in my own chest—the way it felt to see Amir Lahman's matte black Rolls-Royce and know it was bought with the shards of my father's legacy.
Later that afternoon, I took the bus across town to the assisted living facility. The transition from my quiet, curated apartment to the sterile, beige hallways of The Oaks always felt like a descent.
"He's having a good day," the nurse whispered as I passed the station. "He's in the garden."
I found him sitting under an oak tree, a blanket over his lap despite the warmth. Arthur Longman didn't look like the man who once went toe-to-toe with Ahmed Lahman. He looked fragile, like parchment paper that would tear if the wind blew too hard.
"Tea?" he asked, his voice a raspy shadow of the boom it once was.
"Hey, Dad." I sat on the bench beside him, taking his hand. His skin was cold. "It's Saturday. I brought those lemon bars you like."