The Termination Letter

Chapter 2 The Clean Break

The news reached my floor before I did. A company-wide email filled every monitor: *TERMINATION: ARIA STERLING*.

The message accused me of gross misconduct and a breach of company ethics. People I had hired stopped talking when I passed.

Some stared openly. Others lowered their heads to their keyboards, though the same email glowed above their hands. Julian had made sure no one could miss my walk out.

Two security guards waited beside my chair. One held a cardboard box while the other cleared my desk.

They packed a photograph of a smiling woman who was not my mother, the pen my real father had given me, and a small succulent. The pot went in sideways, spilling dirt across the frame.

Neither guard paused when the dirt covered the photograph. They folded the box shut and handled it with the same care they would give office trash.

They escorted me past a hundred desks. I had designed the floor, chosen the chairs, and negotiated the building lease. Now no one met my eyes for more than a second.

I had planned every turn to the elevator. Walking that route between two guards made the office look unfamiliar.

Julian had wanted an audience. He got one.

I took a taxi to the villa. I had lived there for three years, but I had never called it mine. Rain started before the driver reached the gate.

Eleanor sat waiting in the drawing room. Julian's mother wore the same expression she had worn at our wedding, annoyed that my presence had spoiled an expensive room.

She had opposed the marriage from the day Julian's father proposed it. For three years, she reminded me that her son had married an orphan under pressure.

A stack of papers lay on the coffee table.

"I assume your morning was unpleasant," she said. "Sign these. Julian has been generous, considering. You'll leave with nothing."

The top page was a divorce agreement. It ended our three-year marriage and left me with nothing, exactly as Eleanor had promised.

Mia came down the staircase before I could turn it. She wore one of Julian's white shirts, sleeves rolled to her wrists and hem brushing her thighs.

She tossed an emerald key fob from hand to hand. When she caught me looking, she smiled and closed her fingers around the key to the master suite. Our suite.

My hand covered my stomach. The child inside me would never have to earn a place in this house.

I had spent years being grateful for rooms I maintained and a marriage I protected. My child would grow up in a home no one could take away for disobedience.

I picked up Eleanor's gold-plated pen.

"You should read it," she said. Her tone suggested the opposite.

I signed the last page without asking for a settlement. My handwriting didn't shake.

The pen struck the table when I set it down. Eleanor stared at the signature. Mia's smile slipped for the first time.

The guards had left my box by the front door. I walked past it and out into the rain.

Once the villa disappeared behind the trees, I stopped beneath an old oak. My blouse clung to my skin, and water ran down my hands.

From an inner pocket, I took out the encrypted satellite phone I had not used in three years. It held one number.

Elias answered on the first ring. "Aria?"

"The trial is over," I said. "Send the jet. I'm coming home."