The Wife He Let Go

Chapter Six: The Interview

The offices of Halden and Cole sat on the fourteenth floor of a building that felt almost modest compared to the one I used to walk into every day without thinking twice about it. That was part of why I'd chosen it. Nothing about this place would remind me of anything.

I smoothed the front of my blazer for the third time since I'd stepped out of the elevator, less out of vanity and more because my hands needed something to do that wasn't resting against my stomach in front of strangers. I'd learned, these last few weeks, how to carry the secret without giving it away, how to angle my body so a slight curve didn't announce itself before I was ready to explain it.

"Sienna Cross?"

A young woman with a clipboard and a easy, tired smile waved me toward a glass-walled office at the end of the hall. "They're ready for you."

The interview panel was smaller than I expected. Two people, a woman named Priya who introduced herself as creative director, and a man named Desmond who barely looked up from my portfolio until he did, and then looked up for a long time.

"You built this brand strategy yourself?" Desmond tapped the page in front of him. "The full campaign, not just the visuals?"

"I did." I kept my voice steady, the way I'd practiced in the mirror that morning, the same mirror I used to practice soft, careful things I never got to say. This voice was different. This one I got to use exactly as planned. "I worked freelance for two boutique brands last year, building out positioning before either of them had budget for a full agency."

Priya leaned forward. "And you're looking for something full-time now."

"I am." I didn't explain why. I'd rehearsed that boundary too, how much of myself I was willing to hand over in a room like this one. Enough to be hired. Not enough to be pitied.

The conversation moved easily after that, faster than I expected, the kind of interview where you can feel the shape of a yes forming somewhere behind the questions before anyone says it out loud. Desmond asked about deadlines, about working under pressure, and I told him the truth without telling him all of it, that I worked better under pressure than most people expected, that panic had never once stopped me from finishing what I started.

"We have an opening on our senior brand team," Priya said eventually, glancing at Desmond, some silent agreement passing between them. "It would mean hitting the ground running. We just landed a major account, and the timeline is tight."

"I like tight timelines," I said, and meant it.

Desmond smiled properly for the first time. "Good. Because this one's going to test everyone. Steele Enterprises is rebranding their entire consumer division, and the client is not known for patience."

The name landed in my chest like something physical, a small, sharp drop, the kind you feel in an elevator that's moved before you expected it to.

"Steele," I repeated, keeping my voice as flat and pleasant as I could manage. "As in Marcus Steele."

"You've heard of him." Priya said it lightly, the way anyone in this city would say it, the way you'd mention any name that showed up often enough in the business pages to be recognizable without being personal.

"Everyone's heard of him," I said, which was true, and which was also the safest sentence I had available to me in that moment.

They didn't need to know more than that. I told myself this quickly, firmly, the same way I'd told myself things in the dining room the night I signed those papers. This was a job. A good one, with a fair salary and real growth and exactly the kind of independence I'd promised myself and my grandmother I would build. It didn't matter whose name sat at the top of the client file. I wasn't going to let a name chase me out of the first real opportunity I'd found since I walked out of that house.

"We'd like to offer you the position," Desmond said, sliding a folder across the table. "If you're still interested."

I looked at the folder for exactly one breath longer than I needed to, weighing every version of the next five years I could see branching out from this single decision. Then I picked it up.

"I'm interested," I said. "When do I start?"

"Monday," Priya said, already standing, already shaking my hand like the whole thing had been decided before I even walked in. "Welcome to the team."

I left the building with the folder pressed against my chest and my heart doing something complicated and unsteady that had nothing to do with the baby this time. I told myself it would be fine. I told myself Marcus Steele had a hundred employees between himself and whatever creative team actually built his campaigns, that a man who barely looked up from his own desk long enough to answer his assistant twice in a row was not a man who sat in on brand meetings with a mid-tier agency.

I almost believed it the whole drive home.

—

Marcus stood at the head of the conference table on the fortieth floor, flipping through a stack of preliminary concepts he hadn't asked to see yet, wondering why his head of marketing had scheduled this meeting a full week earlier than the timeline called for.

"They moved fast," his marketing director said, sliding into the seat beside him. "Halden and Cole. Good agency, small enough to actually care about the account instead of burying it under six other clients."

"Good," Marcus said, not really listening, his eyes drifting toward the window the way they'd been drifting for weeks now, toward nothing in particular, toward everything he refused to name.

"Their lead on the account is sharp. Built an entire positioning strategy from scratch for two smaller brands last year, no big agency behind her, just instinct and a very good eye." His director tapped a folder against the table. "She's coming in this morning to walk us through the initial direction before the full pitch next week."

Marcus nodded without really absorbing it, the way he'd been nodding through most meetings lately, present in body and somewhere else entirely underneath it. He'd told himself, three weeks running now, that whatever this restlessness was, it would fade. It hadn't. If anything it had settled deeper, into the space behind his ribs where he used to keep things simple.

The door opened.

He heard it before he looked up, the soft mechanical hush of it swinging inward, footsteps crossing the threshold, quick and even and achingly, impossibly familiar, the kind of walk he would have known blind, in a crowd, at the end of the world.

"Sorry I'm a few minutes early," a voice said, warm and steady and exactly the voice that had been living somewhere under his skin for weeks now, refusing to leave. "I wanted time to set up before—"

She stopped.

Marcus looked up from the folder in his hands, and every carefully built wall he'd spent three weeks reinforcing came down at once, silent and total, the moment his eyes met Sienna's across the length of his own conference table.