Ronda did not make the decision in one clean, dramatic moment.
It would have been easier if she had.
If the firm’s last polished move had angered her so sharply that she stood up the next morning, packed her bag, and said, Enough. If pain had arrived hot enough to burn away doubt. If love had made courage simpler.
But real decisions, she was learning, rarely arrived with that kind of mercy.
They built themselves quietly.
In the way her chest had stopped tightening at the thought of leaving and started tightening at the thought of staying too long.
In the way the firm’s corridors no longer looked like possibility first, but strategy.
In the way Unit Four, then another training stream, then another “adjustment” had begun to teach her something she did not want to learn:
that if she r
