Cracks In The Glass
693 Words
Zara didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream, didn’t throw her tablet across the room, didn’t call HR to demand Korede’s immediate replacement. She simply sat there, staring at the photo he’d left behind. Her own face, frozen in laughter she couldn’t remember.
It unsettled her.
She was used to control. Every meeting, every deal, every headline—curated, calculated, clean. But this image felt raw. Unfiltered. Like someone had seen her without the armor.
And that someone had walked away.
She closed the file and leaned back in her chair, the leather creaking beneath her. The skyline stretched beyond the glass, glittering with ambition. But it felt distant now. Like a stage she no longer belonged to.
Her phone buzzed.
Board Reminder: 3:00 PM Strategy Review.
She ignored it.
Instead, she opened Korede’s transition notes. They were meticulous. Every detail accounted for. Every contact, every calendar, every contingency. It was the kind of precision she’d come to expect from him. Depend on.
She hated that.
She hated how much she’d relied on him without ever admitting it. How she’d dismissed his quiet competence as mere obligation. How she’d mistaken his silence for submission.
Zara stood and walked to the window. Below, the city pulsed with life. People moving, striving, surviving. She used to love this view. It made her feel powerful. Elevated.
Now it made her feel alone.
---
Across town, Korede sat in a modest café tucked between two crumbling apartment blocks. The air smelled of roasted beans and rain-soaked concrete. He liked places like this—unpolished, honest.
He sipped his coffee slowly, watching the world move outside. A child chased a plastic bag caught in the wind. A woman argued with a vendor over the price of tomatoes. A man slept on a bench, his dreams unknown.
This was the real Lagos. Not the boardrooms. Not the press releases. This.
His phone buzzed again.
“She’s unraveling. You did well.”
He didn’t reply.
He didn’t need to. The plan was already in motion. Not revenge. Not sabotage. Just truth. The kind that couldn’t be ignored once seen.
He opened a folder on his phone—encrypted, hidden. Inside were files. Designs. Logs. Neural maps. The architecture of a world he’d built years ago. A project abandoned. A dream forgotten.
Until Zara.
She had been the perfect subject. Ambitious. Arrogant. Unaware. Her mind had synced with the system effortlessly. She thought she was building an empire. She didn’t know she was living in one he’d created.
Not entirely fictional. Not entirely real.
A hybrid.
A dream.
And now, the dream was cracking.
---
Back at Adeyemi Tower, Zara sat in the boardroom surrounded by suits and silence. The strategy review was underway, but her mind was elsewhere. She kept glancing at the empty seat beside her. Korede’s seat.
She hated that.
She hated how his absence felt louder than his presence ever did.
“Ms. Adeyemi?” one of the directors prompted.
She blinked. “Yes?”
“We were asking about the Q4 projections.”
She nodded, forcing composure. “They’re solid. But we’ll need to revise the rollout timeline. The market’s shifting.”
The room murmured agreement. But Zara felt disconnected. Like she was watching herself from outside her own body.
Later, in her private lounge, she poured herself a drink. Neat. No ice. She stared at the amber liquid, then at her reflection in the glass.
Who was she?
She used to know. She used to believe in her own narrative. The girl who rose from nothing. The woman who conquered a man’s world. The CEO who never flinched.
But now, she wasn’t sure.
She opened her laptop and searched Korede’s name. Nothing. No LinkedIn. No social media. No trace.
She frowned.
Everyone had a digital footprint. Everyone left breadcrumbs. But Korede was a ghost.
She opened the company archives. His resume. His application. His references.
All clean.
Too clean.
She clicked on his emergency contact. A number. No name.
She dialed.
It rang once. Then disconnected.
Zara stared at the screen.
Something was wrong.
Something was missing.
And for the first time in years, she felt afraid.
- Writer
