ZARA
I was eighteen years old the first time I understood what it meant to watch someone break. Not the dramatic kind of ways we see in movies and whatnot. This was the purest form of hurt I had ever set my eyes on, and it was happening to the best person I had in my life. I remember that night like it was yesterday. I had just gotten back from college for spring break and had just finished the most scrumptuous dinner I've had in weeks. Dad had excused himself from the table to pick an important call, but he didn't come back even after we were done with dinner. Theo had gone up to his room to play X box and mom was finishing up in the kitchen while I wandered off to find my dad. I wish I hadn't done that because the sight of my father sitting on his chair quietly sobbing broke my heart even more than my first heartbreak. He looked helpless, like all hope had been lost and gosh I hated how it made me feel. I was sad and livid at the same time. I had never felt so helpless in my entire life.
I never told him I saw that. Not once in four years, but I filled it somewhere deep and quiet inside me, right next to the name that had been on everyone's lips in the morning after.
Dominic Hale.
That was the name of the man whoose company blocked the deal that nearly took my father's life work apart from the seams. Three years of negotiations killed with one decision from a rich entilted nepo baby sitting at the top of a glass tower who probably didn't even remember signing it off. I closed the study door softly that night and went upstairs. Sat on the edge of my bed in the dark and made myself a promise so quiet it barely counted as a whisper.
One day I'll get close enough to make it hurt
*********
That day, as it turns out, is a Tuesday. I smooth the front of my black blazer and tip my chin up at the building in front of me. Hale Enterprises. Forty two floors of glass and steel. It was impressive but I wasn't fazed, Our company had a better look in my opinion.
I've driven past this building exactly four times this month and no I wasn't obsessed, I was just getting prepared, they weren't the same thing. I have a folder tucked under my arm with every document they requested, yeah it was entirely misleading and a name that means nothing to anyone in the building. Zara Whitfield. Nobody special and certainly not the daughter of the man your company almost ruined and sent to the streets.
I have a smile already locked and loaded and ready to deploy at any moment. I had praciced it this morning in the bathroom mirror for an embarassing amount of time until it looked natural. Theo called it my assasin smile when I facetimed him this morning. He also didn't fail to remind me for the fourteenth time that this was a terrible idea and I told him for the fourteenth time to mind his business. I push through the revolving doors and the lobby swallows me whole. I walked down until I was met with a receptionist who had a smile practiced it could be laminated to her face.
''Zara Whitfield,'' I say, matching her energy precisely. ''Induction with HR at nine''
She types.Nods and Points me toward the Elevator. I cross that lobby like I own every inch of it. Dad always said walk like the room was already yours.
The thirty eight floor is quieter than I expected. A woman named claire materialises at my elbow the moment I stepped off the ele vator , HR lanyard, sensible heels and a brisk energy of someone who has done this induction forty times and will do it forty mootr. I like her. She doesn't waste time. She filled us in on desk location, system access, building protocols and information like the coffee machine on this floor is for senior staff only but the one two floors down is fair game. I am nodding and taking notes and giving a good impression of me being a great assistant and then....
and then I see him. Dominic Hale. The man who cost me everything.
