The moment the elevator doors close, my knees nearly give out. I grip the metal railing inside the cabin and press my back against the wall, trying to hold myself upright while the floor tilts under me. My reflection in the polished doors belongs to someone else, wide-eyed and blotchy-cheeked with panic shaping her mouth into something I do not recognize. I drag in a breath but it catches halfway down and scrapes my lungs without filling them.
The elevator glides downward, silent except for the low hum of machinery and the pulse hammering inside my skull. Eight days. Half a million dollars. Tick, tock. The words sit in my chest with the weight of something Jaden put there on purpose, something he meant to leave behind when he let me go.
As the doors open into the marble lobby, the air fe
