The gavel fell with a dull, indifferent thud. It wasn't the sharp c***k of a cinematic c****x; it was the sound of a file being closed, a case being archived. The final hearing on the Vance Group's bankruptcy and my personal debt liquidation was over. I was officially a non-entity, stripped of assets, titles, and reputation. I walked out of the courtroom, and no one looked at me. Not with pity, not with scorn. They didn't look at me at all. It’s the kind of invisibility you can only earn through a spectacular, public implosion.
My new home is a fifth-floor walk-up in a part of the city that smells perpetually of damp garbage and fried food. The apartment has one window that looks out onto a brick wall, and the plumbing groans like a dying animal. Every surface is sticky with the residue o
