Nicole's POV
I knew something was wrong before anyone said it out loud.
On the surface, everything was fine. No one confronted me or demanded explanations for the rumours that had already begun to circulate. There weren't any new meetings called that weren't already scheduled on the calendar.
But I could feel something shift. If there had been sharp emails, angry calls, warnings delivered with false sympathy then that would have been manageable. I had spent years dealing with that kind of pressure but this was quieter.
Messages that I sent stopped being answered. They weren't declined, not rejected, just left sitting there long enough that the lack of response became its own answer. Invitations that should have been automatic were suddenly postponed and meetings that had been
