Five days had passed since Hazel walked out. One hundred and twenty hours. I counted them because the security recording showed the exact minute she crossed the gate.
Every sound in the house scraped against my nerves, and sleep came in minutes, never hours.
My security team kept its distance. The doctors did too, after I broke the last one's wrist when he tried to sedate me. The injection had done nothing except make the room brighter and the noise sharper.
They called it another psychotic break. To me, it felt like withdrawal. Six months of work on a hundred-billion-dollar acquisition collapsed because I could not last five minutes in a meeting.
My lungs kept finding smoke where there was none. Hazel's clean, rain-washed scent had been the only thing that stopped it. Without her, I w
