He Ditched Me 52 Times

Chapter 2 Revoking the Privileges

The Hayes Tech lobby went quiet when I walked in wearing my wet wedding dress. The receptionist stopped halfway through greeting a visitor, and two engineers near the elevators lowered their voices.

People watched me cross the polished concrete floor. I went straight to the office Julian had promised Mia and put my framed university photograph, spare shoes, and the few other personal items I kept there into a small box.

Mia appeared in the doorway with a stack of files pressed to her chest.

"Serena, I'm so sorry about everything. If there's anything I can do now that I'm taking over."

Her eyes moved across the shelves and desk. She paused at my chair, then at the empty wall behind it, already deciding where her things would go.

I opened the bottom drawer and pressed the release beneath its false back. Behind it sat a plain black flash drive containing the original source code I had written in that garage five years ago. It was the base architecture for the core algorithm, and the only complete copy had never been uploaded with the rest of the system.

The drive went into my pocket. I closed the box.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Julian blocked the doorway, red-faced and out of breath, with rain on the shoulders of his coat. He must have left Mia at the restaurant and run from the parking garage.

"You can't just walk out. After everything I've done for you, you pull this? You’re making a scene, and you're being completely unprofessional."

Five years with him, and he was furious about the scene.

I tried to pass. He caught my arm.

"I am talking to you, Serena."

I pulled free. "Don't touch me."

He followed me to reception, calling me petty and demanding that I return to the office. I took my employee badge from my pocket and dropped it into the trash can on the counter. It struck the metal side before landing.

"My lawyer will be in touch to finalize my exit," I told the receptionist, then turned towards the elevators.

The elevator opened. I stepped inside and set my box at my feet. Julian stood outside, already starting another accusation as he jabbed the call button to hold the doors.

Before the doors met, his assistant ran down the hall with a tablet.

"Julian! The servers crashed. The entire core algorithm is gone. It's been erased!"

The CFO shouted from his office. "The wire from our anonymous backer was recalled. They're pulling everything!"

Julian looked from the tablet to his CFO's office. His hand slipped from the call button, the steel doors closed on his face, and the shouting faded as the elevator descended.

(Julian's POV)

I slammed the apartment door behind me. Every light was off.

“Serena?” I shouted.

Nothing.

I found the switch. The apartment was clean, orderly, and empty. Serena had not left a lamp on in the living room as she usually did when I came home late.

“Alright, you’ve made your point,” I said to the silent rooms. “You can come out now.”

My head was pounding. I wanted my stomach pills, a glass of water, and someone to hear what had happened at the office. Serena always kept the pills nearby, listened while I complained, and then opened her laptop to fix whatever had gone wrong.

The fridge was bare. There were no neatly packed leftovers from the night before and no note in her looping handwriting reminding me to take my medication. The usual glass of water was missing from the counter, leaving a clean circle on the stone.

My silenced phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it and went looking for her. She couldn't have gone far. Where else would she go?

The bed was made. Her pillows were gone.

I opened the closet. My suits and shirts hung in a mess on one side. Her half was empty: every dress, every pair of shoes, and even the faded university sweatshirt she slept in were gone. Only bare hangers remained on the rail.

Her toothbrush and rows of lotions were missing from the bathroom. My things remained in the medicine cabinet, but the spare antacids she bought for me were gone. So was the soft night-light by the door, the one I used to tease her about and still relied on when I got up at night.

She had taken every trace of herself, including the things she kept there for me.

My phone buzzed again. This time, I looked. A text from my CFO: *We have a dozen breach-of-contract lawsuits pending. We’re bleeding cash. Call me.*

Another call came through. Mia. I swiped to answer, needing someone, anyone, to be competent.

“Julian!” she sobbed. “They’re all yelling at me. The investors, the clients. I don’t know what to do!”

“Handle it,” I snarled, and hung up.

I needed Serena back at the office. I told myself that once she restored the code and spoke to the backer, everything else could be settled. An apology, a new title, another registration appointment. She had accepted those promises before.

I searched the apartment for a friend's address or a letter from the parents I assumed lived in some dead-end town. I pulled drawers out and moved old mail from one room to the next. In the spare-room desk, beneath a stack of tax documents, I found a thick, glossy folder I had never seen.

The cover bore a single V. *Vance Capital Partners.*

I assumed it was one of her little side investments, perhaps a few thousand dollars saved from her salary. She had never asked me to look at her finances.

I flipped through pages of financial terms and quarterly tables I barely understood until I saw a section on capital injections into Hayes Tech. The dates began before our first public funding round.

At the bottom of the quarterly report was her signature in a confident hand I hardly recognized. She never used it on grocery lists or the notes she left on the fridge.

*Serena Vance.*

Beside it, in typed parentheses, was a name I had only seen in the *Wall Street Journal*.

*(Sterling).*

The folder slid out of my hands and struck the floor open to the Hayes Tech investment schedule.

The code was hers. So were the strategy papers I had taken into board meetings and the funding that had covered every cash shortage.

Hayes Tech had never been our partnership. Serena had carried it, and now she was gone.