Chapter 3: Zara’s Walk to Work
1108 Words
Zara walked to work like she was marching toward a battlefield she’d already lost.
She had no job. Not technically. But she still walked the same route, same time, same tired sneakers, because if she stopped walking, she might stop moving altogether.
Brooklyn was loud this early. Sirens. Grate-rattling buses. Someone’s dog barking like it had important news. A guy in a suit yelling into his phone about Q3 projections like the city owed him money.
Zara pulled her coat tighter. It was a thrift-store find, slightly too big, smelling faintly of someone else’s life. She liked that. It meant she wasn’t the only one who’d ever been broken and reassembled in public.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
She didn’t look. She knew what it was. Email from HR. Another rejection. Maybe a “we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates” that sounded polite but felt like a door slamming.
She scrolled anyway, because she was masochistic like that.
Subject line: Thank you for your interest.
She snorted. “Thanks for nothing,” she muttered, and tossed the phone into her bag like it had offended her personally.
She passed a coffee shop with a chalkboard menu that said things like Moonkissed Oat Latte and Soul-Warming Hot Chocolate.
Zara stopped. Stared.
“Soul-warming?” she said to no one. “If I had a soul left to warm, I’d buy it.”
She kept walking.
Three blocks later, she passed a billboard. Giant. Glossy. Impossibly white teeth. A man in a tailored suit, sharp jawline, eyes that looked like they’d never cried in his life.
Adrian Vance. CEO. Apex Innovations. The Future Is Optimized.
Zara stopped. Stared harder.
“Of course,” she said. “The future is optimized. Because nothing says ‘love’ like a tagline.”
She squinted at the billboard.
Adrian Vance looked like he’d been designed by a committee that hated fun. Perfect hair. Perfect suit. Perfectly empty eyes.
He looked like the hero in every billionaire romance she’d ever rolled her eyes at.
He looked like the man she was going to work for tomorrow.
If she still had a job.
Which she didn’t.
“Great,” she said to the billboard. “Now I’m mad at a piece of paper hanging above a construction zone.”
A construction worker nearby glanced at her. “You okay, miss?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just hate-pampering a billionaire.”
He shrugged. “Good luck with that.”
She kept walking.
The route to Apex Innovations took her through Manhattan, past skyscrapers that looked like glass knives and people who walked like they owned the sidewalk.
Zara didn’t own anything. She didn’t even own her apartment. It was a shared flat with two roommates who were always dressed like they were on a reality show.
One of them, a girl named Lila, was a plus-up influencer who posted videos of herself eating avocado toast and pretending to cry about it.
The other, a guy named Marcus, was a grad student who believed capitalism was a personality trait.
Zara loved them both. She also wanted to strangle them sometimes.
She passed a bus stop. A guy in a hoodie was reading a romance novel. The cover featured a shirtless man, a woman in a party dress, and the title The Billionaire’s Secret Baby.
Zara stopped.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” she said.
The guy looked up, startled. “What?”
“Your book,” she said. “Is that a joke? Because if you’re reading that for fun, I need to know how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
He shrugged. “It’s good.”
“It’s a cult,” she said. “You’ve been brainwashed by romantic fiction.”
He didn’t even flinch. “Ever heard of escapism?”
“Of course,” she said. “But you don’t escape into a world where the hero thinks he can buy love.”
“Maybe he doesn’t,” the guy said. “Maybe he just has to learn he can’t.”
Zara paused.
That was the twist in all these stories, wasn’t it? The hero had to learn the obvious. The heroine had to wait for him to figure it out. And the reader? The reader had to hope they’d happen to be right.
“Whatever,” she said. “I’m not that girl.”
She kept walking.
Ten blocks later, Apex Innovations appeared.
Glass tower. Shiny logo. Security guard who looked like he’d been hired to intimidate people into being better.
Zara stopped outside the building.
This was her job. Or it had been.
Until yesterday.
Until she’d been fired live on camera for telling the truth.
She pulled her phone out again.
One new email.
Subject: Meeting Request – Adrian Vance, CEO.
She blinked.
Adrian Vance?
She tapped the email.
Dear Ms. Reed,
We would like to discuss an opportunity for you to work with Apex Innovations in a new capacity.
Please report to the main office at 10 a.m. tomorrow.
Signed,
Adrian Vance.
Zara stared at the screen.
New capacity?
That sounded suspicious.
That sounded like a trap.
She read it again.
Then she read it a third time, slower, like maybe she’d misread the billionaire’s name.
She hadn’t.
It was him.
Adrian Vance.
The man on the billboard.
The man she’d just spent ten minutes messing with in her head.
The man she’d just called a “cult” to a guy reading The Billionaire’s Secret Baby.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or run.
Probably both.
She looked up at the tower.
The glass reflected the sky. The sky looked like it was trying to be hopeful.
Zara stuck her phone back in her pocket, pulled her coat tighter, and kept walking.
She wasn’t running.
Not yet.
But she was definitely not walking in confidence.
Because something told her tomorrow wasn’t going to be a normal day.
Something told her tomorrow was going to be the start of something stupid.
Something told her tomorrow was going to be the start of a billionaire romance.
And she was definitely not down for that.
She walked faster.
The city kept moving.
The billboard kept smiling.
And somewhere in that glass tower, Adrian Vance was probably staring at a screen that read: Zara Reed – Meeting Scheduled for 10 a.m.
He probably thought it was just another meeting.
He was wrong.
It was the beginning of the end.
Or the beginning of something.
Probably something messy.
Probably something romantic.
Probably something he wasn’t ready for.
Zara kept walking.
She didn’t look back.
But the city did.
- Writer
