Chapter 1
He cut my salary in half during my annual review, smiled like he was doing me a favor, and told me to take it or leave it.
I asked one question. "When does this take effect?"
My boss, Gregory Dalton, smirked from behind his walnut desk on the thirty-second floor over Wacker Drive. "Immediately."
I nodded, folded the paper once, and said, "Perfect timing."
That was the first second his face changed.
Gregory thought he was trapping a tired employee with bills, loyalty, and eight years of habit. What he didn't know was that two nights earlier, his biggest competitor had called me at 9:30 p.m. while I was still in the office cleaning up one of his disasters. And she hadn't offered me a job. She had offered me a partnership.
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My name is Adrienne Cole, and for eight years I was the reason Dalton and Pierce Marketing hadn't collapsed behind its polished website and expensive conference tables. Gregory was the face. The tailored suits, the loud promises, the handshakes behind glass walls. I was the reason those promises didn't explode. I fixed broken rollout calendars. I rewrote presentations five minutes before client pitches. I took calls after midnight when launches slipped and vendors stopped answering. When Gregory overpromised, the mess landed on my desk. Everyone in that office knew it. So did our clients.
North River Manufacturing emailed me directly. Crestline Robotics texted me when Gregory stopped replying. Junior analysts knocked on my door when they were lost. If something had to actually work, it came through my hands first.
