Chapter 2
A week before my review, Emily Carter showed up at my doorway with a rollout file pressed to her chest so tightly the corners bent. "Gregory promised Crestline a full campaign launch in seven days," she said, looking half-sick. "Can you fix it?"
That was the company in one sentence. Gregory made declarations under recessed lighting and expensive cologne. I sat under fluorescent panels with cold takeout and twenty browser tabs open, turning fantasy into something survivable.
Two nights before the review, Chicago glowed black and gold outside the windows, and almost everyone had gone home. I was still at my desk in a navy blazer, eating stale almonds from my drawer, when my phone lit up. Victoria Hayes. Everybody in Midwest marketing knew that name. Founder of Hayes Strategic. Ruthless in the cleanest possible way, growing faster than anyone else in the region.
I answered, because people like Victoria Hayes don't call twice.
"I've been watching your work for years," she said. Not your team's work. Not Gregory's work. Yours.
I stared at my own reflection in the dark window while she talked. Then she said the part that made me sit up straight. "I'm not offering you a job, Adrienne. I'm offering you a partnership. Equity. Authority. Your own team. A real seat at the table."
May you like
For a second I couldn't speak. No one at Dalton and Pierce had ever said my name like it belonged in the future. At Gregory's firm, I was useful machinery. The woman who made impossible things look smooth enough for him to take credit. Victoria didn't speak to me like a rescue case. She spoke to me like an asset.
I didn't say yes that night. But I stopped seeing Gregory's office the same way after that.
