His coat was immaculate, the kind of wool that never seemed to catch lint. His tie sat perfectly at his collar. His face wore that look he saved for anything he considered messy, inconvenient, beneath him.
He glanced at me first, then at the woman, and his expression sharpened into something like disgust.
“We work in finance,” he said, as if speaking to a child. “Not a charity. Clients don’t want to see employees encouraging this.”
“I wasn’t,” I started, but the words tangled because I didn’t even know what I was trying to defend. My hands felt suddenly exposed without my jacket, my scarf too thin against the wind.
“Don’t,” he snapped.
The word hit like a slap.
He didn’t lower his voice. He didn’t worry who heard. People coming in behind him slowed, pretending not to listen, while still listening.
“Clear your desk,” he said. “Effective immediately.”
For a second, I thought I’d misheard. I waited for the follow-up, the warning, the lecture.
There was nothing.
Just the finality of his tone and the cold certainty in his eyes.
The woman on the ground looked up at him. Her expression didn’t change much. If anything, her gaze became even calmer, unreadable in a way that made my skin prickle.
Mr. Harlan didn’t look at her. He didn’t acknowledge her as a person who existed in the same space. He only turned away, already moving back toward the lobby, as if this moment was nothing more than a smudge he’d wiped off his day.
I stood there, jacketless, jobless, holding a rusty coin that suddenly felt ridiculous in my palm.
My breath came out in a thin cloud.
The woman adjusted the jacket around her shoulders. The sleeves hung slightly long on her, and the sight made me feel both strangely satisfied and suddenly sick with what had just happened.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“It’s not your fault,” I managed, though my throat burned as if I’d swallowed smoke. “I guess I should’ve known better.”
She tilted her head slightly, watching me.
“No,” she said. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”
The words landed like something heavier than comfort. Like a verdict.
I wanted to ask her what she meant. I wanted to demand she explain the coin, the strange certainty in her voice. But the revolving doors were turning, and inside them, the life I thought I had was already moving on without me.
I walked away.
And the wind hit harder without my jacket.
Two weeks is a short time to lose your footing. It’s also more than enough time for panic to become a daily companion.
The first few days, I moved through a fog of disbelief. I polished my resume like it was a life raft. I emailed contacts I hadn’t spoken to in years. I refreshed job boards until my eyes blurred. I wrote cover letters late into the night with my laptop balanced on my knees, the apartment too quiet around me.
At first, I treated it like an emergency that would resolve itself quickly. I had experience. I had skills. I had always been the reliable one.
Then the days kept passing.
The polite rejection emails came in, some immediate, some delayed. A few places never replied at all, which somehow felt worse, like being erased.
My savings began to thin out in a way that made me hyperaware of every purchase. Groceries became a calculation. Heating became a compromise. I found myself standing in my kitchen staring at my bank app with a hollow feeling in my chest, as if the numbers were quietly laughing.
On the fourteenth day, I woke up with that heavy, trapped feeling that comes when you realize you’ve been clenching your jaw in your sleep.
I needed air. I needed movement. I needed something normal.
I opened my apartment door to grab the mail, expecting the usual thin stack of flyers and bills.
And then I froze.
On the porch, placed neatly as if it belonged there, sat a small velvet box.
Deep, dark velvet that caught the light in a soft way. It looked expensive in a way that made my skin go cold. It was too deliberate to be a mistake. Too specific to be random.
No address.
No note.
Just waiting.
I stared at it as if it might move. My heart started beating faster, the kind of pounding you get when your instincts recognize a pattern before your mind does.
My hands shook when I picked it up.
It was heavier than it should have been for its size. Weighty, like it held something more than air and mystery.
I carried it inside and set it on the coffee table. The apartment felt suddenly smaller, like the box had taken up all the space. I circled it once, ridiculous in my own living room, as if I were approaching a wild animal.
Then I noticed something along the side.
A narrow slot.
Oddly shaped, precise, like a keyhole made for something that wasn’t a key.
My breath caught.
The coin.
The memory hit me so sharply I had...
¡Lea más haciendo clic en el botón (SIGUIENTE »») a continuación!
