One evening, as she stared at a spreadsheet she no longer believed in, a nurse paused at the doorway and said quietly, “You should get some rest. You cannot keep going like this.”
Maya forced a smile and replied, “If I stop, everything falls apart,” and she meant it in the most literal sense imaginable.
The company where she interned sat across the river in a steel and glass tower that seemed to look down on the city with detached confidence, and at the top floor worked the chief executive, a man named Victor Sloan, whose name carried weight in every meeting and rumor, spoken with caution by those who admired his success and feared his reputation for emotional distance.
Maya had never spoken to him directly before that night, although she had seen him from afar, moving through corridors with deliberate calm, his presence enough to quiet entire rooms without a word, and when desperation finally drove her to request a meeting after hours, she almost hoped he would refuse.
Instead, the message came back brief and formal, instructing her to come at nine that evening.