The Vault was dark, smelling of expensive cigars and aged leather. Jazz music played softly.

Brittain sat in his usual corner booth. He nursed a glass of scotch. He was brooding. He hadn't heard from Cara in three days. The silence was deafening. He was starting to get worried, though he would never admit it.

Miles Turner sat across from him. Miles was looking at his phone, grinning.

"Damn, Austin," Miles said. "Your little bird flew the coop and found a new nest."

Brittain frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Miles turned his phone around. "Look."

It was a clip from the press conference. Cara in the red dress. Brady brushing her hair back. The look in her eyes.

Brittain felt his blood run cold. His stomach twisted into a knot.

"That's PR," Brittain said. His voice was tight. "It's fake."

But he couldn't stop staring. He stared at Brady's hand on her arm. He stared at the way she leaned into him.

Just then, Caryn arrived. She was wearing white lace. She slid into the booth next to Brittain and looped her arm through his.

"Sorry I'm late," she cooed. "Jordon is being a nightmare again."

Brittain barely acknowledged her. He was fixated on Miles's phone.

Caryn followed his gaze. "Oh," she said. Her voice dripped with fake pity. "She looks... desperate. Trying a bit too hard, isn't she?"

Miles signaled the bartender. "Hey, put the entertainment news on the big screen."

"No," Brittain started to say.

But the screen flickered to life. It was a live feed from the premiere after-party.

There she was. Cara. She was laughing. Her head was thrown back, her neck exposed. She looked alive. She looked electric.

Brittain felt a sharp pain in his chest. He realized he had never seen her laugh like that. Not once.

On the screen, the reporter asked them to play a game. Charades.

Brittain watched as they moved in sync. They had a rhythm.

Caryn tugged at his sleeve. "Brittain, can we order champagne?"

Brittain ignored her. He was watching Cara's hand rest on Brady's chest.

The glass in his hand creaked.

On the screen, the reporter asked for a reenactment of the goodbye scene.

The camera zoomed in on Cara’s face. The laughter vanished. Her expression shifted instantly.

She looked at Brady. Her eyes filled with tears. Her lip trembled. It was a look of pure, unadulterated devastation. It was a look of love so deep it hurt to witness.

Brittain stopped breathing.

He knew that look. She used to give him that look when he left for business trips.

Was she acting then? Or was she acting now?

If she was acting now, she was a genius. If she wasn’t…

If she wasn’t, then she looked at Brady Roy the way she used to look at him. And that thought was unbearable.

Miles whistled low. “Damn. She loves him. Look at those eyes.”

Brittain felt a roar in his ears. It was the sound of his own ego shattering.

Caryn reached out. “Honey, stop watching. It’s just a movie.”

Brittain pulled his arm away violently. “Don’t touch me.”

On the screen, Brady pulled Cara into a hug. He buried his face in her neck.

CRACK.

The scotch glass in Brittain’s hand exploded. Shards of crystal flew. Amber liquid and bright red blood splattered onto the white tablecloth.

The bar went silent.

Miles jumped up. “Dude! You’re bleeding!”

Brittain didn’t feel the cut. He felt the fire in his veins. He stared at the screen, at the couple embracing.

“Turn it off!” he roared.

The bartender scrambled for the remote. The screen went black.

Brittain stood up. Blood dripped from his hand onto the floor.

He pulled out his phone. He dialed Cara.

Call Failed.

He tried again.

Call Failed.

She had blocked him.

The realization hit him like a physical blow. She wasn’t playing hard to get. She was gone.

He turned to Burrel, who had just walked in.

“Get me everything on Brady Roy,” Brittain snarled. “Dirt. Scandals. Everything. I want him destroyed.”

Caryn tried to hand him a napkin. “Brittain, your hand…”

Brittain pushed past her. He pushed past Miles. He stormed out of the bar.

The rain battered the windshield of the Maybach, distorting the city lights into smears of aggressive neon. He didn’t wait for the driver. He stepped out into the deluge, the water soaking through his bespoke charcoal suit in seconds, chilling skin that was already running cold with a nameless dread.

He moved through the lobby like a storm front, ignoring the receptionist’s tentative greeting. The elevator ride to the penthouse took forty seconds. He watched the numbers climb, his heart hammering a rhythm against his ribs that felt foreign, frantic. He was Brittain Austin. He didn’t panic. He executed. But his hand shook as he punched in the code to the private foyer.

The door slid open.

He was met with silence.

It wasn’t a peaceful silence. It was the silence of a tomb. The air was stale, still.

He hit the light switch. The harsh, cold LEDs flooded the living room. It was pristine. Too pristine. The corner where she usually rolled out her yoga mat was bare. The stack of scripts she kept on the coffee table was gone. The crystal vase in the entryway, which she insisted on filling with fresh peonies every Monday, held only brown, withered stalks and a scattering of dead petals on the marble console.

“Cara?”

His voice cracked. It sounded small in the cavernous space.

He ran to the bedroom. Empty.

He opened the closet. Her clothes were gone. The dresses he bought were there, shrouded in plastic garment bags like corpses, but her sneakers, her jeans, her notebook… gone. She hadn’t taken the things he gave her. She had taken herself.

He walked to the nightstand. The black card sat there, untouched, a sliver of plastic looking impossibly small in the vast, empty room.

Brittain Austin sank onto the bed. He looked at his bleeding hand. The physical pain was finally starting to register, but it was nothing compared to the hollow ache in his chest.

She didn’t just leave. She erased herself.

And for the first time in his life, Brittain Austin didn’t know what to do.

He threw the phone. It hit the thick carpet with a dull thud. He put his head in his hands, the water from his hair dripping onto the floor, merging with the ghost of her presence.

The silence in the penthouse was no longer just an absence of sound. It was a physical presence, a weight that pressed down on him, suffocating. He had stormed in here expecting a fight, a confrontation he could win with logic or a well-timed gift. He had found a vacuum.

His phone vibrated in his wet pocket. It was Burrel.

Video link attached. Boss, this is trending.

Brittain didn’t want to look. He had to look.

He tapped the link. It was a paparazzi video, shaky and grainy, taken outside a dive bar in Queens. It showed Cara standing on a curb, shivering. Brady Roy took off his denim jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

Cara looked up at him. She smiled.

It wasn’t the practiced, red-carpet smile she gave Brittain. It was soft. It was unguarded. It was the kind of smile that reached her eyes and made them crinkle at the corners.

Brittain felt a physical blow to his sternum. She looked relieved.

He threw the phone again.

The next morning, the sun was offensive. It poured into the Austin Media top-floor office, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. Brittain sat behind his desk. He hadn’t shaved. There were dark bruises of exhaustion under his eyes. A fresh white bandage was wrapped tightly around his right hand.

The door opened without a knock.

Caryn Newman walked in. She was wearing a white dress, carrying a bento box. She looked like an angel, or what Brittain had convinced himself an angel looked like for the last ten years.

“Brittain,” she said, her voice a soothing coo. “I heard you didn’t go home last night. I made you soup.”

Brittain didn’t look up from the merger documents he wasn’t reading. “I’m working.”

She walked around the desk. She placed her hands on his shoulders, her thumbs digging into the tense muscle.

“You’re tense,” she whispered. “Is this about that little substitute? Did she finally realize she was out of her depth?”

Substitute.

The word hung in the air like a foul odor.

Brittain moved so fast the chair screeched against the floor. He stood up, dislodging her hands. He turned on her, his eyes blazing with a cold, blue fire.

“Get out,” he said.

Caryn blinked, her smile faltering. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t have an appointment,” Brittain said, his voice low and dangerous. “And you don’t get to speak about her. Not in this office. Not ever.”

“Brittain, I’m trying to help…”

“Out,” he roared. “And tell Burrel if he lets anyone up here without a scheduled meeting again, he’s fired.”

Caryn stepped back, clutching the bento box. She looked at him with wide, fearful eyes, realizing for the first time that the pedestal she stood on was shaking. Caryn walked out of the executive suite, her face burning.