The squash court echoed with the thwack of rubber against the wall.

Anna sat on the bench, a towel folded neatly on her lap. She had been out of the clinic for a week. She looked better. The color had returned to her cheeks, though her eyes remained watchful.

Grayson lunged, his racket connecting with the ball. He was sweating, his hair plastered to his forehead. He played squash like he did business-with unnecessary aggression.

He finished the set and walked over to her, breathing hard.

Anna stood up immediately. She handed him the towel.

"Good game," she said. Her voice was steady.

Grayson wiped his face. He winced slightly as the towel brushed a scrape on his forehead, a souvenir from a ball that had ricocheted too fast.

"Here," Anna said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a small adhesive bandage.

She peeled the backing off. She stepped close to him. She was tall, but he still towered over her. She placed the bandage gently over the scrape. Her fingers lingered for a second on his temple.

Grayson closed his eyes, leaning into her touch. For a moment, he looked almost human. He looked like a man who wanted to be taken care of.

"The gala is next month," he said, his eyes still closed.

"I know," Anna said. "I picked up my dress from the cleaners."

"You don't need it," he said.

Anna's hand froze. She pulled back.

Grayson opened his eyes. The softness was gone.

"Why?" she asked.

"You need rest," he said. He tossed the towel onto the bench. "The doctor said stress triggers your episodes. I don't want a scene like the Hamptons again. It's bad for business."

"I'm fine, Grayson," she said. "I can handle a dinner."

"I have other arrangements," he said. He picked up his gym bag. "I'll keep the allowance coming. You just stay at the apartment. Be a good girl. Stay out of sight."

He walked toward the exit.

Anna followed him out to the street. The city noise rushed in to fill the silence between them.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket. A notification from Page Six flashed on the screen.

She tapped it.

WALL STREET GOLDEN BOY GRAYSON WARREN SPOTTED WITH PR QUEEN JAYLENE HORNE. IS THIS THE NEW POWER COUPLE?

The photo was high definition. It was taken through the window of Nobu. Grayson was leaning across the table, smiling at a woman with sharp features and blonde hair that looked like spun gold. Jaylene Horne.

He was holding her hand.

Anna stopped walking. She looked at the photo, then at Grayson's back.

It was a Soft Launch.

In the age of social media, you didn't just announce a relationship. You hinted at it. You let the paparazzi catch a glimpse. You tested the market reaction before you made the IPO.

Jaylene was the merger. Anna was the divestiture.

Grayson stopped by his waiting car. He checked his phone. He was smiling.

His phone buzzed. Then buzzed again. Congratulatory texts.

He looked up at Anna. He saw the phone in her hand. He saw that she knew.

"News travels fast," he said. He didn't look guilty. He looked relieved.

"She's pretty," Anna said. Her voice was flat.

"She's competent," Grayson corrected. "She understands the game."

Anna's phone vibrated again. It was a notification from Signal.

The Warren Family Office.

It was the group chat for the inner circle. Grayson, his brother Preston, their mother Victoria, and the lawyers. Anna had been in it for three years, mostly as a silent observer, a ghost in the machine.

System Message: Grayson added Jaylene to the group.

Anna stared at the screen. The cruelty of it was breathtaking.

Jaylene: Hi everyone! So excited to be part of the team. Let's make this quarter historic!

Victoria: Welcome, darling! Finally, some fresh energy.

Preston: Glad to have you, Jay.

They were welcoming the replacement while the body was still warm. They hadn't even removed Anna from the group. They just ignored her. She was invisible.

Anna looked at Grayson. He was typing a reply in the group chat. A thumbs-up emoji.

He opened the car door. He paused, looking at her standing on the curb.

"You can take an Uber back," he said. "I have a meeting."

He got in. The door slammed shut. The tinted window rolled up, erasing him from her view.

The car pulled away, merging into the traffic of Fifth Avenue.

Anna stood there. She didn't feel the crushing weight she expected. She felt lighter.

The hope was gone. And with the hope, the fear was gone too.

She waited until his car was out of sight before pulling a second, older phone from a hidden pocket in her purse. This one had no tracking software, no digital leash. It was her real phone. She opened the secure app.

Anna: Target has introduced a new variable. Jaylene Horne is in the inner circle.

FBI Contact: Does this compromise your access?

Anna: No. It creates a distraction. Initiate Plan B.

She put the phone in her pocket. She took a deep breath of the exhaust-filled air. It tasted like freedom.

The apartment Anna shared with Sloane was in Queens. It was small, cluttered, and smelled of Sloane's acrylic paints and cheap incense. It was the only place in the world that felt like home.

Anna walked in and dropped her bag on the floor.

Sloane was sitting on the counter, eating cereal. She looked at Anna's face and put the spoon down.

"I saw the news," Sloane said. "He's a pig. A literal pig in a three-thousand-dollar suit."

"He's predictable," Anna said. She walked to the bedroom and pulled a suitcase from under the bed.

"You're leaving?" Sloane asked, hopping off the counter.

"I'm moving the timeline up," Anna said. She started throwing clothes into the bag. "I can't stay in the penthouse anymore. It's not safe."

She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out her phone. She opened the Signal group chat.

Jaylene was sending photos of flower arrangements for the gala. Victoria was sending heart emojis.

Anna didn't type a goodbye. She didn't type a curse word.

She tapped the three dots in the corner.

Leave Group.

System Message: Anna Roth has left the group.

It was a small line of text in a sea of sycophancy. But it felt like pulling the pin on a grenade.

In a glass-walled office in Midtown, Grayson Warren was in a meeting about the Tressel acquisition.

His phone sat face up on the mahogany table.

The notification popped up.

Anna Roth has left the group.

Grayson frowned. He stopped listening to the lawyer droning on about liability caps.

She left the group?

Anna never did anything without permission. She didn't have the spine for it. She was probably throwing a tantrum because of the Page Six article.

He picked up the phone. He opened her contact.

He tapped out a message, then deleted it. This wasn't a lover's quarrel; it was a breach of protocol. He dialed her number. It went straight to voicemail. He tried again. Same result.

A cold spike of adrenaline hit his stomach. It wasn't heartbreak. It was the shock of a tool malfunctioning in his hand.

The door to his office burst open.

Preston Warren, his older brother, stormed in. Preston looked pale. He was holding a tablet.

"Get out," Preston barked at the lawyers. "Now."

The lawyers scrambled to gather their papers and fled.

"What is it?" Grayson asked, standing up. "Did Anna call you?"

"Worse," Preston said. He threw the tablet onto the desk. "Look at this."

Grayson looked.

It was a grainy video feed. Security footage. The timestamp was twenty minutes ago.

The location was the pedestrian path of the Queensboro Bridge.

A woman was standing by the railing. She was wearing a beige trench coat. Her hair was whipping in the wind.

It was Anna.

She was leaning over the rail. She was looking down at the dark, churning water of the East River. She looked small. She looked desperate.

In the video, she raised her hand. She was holding something.

"Is she..." Grayson's voice failed him.

"She's going to jump," Preston hissed. "Or she's thinking about it. This was sent to our PR team by a freelancer. We bought it before it hit TMZ."

On the screen, Anna threw the object into the water. Then she stood there, staring down, her hands gripping the rail.

Grayson felt his heart hammer against his ribs.

He didn't care if she died. He told himself that. But if she died now, right after the Jaylene news...

"If she jumps," Preston said, "Warren Capital tanks. We look like monsters. Jaylene's soft launch becomes a PR massacre."

Grayson stared at the figure on the screen.

"She's not going to jump," Grayson whispered. "She's too weak."

But his hands were shaking.

"Find her," Preston yelled. "Call security. Get her back. Put her in a clinic. Drug her. I don't care. Just get her off that bridge and out of the public eye."

Grayson grabbed his jacket. He ran out of the office.

He pulled out his phone as he sprinted to the elevator. He opened the tracking app he had installed on her phone three years ago.

Signal Lost.

The dot was gone.

She had thrown the phone into the river.

That's what he saw on the video. She wasn't jumping. She was destroying the leash.

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded his veins.

"Anna," he growled as the elevator doors closed. "You stupid, stupid girl."

The street in front of Sloane's apartment building was lined with overflowing trash cans and parked cars that had seen better decades.

A black Maybach screeched to a halt, double-parking next to a fire hydrant.

Anna had just stepped out of a yellow taxi. She was carrying a bag of groceries.

She saw the car. She saw Grayson burst out of the driver's side.

He didn't look like the Master of the Universe today. His tie was crooked. His hair was windblown. His eyes were wild.

He crossed the distance between them in three strides.

He grabbed her by the shoulders. His fingers dug into her flesh through her coat. He shook her, hard.

"Are you insane?" he shouted. "What were you doing on the bridge?"

Anna dropped the grocery bag. A carton of milk burst on the pavement, white liquid pooling around her boots.

"Let go of me," she said. Her voice was ice.

Grayson ignored her. He was scanning her face, her body, checking for broken bones, for signs of the water. When he realized she was dry, the fear in his eyes morphed instantly into rage.

"You wanted to scare me?" he yelled, spit flying from his lips. "You wanted to ruin the launch? Is that it? You think you can threaten suicide to make me dump Jaylene?"

Anna looked at him. She felt a profound sense of exhaustion.

"I wasn't going to jump, Grayson," she said. "I was throwing away my old life. And we are done."

"Done?" He laughed. It was a manic sound. "We aren't done until I say we're done. You signed a contract. You owe the family two million dollars. You don't get to walk away."

He tightened his grip. He pulled her closer.

"You're mine," he hissed. "You're my broken little toy."

He lowered his head. He tried to kiss her.

It wasn't a kiss of affection. It was a kiss of ownership. He wanted to mark her. He wanted to remind her body who it belonged to.

His lips mashed against hers, hard and bruising. He tasted of mints and panic.

Anna felt a wave of nausea.

She remembered Felix. She remembered how he used to kiss her like she was made of glass, like she was precious.

This was violence.

She didn't freeze this time. She didn't dissociate.

She brought her knee up. Hard.

She missed his groin, but her thigh connected solidly with his hip. It was enough to make him stumble back, gasping.

Anna didn't wait. She swung her hand.

Smack.

Her palm connected with his cheek. The sound was sharp, like a pistol crack in the quiet street.

Grayson froze. He put a hand to his face. He looked at her with wide, shocked eyes. The "pet" had bitten the master.

"That," Anna said, her breath coming in short bursts, "is the termination fee. Get out of my life."

Grayson's shock darkened into something dangerous. He took a step forward, his hands curling into fists.

"Hey!"

Sloane burst out of the apartment building door. She was holding a pink canister of pepper spray with both hands, aiming it at Grayson's face.

"Back off!" Sloane screamed. "I swear to God, I will blind you!"

People on the street stopped. A teenager pulled out a phone and started recording.

Grayson saw the phone. He saw the pepper spray. He saw the milk pooling around his expensive Italian leather shoes.

The PR calculation ran through his head in a split second. Assault charges. Viral video. Stock drop.

He straightened his jacket. He smoothed his hair. He put the mask back on.

"You'll regret this, Anna," he said. His voice was low, meant only for her. "Without me, you're nothing. You'll be starving in a week. And when you come crawling back, the price is going to be double."

He turned and walked back to the Maybach. He got in and slammed the door. The car roared to life and sped away.

Anna stood on the sidewalk. Her hand was stinging. Her legs felt like jelly.

She wasn't scared. She was shaking from the adrenaline leaving her body.

Sloane ran over and wrapped her arms around her.

"Holy shit," Sloane whispered into her hair. "You did it. You actually did it."

Anna looked at the empty street where the car had been.

"I did," she said.

She looked down at the spilled milk.

"Let's go inside," Anna said. "I have work to do."