Harley worked like someone defusing a bomb. Calm. Methodical. No wasted motion.

She sat beside my hospital bed with her laptop open and made phone calls in a voice I'd never heard her use before — low, clipped, transactional. The kind of voice that didn't invite questions.

"Arthur," she said into her phone. "It's Harley Fisher. I need a favor. The kind you owe me for."

A pause. I watched her face. It didn't move.

"Closed casket. Cremation paperwork. And I need it airtight." Another pause. "No. You don't need to know why. You just need to remember that malpractice suit I kept out of the papers ten years ago."

She hung up.

I tried to sit up again. The pain in my ribs made me stop halfway. "Harley—"

"Don't talk." She didn't look at me. Her fingers moved across the keyboard. "Save your energy. You're going to need it."

She worked for seventy-two hours straight.

I know because I watched her. She slept in the chair beside my bed in forty-minute intervals, her laptop balanced on her knees. She ate protein bars from the vending machine and drank coffee that smelled like burnt rubber. She made calls at 3 a.m. to people whose names I didn't recognize. She spoke in half-sentences and abbreviations and legal codes I couldn't follow.

On the second day she showed me a passport.

New name. My face. Someone else's history.

"Memorize it," she said. "You're her now."

I stared at the name. It didn't feel real. None of this felt real.

"What about the hospital records?" I asked.

"Handled." Harley closed the passport and slid it into an envelope. "Fatal internal hemorrhage. Declared at 4:47 a.m. three days from now. Arthur will have the body — not your body, obviously, but a body — ready for the closed casket. No viewing. Immediate cremation per your 'last wishes.'"

"Whose body?"

"Does it matter?"

I looked at her. She looked back. Her eyes were flat.

"Someone who won't be missed," she said quietly. "Someone who deserves a name on a headstone instead of a county grave. It's handled, Serena. Don't ask me again."

I didn't.

On the third day she handed me a plane ticket. One way. Paris. Departure in six days.

"You'll stay here until then," she said. "Under observation. Then you walk out the service entrance at 6 a.m., get in the car I'll have waiting, and you disappear. No goodbyes. No last looks. You don't exist anymore."

I held the ticket in my hands. The paper felt thin. Breakable.

"What about you?" I asked.

Harley smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "I'm going to make sure that bastard knows exactly what he did."

—

Colson arrived at the rooftop twenty-three minutes after I fell.

I know because Harley pulled the building security footage later. She showed me once, months afterward, on her laptop in a Paris café. I watched him step out of the elevator. Watched him look around. Watched him walk to the railing and look down.

His face didn't change.

Mrs. Adams was already gone. Building security had taken her to a holding room. The rooftop was empty except for him and the wind.

He stood there for a long time. Then he pulled out his phone and made a call.

The footage had no audio but I could see his mouth moving. Short sentences. Clipped. The way he talked when he was giving orders.

Then he turned and walked back to the elevator.

That was it.

No panic. No grief. Just a man solving a problem.

—

The paramedics told him there was no airbag.

He was standing on the street below when they said it. Harley got this part secondhand from a hospital contact who'd been on the scene.

"No airbag was ordered, sir," the lead paramedic had said. "No setup. No crew. Are you sure someone told you—"

Colson didn't answer. He walked away mid-sentence and got into his car.

Twenty minutes later the hospital called him. They used the script Harley had written. Fatal internal hemorrhage. Pronounced dead at 4:47 a.m. We're very sorry for your loss.

He demanded to see the body.

They told him the injuries were too severe. Closed casket per the family's wishes.

He demanded the medical records.

Harley's falsified documents held. Every signature. Every timestamp. Every lie.

He didn't believe it. Not at first.

Men like Colson Morgan didn't believe in problems they couldn't reverse with enough money or authority. He called the hospital administrator. He called his lawyers. He called people whose job it was to make impossible things possible.

None of it worked.

I was dead. Officially. Legally. Irreversibly.

And he had killed me.

—

Harley walked into his office three days later.

She didn't make an appointment. She walked past two secretaries and a security guard who tried to stop her. She slammed the door open and crossed the room in four strides.

Colson looked up from his desk. His face was gray. Unshaven. He looked like he hadn't slept.

Good, I thought, watching the footage later. I hope he never sleeps again.

Harley dropped the prenatal report on his desk.

It landed face-up. Eight weeks. Estimated due date circled in red.

"Your wife was pregnant," Harley said.

Her voice was very calm. Very clear.

Colson stared at the paper.

"Eight weeks," Harley continued. "She found out three days before Raegan's accident. She bought baby shoes. She wrote you a card. She was going to tell you somewhere quiet. Somewhere good."

Colson's hand moved toward the report. Stopped halfway.

"There was no airbag," Harley said. "You told your pregnant wife to jump off a building and you lied about the safety net. You didn't just kill her. You killed your child."

She leaned forward. Her hands pressed flat on his desk.

"And I'm going to make sure you remember that every single day for the rest of your miserable life."

Colson's face didn't move. But something behind his eyes did. Something structural. Something that couldn't be put back.

He opened his mouth. No sound came out.

Harley straightened. She walked to the door. Stopped. Looked back.

"She's being cremated tomorrow," she said quietly. "Per her last wishes. No service. No grave. Just ashes in the Atlantic. You don't get to say goodbye. You don't get anything."

She left.

Colson sat at his desk for eleven hours after that. His assistant found him there at 3 a.m., staring at the prenatal report, his phone ringing unanswered beside him.

He never touched it.

He just sat there. And stared. And broke.