Chapter 3 - The Exposure"Cut the crap, Ryan," Sandra said, standing up and smoothing down her designer skirt with an impatient flick of her manicured fingers.
Ryan stared at her, his jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached. "Sandra. What are you doing here? How did you even find this branch?"
"I have friends, Ryan! People talk!" she scoffed, throwing her hands up. "And frankly, running around pretending to be a regular filing clerk while driving a beat-up Honda is insulting to everyone who actually has to live like this. Why are you acting like a pauper? You're a Whitfield!"
"Miss Sinclair," Arthur Henderson interrupted, his voice sharp and authoritative as he stepped between them. "You are trespassing in a private corporate facility. If you do not leave right this second, I will have building security escort you off the premises."
Sandra bristled, turning her haughty glare onto the director. "Oh, please. I know who signs your paycheck, Henderson. I know who owns this entire regional network. I'm just trying to figure out why my ex-fiancé—"
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The sharp, rhythmic sound of heels stopped dead outside the open office door.
Ryan didn't even need to turn around. The sudden drop in air pressure in the room told him everything.
He slowly pivoted his head toward the doorway.
Celeste stood there.
She had been holding a stack of interdepartmental sign-off sheets, but her arms had gone completely slack. The papers slid from her grip, fluttering down like tired autumn leaves to land in a scattered heap across the carpeted hallway. Her eyes—usually so steady, so intelligent, and so brilliantly sharp—were wide, fixed entirely on Ryan.
Then her gaze shifted to Sandra in her Chanel blazer, and finally to the gold Rolex watch strapped conspicuously around Ryan’s wrist—a watch he had forgotten to take off that morning in his rush to leave the house.
The silence in the hallway was so absolute you could hear the distant hum of the vending machine down the hall.
"Celeste..." Ryan breathed, taking a half-step forward, his hand instinctively reaching out. "Celeste, let me explain—"
"Explain what?" her voice wasn't loud. It didn't shake. It was terrifyingly, devastatingly calm. It was the voice of a woman watching everything she had believed in disintegrate into ash.
"Celeste, wait, please," Ryan stammered, panic finally breaking through his stoic exterior. "It’s not what you think. I wanted to tell you—"
"What did you want to tell me, Ryan?" she asked, her gaze cutting through him like a surgical blade. She looked him up and down—at the cheap shirt he had bought specifically to look poor, at the Honda keys in his pocket, at the massive, crushing deception he had wrapped around her like a web. "Did you want to tell me about the mansion in Buckhead? Did you want to tell me how much my little life amused you while you were playing dress-up in Vine City?"
"No! No, that's not it at all—"
"Stay away from me," she whispered, her voice cracking just enough to reveal the raw, bleeding pain beneath her composure.
Without another word, Celeste turned on her heel. She didn't run. She walked with a stiff, agonizing dignity down the hallway, past the open-plan workstations where Angela and three other coworkers were staring in stunned silence. She grabbed her purse from her desk, threw her strap over her shoulder, and headed straight for the exit doors, pushing them open and disappearing out into the glaring Atlanta sunlight.
"Well," Sandra muttered, crossing her arms with a self-satisfied smirk. "That could have gone smoother. Who was that? Your little office secretary?"
May you like
Ryan didn't answer her. He didn't even look at her.
With a blind, incandescent fury that frightened even branch director Arthur Henderson, Ryan ripped the plastic ID badge off his chest, threw it onto Henderson’s desk, and sprinted out the door after her.
