Chapter 5 - The Council of War and the Empty DeskThe following morning, the Westside Atlanta branch felt like a tomb.
Ryan sat at his old desk in the records department, though he was no longer an employee. He had officially resigned his clerk position late yesterday afternoon, but branch director Arthur Henderson had allowed him to sit in the empty bullpen while he figured out his next move.
Not that moving was an option. He wasn't leaving Atlanta. He wasn't leaving Vine City until he fixed this.
Across the room, Celeste’s office door was shut. The blinds were drawn completely closed, blocking out any view of her desk. She had arrived at 7:30 AM—her usual early time—without looking left or right, walked straight into her office, and hadn't stepped out once. Not for coffee. Not for client files. Not even to breathe.
At 10:00 AM, Angela Brooks walked purposefully across the floor. She didn't go to Celeste’s office; instead, she marched straight up to Ryan’s desk, her expression thunderous.
"I don't know what kind of soap opera bullshit you dragged into this branch, Ryan Whitfield," Angela hissed, keeping her voice low enough so the surrounding coworkers couldn't hear every word, "but you broke her."
Ryan looked up, his eyes bloodshot from a sleepless night spent pacing the living room of the Buckhead mansion—a house that now felt less like a home and more like a mausoleum.
"I know," Ryan said quietly. "I deserve every word of it."
"You damn right you do," Angela snapped, slamming a manila folder onto his desk. "Celeste didn't come to work today to cry. She came to work because she's a professional. But she hasn't eaten, she hasn't spoken, and she's currently rewriting three months of project schedules just so she can transfer to the Savannah regional office by next week."
Ryan bolted upright in his chair, the blood rushing to his ears. "Savannah? She's transferring?"
"She submitted the paperwork to HR twenty minutes ago," Angela said, her eyes narrowing. "And knowing Arthur Henderson, since he owes your family a favor or two, he’ll fast-track it just to clear the air. If you care about her—really care about her, not just as some twisted psychological experiment—you need to fix this right now."
Angela didn't wait for his answer. She turned on her heel and walked away.
Ryan stood up, his hands balling into fists. He wasn't going to let her run away because of his mistakes. But how do you apologize to a woman whose entire worldview you had insulted? How do you rebuild trust when the very foundation of your relationship was built on a foundation of deceit?
He needed advice. Not from corporate lawyers, not from board members, and certainly not from his father, who had suggested this madness in the first place.
He pulled out his phone, dialed a private number, and waited through three rings.
"Dad," Ryan said when the line picked up.
"Ryan? I heard about what happened at the branch. Sandra called your mother complaining—"
"Stop," Ryan interrupted, his voice ringing with an absolute, uncompromising authority that made Gerald Whitfield pause on the other end. "Your advice was a disaster. I tried to test someone pure with a dirty trick, and I lost the only real thing that ever happened to me."
A heavy silence stretched across the phone line. When Gerald spoke again, his voice was uncharacteristically subdued.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to stop playing games," Ryan said, looking across the room at the closed blinds of Celeste’s office. "And I'm going to prove that I'm worth staying for, even if I lose every penny doing it."
He hung up the phone before his father could reply. Then, he walked straight across the bullpen, bypassed the closed door of Celeste’s office, and marched right out of the building.
May you like
He had forty-eight hours before her transfer paperwork cleared.
And he had a yard in Vine City that needed cleaning.
