Chapter 7 - Suite 402
The Financial Plaza was completely deserted on a Saturday evening. The towering glass lobby echoed with the sterile hum of fluorescent lights and the faint click of my boots against the polished marble floor.
I checked my watch: seven minutes past the deadline.
The elevator ride to the fourth floor felt agonizingly slow. When the brushed-metal doors slid open, the hallway was dead silent. Most of the offices were dark, their occupants long gone for the weekend. Only one office at the end of the corridor radiated a dim, amber glow through frosted glass panels bearing the gold lettering: Vance & Cooper Architecture Associates.
My stomach twisted into a hard knot. That was Ryan’s firm—the business he had built, and the business Claire had apparently gutted from the inside out.
I walked down the hallway, pushed open the unlocked glass door, and stepped inside.
The main drafting room was littered with blueprints, empty coffee cups, and discarded wedding seating charts. But sitting at Ryan’s corner executive desk, illuminated only by the harsh blue light of a dual-monitor setup, was a figure typing furiously away on a mechanical keyboard.
"I wondered how long it would take you to show up, Annie," a low, smooth voice broke the silence.
The figure stopped typing and swiveled the leather chair around.
It wasn't a stranger. It was Marcus Vance—Ryan’s former junior partner, and the man who had supposedly resigned from the firm six months ago amid "creative differences."
"Marcus?" I stepped further into the room, keeping my hand gripped tightly around my phone. "You sent the text message?"
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Marcus offered a thin, tired smile, running a hand through his thinning brown hair. He didn't look like a corporate raider; he looked like a man who had spent three days straight chugging energy drinks and staring down an abyss.
"If I hadn't lured you here, Ryan’s legal team would have scrubbed the primary server by midnight," Marcus said, gesturing to the glowing screens behind him. "And you wouldn't have seen the real reason Claire was so desperate to marry him."
