Parted After The Storm

1 Demoted, I crouched curb-side, shoveling salty street fries through tears. I texted Silas that I was exhausted and the fries helped. He did not reply. Half an hour later, shivering in the biting Seattle air, I texted again that I needed to talk. His response cut deep. What exactly is the point of this text? Are you trying to get me to reimburse you for your junk food? For six years, I had proven I was not a gold digger. Since his mother drained his accounts and left him millions in debt, Silas despised users. I never spent his money. We split every dinner bill. I returned expensive gifts. I kept our relationship hidden at work so my project results alone impressed the board. Refreshing my feed, I saw Mina, the intern who stole my promotion, post a photo wearing a diamond necklace. The caption thanked Mr. Blackwood for celebrating her promotion. I recognized the limited-edition piece from a magazine. Only three existed worldwide. In six years, Silas had never given me a gift worth more than a hundred dollars. The jewels against Mina’s collarbone were worth at least a million. Tears clouded my screen. My desperate attempts to prove my worth over the years were apparently worth less to him than a cheap carton of street fries. … After choking down the last bite, I hailed a cab back to the corporate tower. The promotion results were already posted on the internal network, but I still needed to ask him where I fell short. I had six years of project management experience. I ranked first in performance reviews for three consecutive years. My team had the lowest turnover rate in the entire company. And I lost to a twenty-two-year-old intern who had just passed her probation period. The moment I stepped out of the cab, I froze. Three yards away, Silas was leaning over, holding the passenger door of his sleek black Bentley open for Mina. "There is no rush on this project," his voice drifted over, smooth and patient. "Just take your time getting familiar with the workflow. I am taking you to London in a couple of days to meet the clients. It will be a good learning experience." "But I only just got hired full-time." Mina sounded appropriately hesitant. "It does not matter." Silas cut her off, his tone softer than I had ever heard it. "As long as you have the drive, titles do not mean anything. Besides, I am right here. If anything goes wrong, I have your back." The warm summer wind brushed against my skin, but I felt ice-cold down to my bones. In six years, Silas had traveled to thirty-five countries for business. He never took me on a single trip. He always fed me the same line: "We do not mix personal feelings with company business." I had even asked him once if I could go purely as the project lead. He had looked at me with cold, evaluating eyes. "Aria, are you trying to use your project metrics to extort a free business trip out of me? You need to remember your place in this company." Remember my place. I remembered my place so well that I did not dare commute with him. I did not dare post a single picture of us online. I did not even dare step into the same elevator with him at work. And yet, he turned around and told another woman that titles did not mean anything. Mina spotted me standing by the curb and waved enthusiastically. "Aria!" Silas followed her gaze. His eyes swept over me for less than a second before returning to Mina. "Get in," he told her. "I will drop you off so you can get some rest." Mina nodded, flashing me a bright, innocent smile. "Are you heading back up to the office, Aria? Or do you want to catch a ride with us?" Silas finally looked at me. "Just call an Uber," he said flatly. "Mina lives in the opposite direction. It is out of the way." But at the end of the night, he still had to return to the apartment we shared. So what exactly was out of the way? Before I could force a single word out of my throat, he got into the driver's seat and started the engine. I stood alone in the wind, watching the taillights bleed into the city traffic. I had been chasing that silhouette for six years. 2 There was a time when he would drive across the entire city just to pick me up from a grueling client dinner. Now, I was out of the way. Back at my desk, I logged into the HR portal and pulled up the evaluation matrix. Next to my name, Silas had entered his final score: 58 out of 100. Out of six board members, he gave me the absolute lowest score. I scrolled down to the next page. Next to Mina's name, his score read: 98. I stared at that glowing 58, feeling like the air had been sucked out of my lungs. I could not breathe. I never expected the fatal blow to come from Silas. He knew exactly what I had sacrificed over the last six years better than anyone alive. He had watched every midnight overtime shift, every sleepless night before a pitch, every flawless quarterly report. Yet he gave me a failing grade. "Why?" I whispered to the empty office. The only answer was the wet slap of a tear hitting my keyboard, followed by the sudden, heavy drumming of rain against the floor-to-ceiling windows. By the time I unlocked the door to our apartment, I was soaked to the bone. Silas was sitting on the leather sofa, a laptop balanced on his knees. He did not even bother to look up. "I told you to take an umbrella this morning." No dry towel. No hot tea. Not even a shred of genuine concern. I stood in the entryway. Cold rainwater dripped from my hair, pooling onto the hardwood floor. "You gave me a 58 on the evaluation," I said, my voice hollow. "You gave Mina a 98. Why did you give her the highest score and fail me?" Silas set his laptop on the glass coffee table and leaned back into the cushions. "Because it is fair." "Fair?" "People in the office are starting to catch on to our relationship," he said, his tone entirely clinical. "The other board members gave you high scores to save face for me. If I also gave you a high score, the entire evaluation process would lose its integrity. Someone had to give you a reality check, and it had to be me." I stared at him, a bitter, broken laugh escaping my lips. "Silas, it has been six years. I have never used you to get a single advantage. I bled for every account I brought in. I applied for this promotion based entirely on my data. You know that better than anyone." He picked up a glass of water, took a slow sip, and set it down with a sharp clink. "You still have not learned how the corporate world works, Aria. If people think you rely on nepotism, then you rely on nepotism. Period. I gave Mina the highest score because she gave her presentation without looking at her notes. She was passionate, composed, and she earned it." "So you are admitting it," I said, my voice rising. "You gave her a 98 not because of her actual competence, but because you liked her attitude?" Silas stood up, towering over me with a disappointed scowl. "Can you stop playing the victim every time you face a minor setback? You lost. Deal with it." I tilted my head back, desperately trying to force the tears down, but my eyes burned like fire. "If I actually lost to her purely on merit, I would shake her hand and walk away. But I lost because of you! Because my boyfriend of six years, the man who saw every ounce of my blood and sweat, decided to play God! Your 58 dragged my average from first place down to fifth!" Silas clicked his tongue, his patience clearly evaporating. "This right here is exactly the difference between you and her. If Mina lost today, she would smile and congratulate you. She stays positive. She does not point fingers. And look at you. You just stand there wallowing in your own misery." A hysterical laugh tore from my throat as the tears finally spilled over. "I have been wallowing in misery for six years, Silas! Do you know what I am actually miserable about? The fact that I never got to have a normal relationship! Six years of splitting the check, six years of rejecting your gifts, six years of refusing to get in your car just so the whole company could audit my achievements with a microscope." 3 "I lived like a ghost just to prove I was not the kind of woman you despised!" Silas said nothing. He just stood there, hands shoved in his pockets, watching me fall apart. My legs gave out. I sank to the floor, my hands pressed against the cold wood. Rainwater and tears dripped from my chin. "Six years," I sobbed, my whole body shaking. "I tried so hard. Why do I have nothing to show for it? Why did it have to be you who ruined it?" Silas's phone buzzed. He answered it, and instantly, his voice softened into something incredibly gentle. "Mina? Yeah, I am here." "That market analysis... I will send you a template right now. No, it is not a bother at all." Mina's voice leaked through the receiver, soft and insecure. "Mr. Blackwood, am I just completely useless at this?" "You are not useless," he murmured. "I will walk you through it step by step." A travel pack of tissues hit the floor next to my knee with a soft thud. "If you are going to cry, do it quietly," Silas said coldly. "She is still at the office rushing a proposal. You can throw a pity party over a little failure, but at least give the people who actually want to succeed some peace and quiet." When I walked into the office pantry the next morning, the room was buzzing with whispers. The moment I stepped inside, the chatter died instantly. Someone coughed loudly. Another person stared intently at their empty coffee mug. "Did you hear? The CEO's little pet project totally tanked." "I always knew her whole independent boss-lady act was fake. God knows how long she has been sleeping her way up." "Well, the new girl got it on pure talent. Mina did not need a sugar daddy." "Maybe Aria is just getting too old to keep him interested in bed." I stood frozen by the doorway, my fingernails digging into my palms so hard they almost drew blood. Mina walked over, holding a freshly brewed mug of coffee. "Aria, you are here." She looked up at me with wide, apologetic eyes. "I feel so terrible about yesterday. You are my senior, and winning against you just feels... wrong." She held the mug out toward me. "Please let me buy you this coffee as an apology. I still have so much to learn from you." She held the mug suspended in the air for a full five seconds. I finally reached out to take it. But the exact second my fingertips grazed the ceramic, she let go. Scalding dark roast splashed across my chest and cascaded down to my stomach. I gasped, stumbling backward as the burning pain bit into my skin. Mina froze for a split second, then stared at her own empty hands in horror. "Aria... did you not have a grip on it?" she stammered, her eyes instantly welling up with tears. "I know you are mad at me, but you did not have to drop it on purpose." Her voice trembled pitifully. "That coffee was literally boiling. It burned my fingers just holding it." The entire room turned to glare at me. "Mina tried to be nice, and she pulls a stunt like this? Letting it spill all over herself just to make the poor girl look bad?" "Losing a promotion and throwing a tantrum like a toddler. How pathetic." "What is going on in here?" The crowd parted. Silas walked into the pantry. His eyes swept over Mina's teary face, then landed on my ruined, coffee-stained silk blouse. His brows pulled together in a harsh frown. "I tried to bring Aria a coffee, and she did not catch it," Mina sobbed quietly. "It was just an accident." "I did not—" I started to speak. "Did you burn your hands?" Silas cut me off, looking directly at Mina. Mina glanced down at her pristine white cuff. There was a tiny, singular brown drop on the fabric. "No, just a little splash," she whispered. Silas finally looked at me. His eyes were like jagged ice. "Clean up your own mess, Aria. Go buy her a new shirt." 4 I looked down at my own chest. The skin beneath the wet fabric was already turning angry red and blistering. "I—" "Do not cause a scene and disrupt the workflow." His voice was utterly devoid of emotion. I looked into his eyes and saw nothing. He was looking at me like I was a stranger off the street. I opened my mouth, then closed it. Whatever. It did not matter what I said. He was never going to believe me anyway. I gave a stiff nod, turned on my heel, and walked out without another word. I went down to the designer boutique on the ground floor of our corporate building, pulled a blouse off the rack, and walked to the register. The cashier scanned the tag, then looked up at me with profound concern. "Miss, this is definitely not your size. Do you need me to grab a different one?" she asked gently. "Also, that burn on your chest looks really severe. Do you want me to call a medic first?" I glanced down. A massive, dark brown stain stretched from my collarbone to my stomach, clinging to my skin. The burned area was violently red, and several blisters had already formed. Even a random cashier could see it. But Silas could only see the single drop of coffee on Mina's sleeve. "I am fine. Thank you." I tapped my card, grabbed the shopping bag, and took the elevator back up. Standing in the sleek, marble lobby of the company I had bled for, the tears finally fell. No one was coming to save me. The man who used to drive across the city just to bring me soup was dead and gone. I dropped the fresh blouse on Mina's desk. Silas was leaning over her cubicle. "You got quite a scare today. Take the rest of the day off to recover." "Thank you, Mr. Blackwood." Silas did not even glance in my direction. "Aria, you will cover her workload for the day." My face was completely blank. I just gave a slight nod and walked back to my desk. Sitting next to my keyboard was a sealed tube of burn ointment. Underneath it was a yellow sticky note with familiar handwriting: [Make sure you apply this.] I picked it up, stared at it for a second, and dropped it straight into the trash can under my desk. I booted up my computer. A task list popped up on my screen, crammed with Mina's unfinished grunt work. Every time I hit a key, the blisters on my chest stretched and burned. At exactly six o'clock, I finished the last line of a report. I opened a blank Word document and typed two words in bold at the top: Resignation Letter. Right before clock-out, Mina strolled back into the office, looking radiant. "Aria, about the London contract, I really need to draft the final terms myself. I want to be hands-on with my own accounts." She tilted her head. "You do not mind, do you?" "Go ahead." The next morning, the second I stepped off the elevator, the office was in absolute chaos. "The numbers on the London contract are completely screwed up." "The company just hemorrhaged millions because of that typo." "Who signed off on it?" Mina was standing outside Silas's glass office, her eyes puffy and red. "Aria, did you handle this contract yesterday?" Silas's voice cut through the noise. I walked over and looked at the printed document on the desk. The final payout amount had been altered drastically. "I did not touch those numbers." "Mina said she handed it over to you for final review yesterday evening." "She insisted on writing it herself. She gave it to me to check, I corrected a few formatting errors, but I know for a fact the financial figures were correct when it left my desk." Mina let out a choked sob. "Aria, I know you hate me for taking your promotion, but you really did not have to do this. You can be mad at me, but you cannot mess with the company's money! You know how much blood and sweat Mr. Blackwood put into building this place!" Silas stepped out of his office. His gaze landed on me like a physical weight. "Did you review the contract?" "Yes. But I verified the numbers. I only fixed the formatting." 5 "She says you changed the payout." "And you just blindly believe her? Silas, I have given this company six years of my life. Have I ever made a mistake this pathetic?" The entire floor went dead silent. Silas looked at me, his dark eyes colder than a Seattle winter. "Aria, you are suspended." He paused, making sure his voice carried down the hallway. "Effective immediately, human resources will freeze your portfolio. Every project you have completed, every piece of revenue you claim to have brought in, is now void." "Because you have proven that you lack the basic professionalism required for your role." Lacking professionalism. He took six years of my youth, my loyalty, and my late-night panic attacks, compressed them into two words, and slapped me across the face with them. All those midnight emails. All the new hires I trained. All the moments he sat in boardrooms and nodded at me with pride. None of it mattered anymore. He wiped my existence from the company with a single sentence. "And frankly, you should be grateful you failed the promotion," he added ruthlessly. "This company does not tolerate emotional sabotage in upper management." I stared at him, swallowing hard. I tried to force my voice out, but there was a massive lump blocking my throat. I could not make a sound. The whispers started again, crawling out from the cubicles like roaches. "Who does she think she is? Editing contracts because she throws a fit?" "She really thought the CEO would cover for her just because they were hooking up." "Let me make something abundantly clear," Silas announced to the floor. "Aria and I have absolutely no personal relationship." He turned back to the staff. "The office rumors end today." Silence fell over the room. Silas grabbed Mina by the wrist and pulled her toward the elevator. She leaned into his side, looking like a frightened bird. "Do not stress over this. I will handle the fallout," he told her softly. "Do not let this ruin your mood for London." I watched his broad shoulders disappear into the elevator. He felt so incredibly far away. Like I had never known him at all. That evening, I packed up my desk. As I walked out of the glass doors holding a cardboard box, I saw Mina's latest social media post. It was a picture of a VIP airport lounge. Silas's back was visible in the distance. [Taking off for London with the boss! The future is bright!] A second later, a text from Silas popped up on my screen. [I am heading to London. I will be back next Wednesday. We need to have a serious talk when I return.] I stared at the message. Talk about what? The 58 he gave me? The million-dollar diamond around his intern's neck? The fact that he publicly humiliated me and erased my career in front of a hundred people? I went to his contact profile, hit "Block," and deleted the chat history. The night wind whipped through my hair as I carried my box down into the subway station. By the time he landed back in Seattle, Aria would no longer exist in his world. It was past midnight when I got back to the apartment. I dropped the box in the hallway, walked into the bedroom, and ripped open the closet doors. I shoved my clothes into two large suitcases. I emptied the bathroom drawers. I tossed out half-used lipsticks, old notebooks, and tangled chargers. When I reached the very back of my nightstand, my fingers brushed against a small wooden box. I opened it. Inside was a stack of polaroids. Springtime, six years ago. Our very first date. He was standing under a blooming cherry tree. I had pointed the camera at him, and he had looked down at me, a genuine, unguarded smile on his face. The next photo was our two-year anniversary. He booked a ridiculously expensive steakhouse. I told him we should split it. He smiled and said, "Not tonight." The next was my birthday, year three. He gave me a woolen scarf. The price tag, still tucked inside, said $25.