Chapter 3 - Gaby
I woke to the sound of my alarm screaming and the gray light of an overcast morning pressing against my window.
For a moment, I lay there disoriented, the remnants of a nightmare clinging to me like cobwebs—something about being chased through empty streets, footsteps behind me that I couldn't outrun.
Then the memory of last night crashed back. The bar. The SUV. The paranoid certainty that someone had been watching me.
The shower helped, marginally. I stood under the spray until the water ran cold, trying to wash away the lingering unease that had settled into my bones.
In the harsh bathroom light, I examined my reflection—dark circles under my eyes, skin pale and tired, my wet hair hanging limp around my face.
I looked exactly like someone who'd spent half the night at the window, watching an empty street and feeling like an idiot.
Because that's what I was. An idiot. The SUV had probably belonged to someone visiting a neighbor.
The feeling of being watched was just anxiety given form—my therapist from college would have had a field day with this.
You're catastrophizing, Gabrielle. You're projecting your internal fears onto external circumstances.
I'd stopped seeing that therapist when I couldn't afford the copays anymore. Another thing I couldn't tell my father.
I dried my hair and applied makeup, doing what I could to disguise the evidence of my sleepless night. Then came the ritual I dreaded every morning: getting dressed.
My closet was full of clothes that almost fit.
Size fourteens I kept hoping I'd shrink into, size eighteens that swallowed me in fabric but felt safe.
I settled on a charcoal sheath dress that a shop owner had called "flattering for my figure.
" A diplomatic way of saying it hid my stomach and minimized my hips.
I added a structured blazer to broaden my shoulders, to create the illusion of proportion that fashion magazines promised was achievable with the right silhouette.
The mirror showed me a woman who was trying very hard to look like she belonged in a Manhattan office. Whether I actually belonged there was a question I couldn't afford to examine too closely.
***
The subway was its usual morning chaos—bodies pressed together, the smell of coffee and perfume and human proximity.
I squeezed into a corner and held the pole, trying to make myself smaller.
A man in a suit glanced at me, then away, his gaze sliding past like I was part of the architecture.
I was used to that. Invisible in a crowd, unless someone needed to push past me with a pointed sigh, annoyed by the space I occupied.
I checked my phone compulsively, reviewing my presentation notes for the hundredth time. The quarterly marketing report was solid. I'd spent three weeks on the consumer behavior analysis, two all-nighters on the demographic projections. It was good work. Maybe even excellent work.
But Mr. Brown would find something wrong with it. He always did.
The train lurched, and I grabbed the pole tighter, my knuckles white.
Through the window, I caught a glimpse of a black SUV keeping pace with the train on the street above.
My heart stuttered—but then we plunged underground again, and I couldn't see anything except my own pale reflection in the dark glass.
Stop it, I told myself. You're being ridiculous.
***
The presentation was scheduled for 8:30 in the main conference room.
I arrived at eight, wanting to test the projector and arrange the handouts and do all the small preparatory tasks that made me feel in control.
The room was empty, which was both a relief and a disappointment.
I'd half-hoped someone would be there to distract me from the anxiety coiling in my chest.
I connected my laptop, ran through the slides twice, and arranged the bound reports at each seat with geometric precision. By 8:25, my palms were sweating. By 8:28, I'd checked my teeth for lipstick three times.
Mr. Brown arrived at 8:35, flanked by two junior executives I vaguely recognized from the fourth floor. He didn't apologize for being late—men like him never did. He simply settled into his chair at the head of the table, his silver hair immaculate, his expression already skeptical.
"Let's get started," he said, not looking at me. "I have a nine o'clock."
I took a breath, clicked to my first slide, and began.
For twenty minutes, I walked them through the data.
Consumer trends, market positioning, competitive analysis, strategic recommendations.
I'd rehearsed this so many times that the words flowed automatically, leaving part of my brain free to monitor reactions.
The junior executives were nodding, taking notes.
Mr. Brown was stone-faced, his pen tapping an irregular rhythm against his leather portfolio.
When I finished, silence filled the room. I stood there, the laser pointer clutched in my damp hand, waiting.
"The demographic segmentation," Mr. Brown said finally. "You're assuming a fifteen percent overlap between the millennial and Gen-Z cohorts. What's your source for that?"
I'd anticipated this question. "The Pew Research data from March, combined with our internal customer surveys. The methodology is detailed in Appendix C."
"Pew." He said it like a dismissal. "Anyone can cite Pew. I'm asking what original analysis you did."
"I cross-referenced the Pew findings with our point-of-sale data from Q2 and Q3. The overlap held consistent within a two-point margin of error."
He flipped through the bound report, his frown deepening. "The font choices are inconsistent. Slide twelve uses Arial, but the rest is Calibri."
I blinked. "I—I'll correct that immediately."
"And the color scheme on the charts. It's not consistent with our brand guidelines."
"The brand guidelines specify blue and gray for internal documents. I used—"
"I know what you used, Miss Blanchard." He looked up at me then, and the coldness in his eyes made my stomach drop. "The question is whether you understand that attention to detail matters. That you can't coast on a name and a pedigree."
There it was. The thing he'd never said outright but that poisoned every interaction we had.
He thought I'd gotten this job because of my father.
It wasn't true—by the time I'd applied here, Dad's reputation was already tarnished by the scandal that had cost him his own firm.
If anything, the Blanchard name was a liability, something I had to overcome rather than leverage.
But Mr. Brown had known my father professionally, had played golf with him at the club before everything fell apart.
He'd made assumptions, and nothing I did could shake them.
"I'll revise the formatting and have an updated version on your desk by the end of the day," I said, keeping my voice steady through sheer force of will.
"See that you do." He stood, and the junior executives scrambled to follow. At the door, he paused. "Your analysis isn't bad, Miss Blanchard. But analysis is easy. Execution is what separates the professionals from the privileged."
Then he was gone, and I was alone in the conference room with my immaculate handouts and my shattered confidence.
I couldn't face the office after that. I told my assistant I was going out for coffee, grabbed my coat, and fled.
The coffee shop on the corner was crowded with the late-morning rush—freelancers with laptops, mothers with strollers, a few suits grabbing a second caffeine hit before their next meeting.
I joined the line, pulling out my phone to look busy, to avoid making eye contact with anyone who might see the tears I was barely holding back.
Coasting on a name and a pedigree. The words kept echoing. As if I hadn't worked twice as hard as anyone else in that office. As if I hadn't stayed late every night, come in early every morning, sacrificed every weekend to prove I deserved to be there.
But it didn't matter. It would never matter. In Mr. Brown's eyes, I would always be Thomas Blanchard's daughter—soft, spoiled, skating by on connections I didn't actually have.
The line shuffled forward. I was so lost in my spiral that I didn't notice the man until he was beside me.
Or rather, until I felt him. A presence at my shoulder, close enough that I could smell expensive cologne and something underneath it—something clean and sharp and distinctly masculine. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
I turned, and for a fraction of a second, I looked directly into a pair of green eyes.
They were remarkable eyes—pale and cold and startlingly intense, set in a face of sharp angles and shadows.
Dark hair, swept back. A jaw that could have been carved from granite.
He was tall, well over six feet, with the broad shoulders of someone who'd never had to squeeze himself into a corner of the subway.
Our gazes locked. Something flickered in those green depths—recognition? interest?—and my breath caught in my throat.
Then someone called my order—"Skim latte, extra foam!"—and I jerked toward the counter. When I looked back, the man was gone.
I scanned the coffee shop, my heart racing. Had I imagined him? No, there—a tall figure in a charcoal overcoat, pushing through the door onto the street. By the time I grabbed my coffee and followed, he'd vanished into the crowd.
I stood on the sidewalk, the October wind cutting through my blazer, and told myself I was being insane. A stranger in a coffee shop. It meant nothing.
But those eyes. I couldn't shake the feeling that they'd seen right through me.
***
Lisa met me for lunch at the Thai place near her office. She took one look at my face and ordered us both wine, despite it being barely noon.
"That bad?" she asked, sliding a glass across the table.