9. Neil
— ? —
Neil
I drove myself.
That sentence shouldn’t feel revolutionary. Normal people drive themselves places every day. They get in their cars, they navigate traffic, they find parking. It’s not complicated.
But I hadn’t driven myself anywhere in six years. That’s what happens when you have a Giovani. You forget how to do basic human things like parallel parking and pumping gas and figuring out which pocket you put your keys in.
The bollard came out of nowhere.
Or maybe I came out of nowhere and the bollard was exactly where it had always been. Either way, my left headlight was now kissing concrete, and there was a scraping sound that I was going to pretend I hadn’t heard.
The car was a Porsche. Three-hundred thousand dollars of German engineering, and I’d just used it to assault a piece of municipal infrastructure.
I backed up. Pulled forward and backed up again. The scraping continued.
“Come on,” I muttered. “Work with me here.”
I finally freed the car from the bollard’s embrace and found a parking spot that was definitely not a parking spot but would have to do. The meter was broken. I didn’t have change anyway. I left a hundred-dollar bill under the windshield wiper and hoped for the best.
Anwesha’s building was a converted warehouse in a part of the city I’d never visited.
The kind of neighborhood with coffee shops that had ironic names and graffiti that people called “street art.” My shoes were wrong.
I was wearing Italian leather loafers that cost more than one unit here, and they were completely useless on the cracked sidewalk.
I buzzed her apartment.
Nothing.
I buzzed again. Waited longer.
Still nothing.
I was about to buzz a third time when the door opened.
Anika stood in the doorway, and my heart stopped.
She looked different. Not worse, just different. She was wearing paint-stained jeans and an oversized sweater that hung off one shoulder. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. There was a smear of something blue on her cheek.
She looked like herself. Like the woman I’d fallen in love with, before the galas and the designer gowns and the careful curation of Mrs. Neil Franco.
She looked beautiful.
She looked at me like I was a stranger.
“You drove yourself,” she said.
“I did.”
“There’s paint on your car. From a bollard. I can see it from here.”
“There is.”
“You hit a bollard?”
“The bollard was in my way.”
The corner of her mouth twitched.
“Glad you didn’t scratch your shoes too.”
I looked down at my Italian leather loafers, already scuffed from the sidewalk. “I’m aware.”
“No Giovani?”
“He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“No town car?”
“I drove a Porsche into a bollard. Does that count?”
This time she did smile. Just for a second. Then her face went serious again.
“The full rules,” she said. “Since you’re here.”
She didn’t invite me in. We stood in the doorway like strangers, the cold evening air swirling between us.
“You come during the day. You leave when I tell you. One work call and I sign the papers, and you sign too.”
“That’s not a negotiation.”
“No.” Her eyes were steady on mine. “It’s a price.”
I nodded. “Fine.”
“And Karina. Fire her.”
The request landed like a punch to the gut. “She’s Mateo’s sister.”
“Fire her or leave.”
My phone rang in my pocket. I pulled it out. Giovani.
I looked at Anika and turned it off.
“I’ll call Mateo tonight.”
“You’ll call her. Now. On speaker.”
“Anika…”
“You delegated my birthday. You delegated our anniversary. And now you’re delegating firing her to Mateo.” Her voice was ice. “You want to prove you can show up? Show up. Do the hard thing yourself for once in your life.”
The words hit like a slap.
I found Karina’s name and pressed call. Turned on the speaker and held the phone flat between us like a grenade with the pin pulled.
She picked up on the second ring. Her voice came out warm, completely unaware.
“Neil! I was just about to call you. The Reuters people moved the Thursday thing to two, so I pushed your…”
“Karina. Your employment with Franco Holdings is terminated. Effective immediately.”
Three seconds of silence.
“…What?”
“HR will process severance through the end of the quarter. Your building access will be revoked tonight.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No. I wouldn’t joke about this.”
“Neil.” A laugh, small and brittle. “I moved cities for this job. I gave up my lease. I’ve been here for a few weeks.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry.” The word came back razor-thin. “You’re sorry. Is that it?”
The warmth bled out of her voice. What remained was something cold.
“She’s there, isn’t she? Standing right there. Listening.”
I didn’t answer.
“God.” Another laugh, wrong this time. “Of course she is. This is about her. Everything’s always about her.”
“Karina…”
“No.” The word cracked through the speaker like a whip. “I answered your emails at midnight. I reminded you to eat. I rearranged my entire life to make yours run smoother. And your wife gets jealous, snaps her fingers, and you throw me out on a phone call like garbage.”
Anika’s face was stone.
“That’s not what this is,” I said.
“It’s exactly what this is. Someone else made you laugh. Someone else made you feel seen. And she couldn’t stand it.” Karina’s voice climbed, sharp and ugly. “Eight years of holding you by the throat, and you still jump when she says jump. You’re pathetic. Both of you.”
“Careful.”
“Or what? You’ll fire me twice?” A sound through the speaker. Something hitting a counter too hard. “Does Mateo know?”
“He will.”
“He’ll hate you for this.”
“Maybe.”
Silence. When she spoke again, her voice had gone quiet. Almost gentle.
“I want you to remember something, Neil. When this gets ugly, and it will, remember that I didn’t start it. You brought me into your house. You gave me access to everything. You made me feel like I mattered, and then you let her erase me with a single conversation.”
“That’s not what I-”
“You have no idea what you just did.”
The line went dead. The hallway was very quiet.
I lowered the phone. My hand wasn’t steady. I’d fired two hundred people in my career. Shut down entire divisions over video calls and eaten lunch afterward. This was different.
“You did that yourself,” Anika said.
“I did.”
“Was it easier?”
“No.”
“Good.” She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the dark phone screen. “That’s the point.”
“She’ll cool off. She’s upset, but she’s Mateo’s sister. She’ll be furious for a week and then-”
“That wasn’t someone who’s going to cool off.” Anika’s voice was flat. “She won’t be quiet.”
“You think she’d actually do something?”
“I think you just humiliated a woman who’s very good at being underestimated.” She shrugged, and the absence of heat made it land harder. “But you’ve never once believed me about her. So I don’t know why I’m bothering.”
Something cold moved through my chest and settled there like ice.
“I believe you now.”
“We’ll see.” She nodded at the row of mailboxes in the entryway. Old metal boxes, dented and scratched. “Last rule. Every day you’re here, the phone goes in my mailbox. You get it back when you leave.”
I looked at the mailbox. At my phone, a lifeline that had connected me to my company, my empire, my entire sense of self for the last decade.
I dropped it in.
The metal clang echoed in the quiet hallway. Anika reached in, fished out the phone, and handed it back to me.
“Tomorrow. Nine a.m. That’s when the clock starts. That’s your day one.”
“What do we do tomorrow?”
“You knock. We’ll see if you get in.”
She closed the door.
I stood there staring at the wood grain until I couldn’t hear her footsteps anymore.
The street was cold when I finally turned around. The kind of evening that made you want to be anywhere with warmth and light and someone waiting for you.
I didn’t go back to the car.
I stood on the sidewalk and looked up at her window. The light was on. Shadows moving behind the curtain. She was in there, probably painting, probably not thinking about me at all.
My phone was heavy in my hand. I could feel it pulling me back toward the world I knew. The world of calls and emails and problems I could solve with money and authority. The world where I was Neil Franco, master of the universe.
But that world didn’t have her in it.
I stood there looking up at her window, holding a phone I suddenly didn’t want.
You have no idea what you just did.
I told myself it was nothing. A woman on her worst night, saying the thing that would hurt most on her way out. People said things like that. They never meant them.
I would think about that sentence a great deal, later.