Chapter 32 Sloane
Sloane
The knock comes again. Sharp. Insistent.
I remain frozen beneath my blankets, wrapped in fleece and denial. Through the fabric, I can hear movement in the hallway—shuffling feet, whispered consultation. They know I'm in here. My car is in the parking garage. The lights have been on day and night because I lack the energy to turn them off.
"Sloane?" Brynn's voice, muffled but unmistakable. "Come on, we know you're in there. I know you said you wanted to be left alone, but—"
I close my eyes tighter, willing them to disappear. Willing everything to disappear.
"We're worried about you," Easton's deeper voice joins the chorus. "It's been three days. You haven't answered your phone, your emails—"
Three days. Has it really been that long? Time has become elastic, meaningless. Hours blur together into numbness, punctuated only by brief, brutal moments where I remember exactly how I've destroyed everything.
"Sloane, please." Brynn again, and there's something in her voice—a crack of desperation that makes my chest tighten. "We just need to know you're okay. You don't have to talk to us. Just... knock on the wall or something. Give us a sign."
The silence stretches. I can picture them standing there in the hallway, probably holding coffee they brought for me, probably with new evidence or strategies or well-meaning advice about moving forward.
They still think this is fixable. They still believe in justice, in truth winning out, in good people being rewarded for their integrity.
Frank Miller cured me of that delusion on Monday morning.
He hadn't even looked at our evidence. The financial irregularities.
The pattern of sabotage. The documented proof of Vivian's systematic campaign to destroy careers.
None of it mattered. The narrative had already been written: I was the distraction who cost them a major sponsorship.
I was the liability who needed to be excised.
"Furthermore, any attempt to publicize these allegations would be considered a violation of your non-disclosure agreement and would result in immediate legal action."
The trap had been sprung. They'd built the trap perfectly—allow me to present my case so they could appear fair and reasonable, then dismiss it while threatening me into silence. Even my righteous anger had been anticipated, planned for, neutralized.
The footsteps in the hallway move closer to my door. I hear Easton's voice, lower now, probably meant to be private but carrying anyway.
"Maybe we should call my mom. Get her down here."
The suggestion is a shock of ice water. Mom, who spent two years catatonic on a kitchen floor after Dad left.
Mom, who lost herself so completely in someone else's love that when it vanished, there was nothing left but an empty shell.
Mom, who would take one look at me and see her worst fears confirmed—that I've inherited her weakness, her inability to survive without external validation.
No. I can't face that recognition in her eyes. Can't handle the gentle disappointment, the careful suggestions about "getting help," the underlying assumption that this breakdown was inevitable because I am, at my core, just like her.
I pull the blanket tighter around my head and wait.
After what feels like an hour but is probably only minutes, I hear Easton sigh. "She's not going to answer."
"This isn't like her," Brynn says, and there's frustration mixed with the worry now. "Even when she's hurt, she fights. She doesn't just... disappear."
But that's exactly what I've done. Disappeared. Not just from their concern, but from everything. I've deleted my LinkedIn profile, blocked news alerts, muted every group chat that might remind me of the professional world I used to inhabit. I am lost in the ruins of my own ambition.
"Tomorrow," Easton says finally. "If she doesn't answer tomorrow, we're getting the building manager to let us in."
The threat should motivate me to respond, to give them some sign of life before they stage an intervention. Instead, it just adds another layer to my exhaustion. Tomorrow, I'll have to force a mask of normalcy. Pretend I'm healing when really I'm just hollow.
Their footsteps retreat down the hallway, leaving me alone again with the silence and the weight of my failure.
I drift.
The afternoon light fades to evening gray, then to the artificial orange glow of streetlights filtering through windows I haven't bothered to cover.
Somewhere in the building, a door slams. A car alarm wails briefly before cutting off.
The normal sounds of people living normal lives, pursuing normal dreams that won't detonate in boardrooms full of men who mistake cruelty for strength.
My phone sits facedown on the coffee table where I abandoned it yesterday, its silence now less merciful than ominous.
No doubt there are messages accumulating—job recruiters with opportunities that pay half what I was making, former colleagues offering hollow condolences, maybe even media requests from outlets that want to turn my destruction into content.
I should check it. Should start the grim process of rebuilding from the ashes. Should prove to Easton and Brynn that I'm not completely broken.
Instead, I close my eyes and give in to the darkness again.
When awareness returns, it's to the sharp buzz of my phone vibrating against the wooden table.
The sound cuts through my numb state like a fire alarm, jarring and impossible to ignore.
I check the time through bleary eyes—4:47 a.m. Nothing good happens at 4:47 a.m. Medical emergencies.
Family crises. The kind of catastrophes that make losing a job seem like a minor inconvenience.
With sluggish effort, I reach for the phone and flip it over. The screen blazes with an intensity that makes my adjusted eyes water. One new text message, from a number I don't recognize.
For a moment, I consider deleting it without reading. Whatever new problem this represents—another reporter digging, another job recruiter, another reminder of how far I've fallen—I don't have the strength to process it.
But something about the timestamp stops me. What kind of crisis makes someone text a stranger at 4:47 in the morning?
I open the message.
The photo loads first, and my heart stops.
Maya. Ten years old, gap-toothed grin bright enough to power the city.
She's holding up a report card—straight A's marching across the page in perfect formation.
But it's what she's wearing that resonates deep in my chest: a Minnesota Mammoths jersey, number 19, hanging loose on her small frame. Garrett's number.
555-237-9862
Hi Sloane, this is Emily, Maya's mom. Just wanted to reach out before I head into work—Maya was so excited this morning she made me promise to text you right away.
She got all A's on her report card! She keeps saying it's because hockey taught her discipline and focus, and she wanted to make sure you knew.
Thank you for believing in her. It's made all the difference.
I stare at the screen until my eyes blur with tears I didn't know I still had.
Maya. Sweet, brilliant Maya whose mother works double shifts to afford equipment, whose dreams of working in hockey seemed impossible until I helped design programs specifically for kids like her.
Maya, who still believes I matter. Who still sees me as someone worth thanking.
While I've been buried in despair, convinced my career is over, Maya has been out there living the vision I created. Proving that what I built had value beyond corporate politics and poisonous colleagues.
The analytical part of my brain—dormant for days—begins to stir. I sit up slowly, pushing the blanket away from my face, and read the message again. Then again. Each word lands with increasing weight as the heavy despair finally begins to recede.
Thank you for believing in her.
But Maya doesn't know that I've been fired.
Doesn't know that the programs she's benefiting from are being dismantled by executives who see community outreach as an expense rather than an investment.
In her world, I'm still the woman who believed kids like her deserved opportunities. I'm still the architect of her success.
And suddenly, with sharp clarity, I understand my fundamental mistake.
I've been fighting the wrong battle.
For three days, I've been consumed with the injustice of my termination, the corruption of the system, the unfairness of Vivian's sabotage campaign.
I appealed to Frank Miller's sense of ethics, presented evidence of wrongdoing, demanded accountability from an organization that had never once prioritized integrity over image.
But business doesn't care about wrong. Business cares about indispensable.
I've been trying to prove what had been done to me was unjust, when I should have been proving what they lost when they let me go was irreplaceable.
My laptop sits buried under three days of takeout containers and self-pity. I clear the debris with sudden, sharp movements, my body finally responding to commands from a brain that's fully awake for the first time since the boardroom disaster.
The screen flickers to life, and I navigate to the locked folder I haven't opened in months: "MCCP - Master." The Mammoth Community Champions Program. My passion project. The comprehensive vision that stretched well beyond any single sponsorship deal.
I'd pitched pieces of it to Vivian over the past year, but she'd always dismissed it as "too ambitious" or "not commercially viable.
" So I'd developed it in secret, refining the framework in stolen moments between official duties, building something that could transform not just the team's brand, but their entire relationship with the community.
As I scroll through pages of research, projections, and strategic frameworks, Maya's photo burns bright in my peripheral vision.
This isn't just about youth hockey programs. This is about urban development, educational initiatives, creating a sustainable model for sports franchises that want to matter beyond their win-loss record.
The Northstar deal had been thinking too small.
A single corporate partnership, impressive but ultimately limited in scope.
What if instead of chasing one major sponsor, we created a comprehensive community engagement platform that attracted dozens of corporate partners?
What if we turned the Mammoths into the sports franchise that other teams tried to emulate?
My fingers fly across the keyboard, pulling together market research, demographic data, revenue projections.
I integrate case studies from successful community programs in other markets, add my own innovations, weave it all together into a vision that's audacious enough to make even corporate executives pay attention.
The numbers are staggering. Conservative estimates put the potential annual revenue at thirty-seven million dollars. And that's just year one.
This isn't about proving I was wrongfully terminated. This is about proving they can't afford to let me stay terminated.
The apartment around me has gone silent except for the rapid clicking of keys. Outside, Minneapolis sleeps, unaware that in this small corner of the city, something is being born from the ashes of destruction. Not revenge—though that will be a sweet side effect. Revolution.
I save the file and reach for my phone, Maya's message still glowing on the screen. Sweet, brilliant Maya who believes in me even when I've stopped believing in myself. Who sees possibility where I saw only ending.
Time for me to return the favor.
I open a new message and type.
Brynn. I know I've been MIA and I owe you a massive explanation. I promise I'll give you one. But first—I need a huge favor. Can you get me Robert Blackwood's personal number? Please.
I hit send before I can second-guess myself, then lean back in my chair and smile for the first time in three days. It's sharp enough to cut glass, cold enough to freeze flames.
Frank Miller thinks he buried me. Vivian thinks she destroyed me. The entire organization thinks I'm a cautionary tale about the dangers of mixing business with pleasure.
They have no idea what's coming.
But they're about to find out.