---- Chapter 12 Chapter 12 Kyle Lopez POV: The nights bled into a monotonous cycle of humiliation. | learned the geography of the building in a new way-not by its power centers, but by its dirtiest corners. | knew which executive always left a half-eaten sandwich in his trash, which department spilled the most coffee. And | saw her. Not in person, but her presence was everywhere. A jacket left on the back of a chair. The faint scent of her perfume in the elevator. A half-finished cup of coffee on her desk, a faint lipstick stain on the rim. Each trace of her was a fresh twist of the knife. She was cruel in her precision. One morning, as | was finishing my shift, she arrived early. She walked past me without a glance, her heels clicking on the floor | had just polished. As she passed, she "accidentally" dropped her leather briefcase. Papers scattered everywhere. "Oh, clumsy me," she said, not even looking at me. "Be a dear and get those, will you?" | knelt at her feet, the former CEO, gathering the papers of the woman who had taken everything from me. My hands trembled as | handed them back to her. Our fingers brushed. A jolt, like an electric shock, shot up my arm. ---- She pulled her hand back as if she'd been burned. For a split second, | saw something in her eyes. Not hatred. Not pity. Something else. Something that looked like... pain. Then it was gone, replaced by the icy mask she always wore. "Thank you," she said, her voice clipped and distant. And she walked away. The other employees whispered and stared. | was a cautionary tale, a ghost of Christmas past. They gave me a wide berth, as if my failure were contagious. One night, | was cleaning the boardroom. The long, polished table reflected the city lights like a dark, still lake. | remembered the day she had destroyed me in this room. The cold, clear logic of her attack. The way she had used my own arrogance as a weapon against me. She hadn't just been emotional. She had been strategic. She had been brilliant. She had been the woman | first fell in love with. | walked over to the head of the table, where | used to sit. | ran my hand over the cool, smooth wood. | had been so obsessed with the view from this chair, | had never bothered to look at the woman sitting beside me. The woman who was holding up the entire world | had built. Anew kind of grief, sharper and more profound than any | had felt before, washed over me. | wasn't just mourning my lost empire. | was mourning my own catastrophic blindness. | had ---- been given a gift, a partner beyond compare, and | had treated her like a disposable asset. | sank into the chair, the one at the far end of the table now, the one with no power, and | wept. Not for my lost fortune, but for my lost soul.