Chapter 2

The taxi ride back to Manhattan was a blur of rain-streaked lights and a cold, heavy dread settling in my stomach. The office was mostly dark, except for the harsh fluorescent glow over the junior architects' bullpen. David, a senior colleague, was waiting for me, pacing nervously.

"Thank God you' re here, Gabrielle."

He pointed to a set of blueprints spread across a desk. "It' s the HVAC specs. They' re completely wrong. The client would have our heads."

I looked at the messy, amateurish lines. They were Ethan' s. I' d told him to let me check them before submission, but he must have sent them off himself.

"Why didn' t you just tell Ethan to fix it?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm. "It' s his mistake."

David looked away, shifting his weight. He wouldn' t meet my eyes.

"Well... you know. Nobody wants to..."

"Wants to what?" I pressed, the anger starting to burn through the shock. "Correct an intern?"

David finally looked at me, his face a mask of pity. That was the look that broke me. Not anger, not frustration. Pity.

"Gabrielle," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Come on. Everyone knows."

"Knows what?"

He sighed, a long, weary sound. "That he' s not just an intern. He' s Ethan Lester. His father is our biggest client. The partners all know. He' s just... playing intern. We were all told to just let him do his thing."

The air left my lungs. Everyone knew. My bosses, my senior colleagues, the people I looked up to. They had all watched me. They watched me mentor him, stay late to fix his errors, pay for his lunch when he "forgot" his wallet. They watched me pour my heart and soul into helping the boss' s son play a game.

My two years of struggle, my ambition, my sacrifices-it was all just entertainment for them. A running joke in an office I had bled for.

I stared at the blueprints, at the evidence of his incompetence that I was, once again, expected to fix. All the late nights, the missed dinners with friends, the constant stress that I thought was building my future... it was all just to babysit a bored billionaire.

I didn' t say a word to David. I just picked up the red pen. My hand was steady now. The shaking had stopped, replaced by an icy resolve. I corrected the specs with clean, precise lines. I did my job.

And with every stroke of the pen, I plotted my escape.