“Get up yourself,” he said after I fell in the rain, then pulled his lover closer beneath the umbrella and walked away without looking back. I said nothing, but the resignation letter on his desk—and the client contract missing from his portfolio—gave him an answer he would never forget........

The fallout from the Fairmont Olympic Hotel disaster was swift, brutal, and absolute.

By five o'clock that afternoon, video footage of Nolan Pierce and Camille Ward being escorted off the stage by security had gone viral across corporate legal networks and business news outlets across the country.

The board of directors of Westbridge Strategy convened an emergency midnight session.

Arthur Vance presented the executive committee with a choice: terminate Nolan Pierce and Camille Ward immediately for gross misconduct, or face a total shareholder revolt and immediate bankruptcy.

The board voted unanimously.

At seven o'clock the following morning, Nolan Pierce arrived at the Westbridge tower to find his keycard access revoked at the turnstiles. Two security guards met him in the lobby, carrying two small cardboard boxes containing his personal belongings from his corner office.

Camille Ward was not even allowed into the building. Her termination letter was delivered via certified courier to her apartment, along with a formal notification that Westbridge was suing her personally to recover the corporate funds she had misused on luxury personal expenses.

Without the Harrow & Finch account, without the Apex Tech bid, and faced with my twenty-million-dollar trade secret lawsuit, Westbridge Strategy’s stock plummeted by seventy percent in seventy-two hours.

Within a month, the firm was forced to dissolve its brand strategy division, sell off its office leases, and shut down its Seattle headquarters forever.

One rainy afternoon in late October, I walked past the Westbridge tower on my way to a lunch meeting with Rebecca Harrow.

The massive brass logo of Westbridge Strategy was being pried off the lobby marble by two construction workers with crowbars.

Standing near the curb, watching the workers, was Nolan.

He wore an old coat that looked unpressed and damp from the drizzle. He held a plastic bag containing a few leftover files. His Porsche had been repossessed two weeks prior to cover his mounting legal retainers, and he was waiting for a city bus.

He saw me walking down the sidewalk, protected beneath a wide, beautiful navy umbrella held by my senior executive assistant.

Nolan stepped forward, his eyes hollow, his voice hoarse.

"Maya..." he called out, his voice competing with the sound of the Seattle traffic.

I stopped five feet from him.

He looked at my tailored wool coat, my healed left wrist, my serene, radiant face, and the team of four brilliant young strategists walking beside me, laughing and discussing our new European expansion deck.

"I lost everything, Maya," Nolan whispered, tears welling in his red eyes. "My firm, my reputation, my home... everything is gone."

I looked at him beneath the shelter of my umbrella.

"You didn't lose everything, Nolan," I said softly, my voice calm and firm against the rain. "You just lost the woman who was holding it all up for you."