By the time security called up to tell me my family was sitting in the Novaore lobby demanding to see “the chairman,” the sun over San Francisco had already slid behind the skyline and turned the bay into hammered metal. I was still in the same navy suit I’d put on before dawn, the fabric molded to my shoulders, my heels kicked off under the desk. From my office on the thirty-eighth floor, I could see the reflections of the city lights in the glass and, faintly, the ghost of my own face looking back.
Not the face they knew. Not the girl in the thrift store coat and scuffed boots. My reflection looked like what it was: a woman who signed off on eight-figure contracts before breakfast, who could move markets with a single email, who technically owned the roof over my family’s heads.
“Kayla,” my assistant Sarah said softly from the doorway, iPad in hand, “they’re in reception. Melanie insisted on speaking to ‘whoever is in charge.’ Gary threatened to sue the building.”
I let out a breath that felt more like a ledger closing. “And Abigail?” I asked.
“She’s with them.” Sarah hesitated. “Still talking to the receptionist like she owns the place.”
Of course she was. Status was muscle memory for my sister.
She didn’t know how to occupy a room without letting everyone know what kind of car she drove and how many commas were in her salary. “Tell security to let them stew in the lobby for ten more minutes,” I said, sliding my bare feet back into my heels. “Then bring them up.”
Sarah nodded and disappeared.
I turned my chair toward the window again, watching the tiny people and cars move in orderly patterns thirty-eight floors below. They thought they were coming here to fix a legal mistake. They thought Novaore Industries was an anonymous real estate conglomerate and that some faceless executive had accidentally thrown their lives into chaos.
They were about to find out the truth. The audit they kept screaming about hadn’t started with an eviction notice. It had started the night I walked through their front door in a thrift store coat and handed them a pen.
—
Twelve hours earlier, that same coat smelled faintly of dust and old perfume as I stood on the cracked concrete walkway of my childhood home in the Sunset District. The San Francisco fog rolled in low and heavy, curling around the streetlights and blurring the Christmas lights strung along the eaves. I had picked the coat on purpose.
