The newsroom was chaos. Actual, living, breathing chaos.
Clarissa trailed behind me, juggling two phones in one hand and a tablet in the other, rattling off stats, reminders, and questions as if I were some AI that didn't need to sleep, eat, or feel the skin peeling off my heels.
"No, you can't push the exposé again," I muttered, sidestepping a junior editor who was on the floor trying to reconnect a printer cable like it held the fate of the nation. "We've already lost the jump on Reed's headline. If we delay, we may as well hand it to him gift-wrapped with a goddamn bow."
Clarissa didn't even flinch. "Got it. So... restructure? Add a new lead?"
"Fine. Pull the line about the offshore account, push the quote from the whistleblower to the top, and flag legal for the language around bribery. We're skating close."
I said all this while crossing the bullpen in flip flops. Flip. Flops.
Thank God for suit pants. No one had to see the war zone that was my ankles.
My blazer had vanished somewhere along the way, probably buried under a pile of newsprint or perhaps consumed by the building itself.
My hair—usually clean, precise, neat—was shoved into a makeshift ponytail that sat awkwardly high on my head, held together with a rubber band I'd found in the supply drawer.
I looked unhinged, and I didn't care.
Because nothing was where it was supposed to be. Departments that normally ran like clockwork were dropping the ball left and right. People were shouting across desks. Someone cried in the break room—twice. I didn't even ask who. There was no time.
I cursed Mario at least a million times in my head for giving me hope. 'I'm packing,' he'd said. Like it meant now. Like he'd be back in a day or two to rescue me from the hellfire this office had become.
He wasn't. And I was very much still here.
I stopped abruptly outside the graphics room and spun on Clarissa. "If one more person asks me if Mario's flight got delayed, they'll hear it from me. And I mean it."
She blinked at me, deadpan. "Noted."
Someone handed me a protein bar and I chewed it while walking, not even pausing to check the flavor. Cardboard, probably.
I washed it down with lukewarm coffee that had been sitting on my desk since... whenever. At this point, caffeine was less a luxury and more intravenous.
"Yareli," someone called. "Budget review in ten."
I waved a hand without turning. "Push it."
"You said that two days ago."
"And I meant it then too."
The problem with running a company in someone else's shadow was that eventually, the spotlight found you anyway. And when it did, it was hot, blinding, and entirely too cruel.
I hadn't sat down properly in about three days. I'd perched. Leaned. Balanced precariously on the edge of tables. At one point, I sat on a windowsill for an entire phone call just to feel something that wasn't desk chair upholstery or existential dread.
The office looked like a hurricane had swept through and gotten bored halfway. Papers everywhere. Coffee rings on whiteboards. A rogue stapler in the sink. No one knew how it got there.
And me? I was trying to remember how to breathe through my nose and answer questions at the same time.
Clarissa returned with a stack of folders and a haunted look in her eyes. "Okay, so the 4 p.m. is moved to 2:45, but the layout meeting needs to happen now because they've redone the mock-up and want to pitch something bolder—"
"Bolder?" I stopped walking. "They spelled the governor's name wrong last week. Let's master the basics first."
"I said that! I said exactly that."
I rubbed a hand over my face and exhaled hard. "Fine. Let's go."
Around 3 p.m., my phone buzzed. A calendar alert reminding me to eat. I didn't remember setting it up... my guess was Clarissa.
I let out a tired sigh and returned to what I was doing.
I found myself on the 23rd floor. The elevator slid open, and the sight of Mario's office—a pristine, untouched space—made my insides twist.
If my eyes had been knives, they would've sliced through the polished glass or cleaved right into his impeccably organized desk.
I went straight to the issue that had dragged me up here. An anchor was on the line, and I found myself not just explaining, but defending why our cover story deserved the front page—even without a single quote from the administration.
Clarissa shoved a tablet into my hand, pointing out that someone had triple-booked the press room for Thursday.
Three different voices talked at me at once, and I could feel my concentration slipping away.
The presidential floor felt like a circus. Editors hovered near the main table, secretaries passed files back and forth, and someone—somehow—spilled their espresso all over me, soaking the right half of my blouse in brown stain.
I squinted and he froze—eyes wide with panic, probably thinking he was about to get fired. I waved him off but he was already on the verge of tears.
I had to put the call on hold and reach out to reassure him, giving him a quick, "It's okay, you're not in trouble."
"Yareli?" Clarissa called.
I turned. "What now?"
The elevator pinged before she could answer.
Nobody looked up. We were all used to the constant arrival and departure of people with too many credentials and not enough patience.
Then a junior assistant near the glass doors glanced up and practically shouted: "Welcome back, CEO!"
My head snapped toward the elevator.
And there he stood.
In the flesh. In a perfectly ironed suit, flanked by two people I didn't recognize and looking like he'd just returned from vacation.
He looked tanner. Calmer. Refreshed.
He stared at me and I stared back.
The coffee stain. The flip-flops. The half-eaten granola bar in my hand. The dark rings under my eyes. The band that had been barely holding my hair up gave up and slid down the side of my face.
He opened his mouth to say something. Maybe 'Hey' or 'Thanks for holding the fort.' Maybe something breezy, easy, like this wasn't a betrayal.
I didn't wait to hear it.
I handed the tablet back to Clarissa with a shaking hand and said, "Excuse me."
Then I turned and walked out.
Because if I didn't, I'd say something I'd regret. Or cry. Or scream. Or all three.
•••