“But you never have to pretend something didn’t hurt.”
He nodded slowly.
Then hugged me.
Three years after the courtroom hearing, I returned to the building where the company had first operated.
It was a small office near an industrial park.
The paint had faded.
The windows were old.
And the parking lot was cracked.
I stood outside.
Remembering.
Julian and I had once worked there until midnight.
We’d celebrated our first profitable quarter with cheap pizza.
I’d drawn the company’s first expansion plan on a whiteboard.
And we’d promised each other that success would never change us.
I smiled sadly.
Success hadn’t changed everything.
But power had revealed things I hadn’t wanted to see.
I walked inside.
The office was empty.
The company had moved years earlier.
But the old whiteboard still hung on the wall.
Faint marks remained.
I touched the frame.
Then laughed softly.
Because I remembered exactly what I’d written there.
