Page 70 of Boardroom Mask

But the copy Doug is getting is two hundred and fifty words of absolutely fucking nothing.Kir Lazarev donates pediatric oncology wing. Kir Lazarev shakes hands with hospital CEO. Kir Lazarev crouches down to talk to sick children and hands out stuffed animals because Kir Lazarev is a wonderful, generous, emotionally well-adjusted human being with a completely normal and straightforwardly vanilla sex life.

Quote, quote, fact check, done. Another journalistic masterpiece by superstar reporter Jillian Pierce.

But the whole time my fingers are on the keyboard, there’s a second article writing itself in my head. Therealone. In this version, the CEO’s charitable smile is a shambolic fraud and his bare hands still have scabs on the knuckles from beating my neighbor unconscious. Inthisversion, Mr. Golden Boy climbs through windows wearing a black mask and leather gloves and whispers depraved fantasies against a reporter’s throat while a kill order from his own father looms over both their heads.

That version doesn’t get typed.

Not yet, at least.

I click submit on the puff piece and watch it disappear into Doug’s inbox. Good freaking riddance.

Then I grab my phone. I need something to take my mind off the disaster my life has become, and I know just the thing: Rae.

My best friend been radio silent for days. She went gallivanting off across the Atlantic to God-knows-where with Lukas Lazarev—a man whose son just confessed to me that Lukasmurdered his own wife—and hasn’t answered a single one of my texts. I’ve been so deep in my own mess that I haven’t had the bandwidth to properly spiral about this, but the bandwidth just freed up, and oh, boy, here we go.

I pull up Find My Friends. The little green dot loads and I hold my breath. She’s been MIA for days, but I’m hoping…

There. She’s in Manhattan.

She’shere. She’s back.

The relief lasts about a quarter of a second before it gets completely bulldozed by fury. She’s been back and she didn’t call me? Or text? Not even a “hey, pulse check, proof of life, don’t worry”?

I’m fully aware that I’m redirecting. The anger I feel right now is not entirely—or even mostly—about Rae. It’s about Kir publicly humiliating me at that gaggle. While we’re doing the math, it’s also about Doug’s imminent deadline and Bartlett circling and Ochoa being gone and the bloody message I can still almost see the outline of on my shower wall.

It’s about all of that.

But Rae is the one thing I can actuallydosomething about, so Rae is the one who gets it.

I open our text thread.

So you’re back in New York and you just weren’t going to tell me??

I’ve been texting you for DAYS, Rae.

I get that you’re going through stuff but I have been going out of my mind over here. You disappeared with a scary guy and you couldn’t send me one text to let me know you were breathing?

She doesn’t answer, so I drop the phone on my desk and press my palms against my eyes. My throat is tight and my hands are shaking. God, I despise myself. I know I’m being unfair. Rae doesn’t know about any of the stuff I’ve uncovered. She doesn’t know that every hour she was unreachable, I was imagining Lukas doing to her what he did to Elena.

But that’s the problem. She doesn’t know any of it, because I haven’t told her.

And I still can’t.

That doesn’t mean I can’t check on her, though. I need to know that at least one precious thing in my life is still safe. So I grab my coat off the back of my chair, shove my phone in my pocket, and leave without telling anyone where I’m going.

Rae lives in a walk-up near Barclays Center in Brooklyn. When I get there, I take the stairs two at a time and stand in front of her door, breathing hard, not from the climb but from everything piled up behind my ribs.

I knock twice, but she doesn’t answer. Nor does she reply when I call her name. So I dig through my bag for the spare key she gave me a couple years ago. I find it buried under loose receipts and a crumpled granola bar wrapper. The lock turns easily and I push the door open.

“Rae?” I call into the apartment. “I’m coming in, so if you’re naked or doing something weird, consider this your warning.”

I step inside and close the door behind me. She’s definitely not here yet, so I drop onto the couch and check Find My again. The green dot is moving in my direction. She’s heading south toward where I’m seated. Ten minutes out, maybe fifteen.

Fine. I’ll wait.

I sit on her couch and rehearse the speech I’ve been composing in my head the whole subway ride over. It’s a good speech. It covers the not-texting, the disappearing, the going-off-the-grid-with-a-man-who?—

The lock turns. The door opens.