Chapter 2
Rachel's POV
My alarm went off at six.
I opened my eyes. Damn. Coffee shop shift in forty minutes.
I grabbed my toothbrush and looked around the bathroom while I brushed — chipped tiles, someone else's shampoo on the edge of the tub, a window that didn't close all the way. From downstairs came the grind and crash of the garbage truck, right on schedule.
Three weeks out of the Pierce apartment.
I rinsed, pulled on my clothes, ate a granola bar over the sink, and headed out the door.
No Pierce money meant no margin. Days were Columbia — studio crits, load calculations, back-to-back deadlines. Evenings I drafted floor plans at a small firm in Lower Manhattan. Weekends I made lattes four blocks from my sublet.
Five hours of sleep on a good night.
But every dollar was mine. Every drawing was mine. Nobody could take credit for it. Nobody could take it away.
That was worth more than I expected.
David ran the firm. Old-school, short fuse, genuinely brilliant. He'd been hard on me from day one — redlined everything, sent me back to redo things without explanation. I kept my mouth shut and redid them.
Then I pulled three all-nighters on a load-bearing structure diagram he needed by Friday.
He looked it over for a long time. Set it down. Slid a cup of black coffee across the desk.
"You're tougher than I thought," he said.
Then: "There's a national student design competition next week. Fifty-thousand-dollar prize. First place gets a direct offer from one of the top firms in the country." He looked at me. "I want to put your name in."
Fifty thousand dollars.
Two years of tuition. Two years of not doing math in the grocery aisle.
I wrapped both hands around the cup. "I'm in."
I practically moved into the firm after that.
My entry was called Light Through the Crack. A community center built into a derelict block in South Brooklyn, designed around the gaps in the existing brick walls where morning light pushed through at a low angle. I'd seen it on my walk to the subway three days after I left — half-delirious, bag too heavy, not entirely sure where I was going.
I stood there for ten minutes just looking at it.
It wasn't just a design. It was the only way I knew how to say what the last few weeks had felt like.
I was coming out of a print shop in Midtown, large-format copies tucked under my arm, when a black car slid up to the curb and stopped.
The window came down.
Gabriel.
Same suit. Same expression — like the world kept falling slightly short of what he deserved.
"Get in," he said.
I walked around the front of the car and kept going.
"Rachel." He got out. Four strides and his hand locked around my wrist. Hard. "Three weeks. Eleanor calls every day. You don't pick up once. What exactly is this?"
I yanked my arm back and faced him.
"I blocked all of you. That's why no one's getting through." Flat. Even. "I'm not making a point, Gabriel. I'm just not interested."
His eyes moved over me. The jacket. The dark circles. The print tube under my arm. Not concern — more like irritation at a problem taking longer than it should.
"You want to live like this?" he said. "Come back. Apologize to Isla. Keep things civil. I'll reinstate your card."
"Apologize." I looked straight at him. "I gave her my father's house. What exactly am I apologizing for?"
"Rachel—"
"I'm good. Go home."
"Hey." David appeared from behind me, stepped up without hesitating. "You want to let go of her, or should I make a call right now?"
Gabriel looked at David. Then at me.
I watched it register — that I had a job, a mentor, someone willing to plant himself on a Midtown sidewalk between me and a Pierce without knowing or caring who that was. Gabriel wasn't used to that. People in his world always knew.
He adjusted his cuffs.
"Good luck." His voice went cold and quiet. "I want to see how long you last out here without a net."
He got in the car. Gone.
David watched it pull away. "You okay?"
"Yeah." I shifted the tube under my arm. "Thanks."
He nodded. Didn't ask anything else. That was one of the things I liked about him.
That night, Isla posted.
A classmate sent me the screenshot.
Selfie. Tears sitting perfect on her cheeks, head tilted just right. The caption: her sister had been gone three weeks, their mother cried every day, she'd only ever wanted a quiet place to paint. Then — I've heard things about where she's been and who she's been with. Older men. I don't want to say more. I'm just scared for her.
One million followers.
The comments piled up fast.
How does someone like that deserve a sister like Isla?
Didn't she steal from the Pierce family? Guess we're seeing who she really is.
David showed me his phone the next morning, jaw tight. "This is a real problem. The committee does background checks on every entrant. They take this stuff seriously."
I looked at Isla's face on the screen.
That careful, practiced sadness. Every word designed to sound like worry and land like a blade.
They took the house. Cut me off. And now this.
Old me would've spiraled. Typed out responses at 2 a.m., trying to explain myself to strangers who'd already decided. Trying to prove something to people who didn't want proof.
I handed the phone back.
"I know what I'm doing," I said.
"Rachel—"
"Trust me." I picked up my pencil. "Let her have this one."
Isla thought she'd cornered me.
She had no idea she'd just handed me exactly what I needed.
