Chapter 1

I'd given that company eight years, and three of its core patents were in my name.

I was walking past HR when I caught a glimpse of the layoff list the CEO's secretary had put together.

The first name on it was mine.

I didn't make a sound. I went back to my desk and finished my exit paperwork in three minutes.

On my way down, my husband came hurrying over. "Honey, the license on those three patents of yours runs out at the end of the month. Don't forget to renew."

I stopped and looked at him. "That girl you've never gotten over just fired me."

Every bit of color drained out of his face.

I smiled and waved him off. "The patents? I'm taking them with me."

*****

I'd been at Pioneer Solutions a solid eight years, from a green kid fresh out of college to the head of R&D with three core patents to my name.

Our flagship product, the Polaris System, was the benchmark the whole industry measured itself against. I had written its underlying architecture and tuned every one of its core algorithms.

Nobody had ever come close to replacing me.

I thought I was the bedrock of Pioneer Solutions. The one pillar they couldn't afford to pull out.

That afternoon I walked past HR. The door hadn't been shut all the way.

Inside, the CEO's secretary was going through a list with the HR director. A layoff list.

One glance was all it took. A name I knew jumped off the page.

The first name on that list was my own, Charlotte Quinn.

I froze where I stood, and every drop of blood in me seemed to turn to ice.

The secretary's voice drifted through the gap in the door.

"Ms. Winters says R&D is bleeding money, and Ms. Quinn's salary is the biggest line on it. Split her work among the people under her and it still gets done.

"Besides, her husband is the VP. A married couple both sitting in senior management doesn't look good."

The HR director hesitated. "But what about her patents?"

"The license is nearly up anyway. Mr. Reed will take care of it." The secretary said it like it was nothing.

"Ms. Winters wants her to walk out with her dignity intact. No mess."

I stood outside that door like a stranger listening in on somebody else's life.

Inside my chest, though, something dull kept sawing back and forth.

Rachel Winters was the CEO of Pioneer Solutions.

She was also the woman my husband, Michael Reed, had never gotten over. They'd been classmates in college, the golden couple everyone expected to last.

If I hadn't put my family's money behind Michael and helped him build the company, the woman married to him today would probably have been her.

I turned and walked away without a scene, without a single question, and went back to my desk.

Sunlight glared through the window. The little plant on my desk was thriving.

Half-finished code was still scrolling on my monitor.

Nothing looked any different. Only I knew that something underneath had already caved in.

I opened the internal system and pulled up the electronic resignation form. Three minutes was all it took to clear every step.

Eight years of my life and everything I had poured into them disappeared in a handful of mouse clicks.

I packed up my things, a mug and one small potted plant.

I carried the box downstairs.

Plenty of coworkers saw me, and surprise and confusion showed on their faces.

I smiled and nodded at each of them the way I did every other day.

The elevator doors opened and Michael came rushing in from outside.

There was a thin film of sweat on his forehead. He saw the box in my arms and stopped short.

"Honey, what are you doing?" he asked.

I said nothing. The elevator sank slowly.

Our faces looked back at us out of the brushed metal wall.

His was all anxiety, with a thread of guilt he couldn't quite hide. Mine was calm.

The elevator reached the lobby.

He caught my hand, and his voice turned urgent.

"Honey, listen, there's something I forgot to tell you. The license on those three patents in your name runs out at the end of the month.

"Go into the system and renew it. Next quarter's main project depends on it."

I stopped walking, turned around, and looked at him without saying anything.

I had loved this man for ten years and been married to him for eight.

He had beautiful eyes. There was a time when they held nothing but big plans and me.

Now all I could find in them was calculation and panic.

My mouth pulled at one corner, and I gave him a smile.

"Michael," I said.

"That woman you never got over? She fired me."

His face went white in an instant, drained and lifeless.

His mouth opened. He swallowed hard. Not one word came out.

Employees kept moving past us, and their eyes landed on the two of us like floodlights.

My smile widened.

"Oh, the patents." I waved a hand at him.

I held the box against my chest and turned toward the sunlight at the entrance.

"Those are coming with me."

Behind me, Michael's shout came out ragged. "Charlotte!"

I didn't turn around.

Pioneer Solutions' Polaris had gone dark that day.

Mine was only starting to rise.

As I walked out through the front doors, my phone rang, and Michael's name came up on the screen.

I hung up. He called again. I hung up again, and we went around like that a few more times.

Then a text came through.

Michael: [Honey, go home first. We'll talk tonight. There's been a misunderstanding somewhere.]

He called it a misunderstanding, and that word made me laugh.

Nothing could be more real than what I had heard with my own ears.

Another text landed right behind it.

Michael: [Don't play games with the patents. The whole company lives or dies on this. Don't be difficult.]

So I was the one being difficult.

I put his number on the block list, and the world went quiet.

I called a car. I didn't go home.

That so-called home turned my stomach every time I pictured it.

I went to the apartment I'd owned before the marriage.

Nobody had lived there in years, but a cleaner came through on a schedule, so the place was spotless.

I set my things down and dropped hard into the soft couch.

The ceiling was white, the same white as Michael's face an hour earlier.

I closed my eyes, and eight years ran past me in pieces.

I had gone three days and three nights without sleep to break through one technical wall.

I had smiled my way through client dinners and drunk until my stomach bled so the company could land its funding.

I thought Michael and I were fighting the same war. I thought Pioneer Solutions was the child we'd raised together.

In the end, all I'd been to him was a tool he could sacrifice whenever it suited him.

I was a stepping stone laid down so the woman he never got over could take my place.

My phone buzzed again, and the number on the screen was one I didn't know.

I had no intention of answering, but it kept ringing.

I swiped to pick up.

"Hello?" I said.

A man's voice came back, polite and a little hurried.

"Am I speaking with Ms. Charlotte Quinn? My name is Larson. I'm a headhunter working with NovaTech Group."

NovaTech Group was Pioneer Solutions' biggest competitor in the country.

One of my eyebrows went up.

"What can I do for you?" I asked.

"Ms. Quinn, I know this call is out of the blue. But I hear you left Pioneer Solutions today."

Word traveled fast.

"And?" I said.

"Our CEO would like to meet you. He wants to talk about your three patents, and about what happens to Pioneer Solutions next."

I let a few seconds go by, then smiled.

"All right. Pick the time and the place."

I ended the call, got up, and walked to the big window.

Below me the city was coming on light by light.

Michael and Rachel were somewhere out in all that light.

They thought that pushing me out of the game had ended it.

They were being naive.