Chapter 73 CHAPTER 73
Speed home
Ayisha left the office like someone propelled from underwater. The city felt different, meaner, sharper. She sprinted down the few blocks to the subway; the cold wind slapping her face felt like judgment. The idea that Tessa might have used them… used her shredded something inside. Trust, once broken, was not like spilled water. It soaked into floorboards and left a slick you could almost slide on.
The ride home was a jumble of memories: Tessa’s laugh when they closed their first small order, the two of them in matching robes after nights of low sleep and high adrenaline, the phone calls to factories that now read like a script to a life that had just been unmasked. Ayisha’s mind raced ahead, imagining the confrontation she would have: clamps on wrists, the voice sharp as a knife, words falling like verdicts. She rehearsed what she would say: How could you? How could you betray me? How could you use our trust as a ladder?
When she turned into the driveway, the evening light slanted into long orange bands. The car door slammed with too much force. She pounded up the concrete steps, adrenaline and fury fueling her. The thought of calm conversation evaporated like steam. She needed answers and a reckoning.
She nearly burst through the front door, breathless, ready to call Tessa’s name and drag her into the hallway. Instead, a single envelope rested on the foyer table. Plain white. The handwriting familiar: small, careful, slanted.
Her pulse fluttered. The paper felt heavier than it should. She snatched it up, fingers trembling, tearing it open with a noise that felt obscene in the quiet house.
The letter inside was embarrassingly short. Three lines. No flourish. Perfectly contained.
Ayisha,
I’ve gone. It was nice meeting you. Take care of yourself. It was nice meeting you.
— Tessa
For a second the world stopped. Ayisha read the words twice, then again, hoping repetition might change them. A laugh escaped her… raw, incredulous and snapped into a sob that felt like something breaking inside. “No,” she said aloud. “No, no, no.”
The floor felt suddenly too far away. She sank to her knees, clutching the letter as if it were the only proof she had left that the woman she loved had ever existed. Her throat closed; tears burned so fiercely she couldn’t see.
“Why?” she gasped into the empty house. The walls offered nothing back. How could Tessa leave like this? Was the whole life they’d made just a fabrication, a performance, a setup? Marco’s binder sat heavy in her bag; his voice repeated in her head like evidence in a loop.
With a sound that was part animal and part anguish, Ayisha crumpled. She rolled on the hardwood, pulling the paper to her chest like a talisman and then letting it fall away. Her knees scraped as she kicked out, hands clawing at the air as if to catch the vanished years.
Neighbors peeked through curtains as the muffled sobs leaked past the thin entryway. She didn’t care. Shame had no place among the shards of rage. The disbelief burned brighter than embarrassment.
“This can’t be real,” she whispered between hoarse, ragged breaths. “She can’t be that cruel.”
Her mind stumbled back to small moments, the intimacy of shared cigarettes on the balcony, the way Tessa had traced constellations on her palm while they lay awake and talked about impossible futures. Did Tessa mean it when she whispered, “It’s just us”? Had those promises been lines in an elaborate deception?
Memories that once shimmered now felt like shards. Ayisha’s hands found the wine glass on the coffee table. The bottle was empty, its cork gone. She flung the glass across the room; it shattered against the wall, glinting like a constellation of failures.
“Why?” she screamed, louder this time, and the sound tore through the house…a long, pained howl drawn from the ribs. She curled into a ball and let the scream carry her further into grief.
Minutes stretched and blurred. Time no longer had edges. The scream became a wet, hiccuping sob. She lay back against the cool floor, the letter crumpled beside her, and the house smelled faintly of lemon cleaner, old perfume, and the ghost of laughter.
When the noise finally eased, Ayisha sat up slowly. Her cheeks were streaked with dried tears; her hair was mussed. Outside, city life continued: cars, distant music, the indifferent rhythm of a world that didn’t know and didn’t need to know… the private unmakeings inside a single house.
Her hands trembled as she picked up the phone. Marco’s number sat at the top of the call log. She hovered, wanting confirmation, wanting proof that this was a mistake she could correct. Instead she dialed the bank.
“Hello,” the polite voice answered. “This is Ayisha Wilson. I need to report a suspected fraud. Please freeze any outgoing transactions on our business accounts. Immediately.”
There was a brief pause; the representative’s tone sharpened. “Ma’am, may I have your account…”
Ayisha supplied the numbers, her voice steadier now, stripped of the earlier tremor. “Freeze it. Everything.”
As the line clicked off, she looked again at the tiny note. It repeated in her mind like a grotesque joke: it was nice meeting you. She pressed the crumpled paper to her lips as though physical contact might conjure sense.
Domestic life nagged at the edges of her despair. The kettle clicked off on the stove; the sound felt absurdly ordinary. Practicality reasserted itself in small, stubborn ways. If Tessa had taken their money or allowed the accounts to be compromised, there would be consequences. Ayisha had to protect what remained. She had to make sure that when the dust settled, she would still be standing.
She rose with effort, wiped her face, and moved to the living room. Marco’s binder lay where she’d dropped it. She picked it up; the weight of the paper felt like an anchor…factual, solid.
There would be a fight now: legal moves, subpoenas, forensic audits. She would call contacts, sound alarms, drag everything into daylight. She would not let their savings burn without a war. The practical plotting steadied her, a scaffolding under the raw wound.
And yet beneath the plans there was a naked grief for something altered beyond repair. The betrayal…whatever the reasons, however twisted the motives…had opened a crevice she wasn’t sure she could cross.
She folded the letter and tucked it into the binder, sliding it under the evidence like a personal forensic tag. Then she stood, feeling the day’s weight settle into her shoulders. She did not know how to move forward, only that she must. For herself, for the business, for the stubborn part of her that still believed in life beyond ruin.
In the corner, shards of the smashed glass glittered in the dim light like tiny stars: a constellation marking the exact place where everything had changed. She would take those pieces and use them to build some
thing else. She would not let them define her. She had to try.