Chapter 3 Goodbye Daniel

I didn't sleep that night.I lay on my narrow bed, staring at the ceiling fan going round and round, with a white handkerchief folded on my nightstand and a crumpled note under my pillow. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw two things: a red dress in a corner booth, and a line of slanted handwriting. "You deserved better than chocolate-hazelnut." How did he know? Tessa had walked me home and stayed until I pretended to be asleep. She had made me promise two things: that I wouldn't text Daniel, and that I would eat something. I had broken the first promise at 2 a.m., when I typed, We need to talk. Tomorrow. 10 a.m., the park bench, and pressed send before I could change my mind. His reply came in under a minute. Of course. I miss you. I almost threw the phone across the room. Morning arrived anyway, gray and noisy. Our little house smelled of toast and burnt coffee, which meant Mum was already up. I came into the kitchen with swollen eyes and found three faces turn toward me at once. "Oh my goodness," said Lily, setting down her spoon. "Somebody died." "Lily," Mum warned. "What? She looks like a ghost that cried." "I'm fine," I said, sitting down. Noah, who was twelve and allergic to emotions, studied me over the rim of his cereal bowl. "Daniel did something," he said flatly. I froze. "Why would you say that?" "Because he's the only person who makes you cry. And he never helps with the dishes." Mum put down the kettle. She didn't say anything. She just walked over, cupped my face in her warm, rough hands, and looked at me the way only mothers can, like she was reading every page of my night. "Ella," she said softly. "My baby." That was all it took. I folded into her apron and cried again, and Lily climbed onto my other side and hugged me from behind, and even Noah stood up awkwardly and patted my head twice, like I was a very fragile dog. "I saw him with someone else," I whispered. "Yesterday. I'm going to end it today." Mum's jaw tightened, and for a moment I saw a flash of something fierce under her gentleness. "Do you want me to come with you?" "No. I need to do this myself." "Then do it with your head high," she said. "You gave that boy three good years. Don't give him one more minute of your tears." "I can bring my baseball bat," Noah offered. "You don't have a baseball bat." "I can get one." I laughed. It hurt a little, but it was real. At ten o'clock, I sat on the same wooden bench where I had fallen apart the day before. The park looked different in daylight. Greener. Smaller. A woman jogged past with a stroller. Pigeons argued over a muffin. I saw Daniel from far away. He walked quickly, hands in his pockets, wearing the blue jacket I had given him last Christmas. He looked tired and sorry and, honestly, a little handsome, which made me angrier. "Ella." He sat beside me and reached for my hand. I pulled it away. "Babe, I'm so glad you texted. I've been going crazy. About last night..." "Which part?" I asked. "The part where you didn't come home, or the part where you were kissing a girl in a red dress at Café Lumière?" His face went white. "I can explain." "Please do." "She's just... Bella is a friend from the gym. It was nothing. She kissed me, I swear. I was going to push her away." "You were holding her hand, Daniel." "She grabbed it!" "And you kissed her back for a very long time." He opened his mouth. Closed it. His eyes darted around like he was looking for a door in the middle of the park. "I'm not going to scream at you," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I'm not going to throw anything. I just want one honest answer. How long?" A long silence. A pigeon stole the muffin. "Seven months," he said at last, very quietly. Seven months. I had bought him a birthday watch with my savings during those seven months. I had sat through his mother's awful dinners and smiled. I had defended him to Tessa, again and again. Something inside me did not break. It simply went quiet, like a light turning off in a room I no longer needed. "Okay," I said. "Okay?" He looked up, hopeful. "Okay, you forgive me?" "Okay, we're done." "Ella, wait..." "I brought you a cupcake yesterday," I said, standing. "Chocolate-hazelnut. It was our anniversary. I dropped it when I saw you." I gave a small, tired smile. "I think that's the only honest thing in this whole relationship. It was a good cupcake." "Babe, please." "And I want one more answer." I took out the folded note from my pocket and held it where he could see it. "Did you tell anyone what flavor I'd bring you?" He blinked at the paper, confused. "What? No. Why would I? It was our thing. I never told anyone." "Not Bella? Not your friends?" "No, I swear on my mother." He frowned harder. "Ella, why? What is that?" His confusion looked completely real. That scared me more than a lie would have. I folded the note away. "Goodbye, Daniel." I walked up the path with my shoulders straight and my chin high, exactly as Mum had said. I made it all the way to the gate before my knees began to shake. "Ella!" he called after me. "You'll regret this! No one else is going to love you like I did!" I didn't turn around. But then I heard him make a strange, strangled noise, and when I glanced back, he was staring past me, toward the street, his face drained of color. "Is that... who is that?" I turned. A black car was parked at the curb, long and gleaming and absolutely out of place in front of a rusted park gate. The same car from yesterday. A broad-shouldered man in a dark suit stepped out of the driver's seat. He was somewhere in his forties, with kind eyes and a face like a friendly bulldog, and he carried a thin leather folder in his hands. He walked straight up to me and gave a small, respectful bow. "Miss Monroe. Good morning. My name is Marcus. I drive for Mr. Blackwood." Daniel made another choking noise behind me. "Blackwood? As in Blackwood Group?" Marcus did not even glance at him. "Mr. Blackwood asked me to give you this." He handed me the leather folder. "And to tell you that it is eleven minutes past ten, and you have not had breakfast." My mouth fell open. "How could he possibly know that?" Marcus's face stayed perfectly professional, but his mustache twitched. "I could not say, miss. I only deliver." I opened the folder with trembling fingers. Inside was my Blackwood Haven hotel campaign, built around real guest stories and warm, homey colors, the same proposal Adrian had called forgettable, the same one I had rewritten at midnight three times. But now a sticky note was attached to the first page, with the same neat, slanted handwriting. "I read the third version last night. It was not forgettable. I was wrong. Approved. A." I stared at it. Adrian Blackwood, the man who didn't know how to say sorry, had written the words I was wrong. Behind that page lay a second item, a plastic card with my photograph on it. It was a staff ID, but not the usual blue one. This one was black, with a silver edge, and above my name were four words that made my stomach drop. Executive Assistant to the CEO. "What is this?" I whispered. "Your new position, miss," said Marcus. "Effective tomorrow, eight o'clock sharp. Mr. Blackwood said you would argue." "I am going to argue!" "Yes, miss. He said you would also say you didn't want special treatment, and that you were perfectly capable of getting promoted on your own." I shut my mouth. That was exactly what I had been about to say. "He asked me to tell you," Marcus continued gently, "that it is not a favor. He said the assistant who works for him must be able to survive him, and that he has only ever seen one person in the building stand up to him." "Me?" "You, miss." His eyes crinkled. "For what it's worth, I have driven Mr. Blackwood for eleven years. I have never once seen him stand outside a park for twenty minutes, pretending to read a phone he was not using." My heart gave a loud, treacherous thump. "He was... what?" "Good morning, miss." Marcus bowed again, gave Daniel one polite, devastating look, and returned to the car. I stood there with a black ID card in my hand while the black car purred away, and Daniel sat frozen on the bench behind me, finally, wonderfully quiet. My phone buzzed in my pocket. An unknown number. I almost didn't answer. Then I did, because curiosity has ruined better women than me. "Miss Monroe." That deep, cool voice again, even through the phone. "I trust you've met Marcus." "Mr. Blackwood, I can't take this job. I don't even understand why you..." "Tomorrow. Eight o'clock," he said, as if I hadn't spoken. "And Ella?" My name again. My pulse stumbled. "Yes?" A pause. I could hear him breathe, as though he were choosing his words carefully, the way you walk across thin ice. "Do not tell anyone at the company how we met," he said. "Not Tessa, not your family. Not yet. There is someone in my house who would use you against me, and I would like to keep you hidden for as long as I can." The line went dead. I stood in the sunlit park, holding a black card and a dead phone, while one question rang louder than all the others. Who in the Blackwood mansion already knew my name?