Chapter 3

The next day, or rather, the day before his official departure for the new agency, Jessica finally came home.

She smelled faintly of Leo' s expensive, overbearing cologne.

"Alex? You're still up?" she asked, feigning surprise.

He was packing a single suitcase.

"We need to talk, Jess," he started, but his phone, still his personal one for a few more hours, buzzed.

It was Jessica' s phone. Leo was calling.

"Oh, God, what now?" she muttered, then answered.

Her voice immediately shifted, dripping with concern. "Leo? What' s wrong? A misplaced confidential file? Oh, you poor thing, don't panic, I'll be right there."

She grabbed her keys, already halfway to the door.

"Jessica," Alex said, his voice flat.

"Not now, Alex, this is important!" she snapped, and then she was gone.

He walked into their bedroom. In her jewelry drawer, tossed carelessly among cheap trinkets, was the engagement ring he' d given her.

It wasn't expensive, he couldn't afford much back then. But he' d saved for months.

He picked it up, looked at it for a moment, then walked to the kitchen and dropped it into the trash can.

Later that morning, he went to NovaFlight to finalize his exit.

His colleagues were shocked.

"But Alex, the launch... your designs are the core of it!" Mark, a senior engineer, said, his face creased with worry.

"You'll manage," Alex said, offering a tired smile.

Leo Maxwell appeared, looking smugger than ever. Jessica was nowhere in sight yet.

"Leaving so soon, Miller?" Leo taunted, leaning against Alex's old cubicle. "Guess some of us just can't handle the pressure."

Alex ignored him, focusing on signing the last of his HR forms.

Then Jessica arrived, a flurry of motion, doting on Leo.

"Are you okay, sweetie? Did you find the file?" she cooed, adjusting Leo's tie.

Leo beamed. "All sorted, thanks to you."

The atmosphere was thick with unspoken tensions. As Alex was gathering his few personal items, including his personal research laptop – backups for an independent project, irreplaceable data – Leo "tripped."

A bottle of corrosive cleaning solvent, inexplicably in Leo' s hand, went flying.

It splashed directly onto Alex' s open laptop.

The screen hissed and went dark.

"Oh, my God! Alex, what did you do?" Leo exclaimed, feigning shock. "You made me spill it!"

Jessica whirled on Alex, her face a mask of fury.

"Are you insane, Alex? Trying to sabotage Leo? That data could have been crucial!"

"That was my personal laptop, Jessica," Alex said, his voice dangerously quiet. "My research."

"I don't care!" she shrieked. "You better recover whatever Leo thinks was on there, or you can forget about any future with me! You're always so clumsy, so careless!"

Alex just looked at her. The "future" she spoke of was already a ghost.