Chapter 11: Unraveling
The email came at 6:02 a.m.
Lena sat in bed, blinking against the morning light, coffee cooling beside her. She almost didn't open it.
Subject: Immediate Attention Required – Hart & Co. Licensing Suspension
Her heart stopped.
She clicked.
The words blurred together as her mind scrambled to catch up.
"Effective immediately, your architectural license is under review by the New York Licensing Board due to allegations of fraudulent documentation, improper client reporting, and ethics violations. Pending investigation, your ability to submit permits or operate under your firm's name is suspended."
The room went cold.
She reread it twice. Then a third time.
Her fingers trembled as she reached for her phone.
Alexander answered on the first ring.
"Hey, it's early. Everything okay?"
Lena's voice came out flat. "I just got a notice. My license is being suspended."
Silence.
"What?" he said sharply.
"They're accusing me of submitting fraudulent permits. Improper documentation. Someone filed a complaint."
She didn't have to say it out loud.
They both knew who.
"I'll fix this," he said immediately.
"No." Her voice cracked. "You can't just make this go away."
"Yes, I can—"
"I don't want you to."
That stopped him.
"I need to do this on my own," she said. "Or I'll never know if I belong here because I earned it… or because you protected me."
Alexander's voice was low, pained. "I never meant to make you feel that way."
"I know," she whispered. "But I need to stand on my own right now."
She hung up before she could change her mind.
The Licensing Board's office was cold, sterile, and full of people pretending to care while scribbling on clipboards.
Lena sat across from a panel of three — two men, one woman — as they went through the list of allegations, none of which had any truth behind them.
"Who submitted the complaint?" she asked finally.
The woman in the center smiled tightly. "Anonymous. But well-documented. With access to your project files."
Lena's stomach turned.
Only a handful of people had access to those documents. And one of them worked for the Reinhart Group — a junior architect who had once asked her out. She'd said no.
Now her career was hanging by a thread.
By the time she left the office, her head was pounding.
The city roared around her — taxis, sirens, voices — but all she heard was Claudia's voice in her memory:
"Navigating Alexander's world can be difficult for the unprepared."
She was being hunted.
And for the first time, she wasn't sure she could outrun it.
That night, she didn't call Alexander.
She didn't answer his messages.
Instead, she sat alone on the rooftop of her building, sketchpad in her lap, drawing a house she wasn't sure would ever be built.
She felt like glass — too full, too fragile.
Then footsteps.
She turned.
Alexander stood there, rain soaking into his coat, eyes locked on hers.
"You're avoiding me."
Lena looked down. "I didn't want to bring you into it."
"You're already in it," he said. "So I am too."
She shook her head. "This is what Claudia wants. For me to break. For you to choose."
"I already chose," he said, crossing the space between them. "The moment I kissed you in that damn kitchen, I chose you."
She looked up at him, eyes burning. "What if choosing me means losing everything else?"
He cupped her face, gently, reverently.
"Then everything else wasn't worth having."
And just like that, her walls cracked.
She buried her face in his chest, letting the tears fall.
"I'm so scared."
"I know," he whispered into her hair. "But you don't have to be alone."
Thunder rumbled in the distance, a storm rolling in.
But for once, Lena felt like she had something to hold onto.
Even if the world tried to tear it from her hands.