Quarterly Report

The conference room smelled of stale coffee and desperation. Sarah stood at the head of the table, running on three hours of sleep and a xanax, staring down twelve executives whose expressions ranged from bored to predatory. The quarterly review was in twenty minutes, and her team's data was garbage. Pure, unadulterated garbage.

"What the hell is this?" Marcus from Finance pointed at her slide. "You're expecting us to believe conversion rates tripled when your headcount was cut? That's some grade-A bullshit, Sarah."

She felt the familiar tightening in her chest, the same physical dread she'd experienced daily since her divorce three years ago. Marcus reminded her of a bulldog—small, jowly, convinced his own bark was worse than his bite. The office was full of animals like him, clawing their way up while she tried desperately not to become collateral damage.

"The methodology's solid," she said, hearing the hollow ring in her own voice. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Manhattan glittered like a cruel joke.

Janet, the CFO, watched Sarah with sphinx-like inscrutability. Janet was the only woman on the executive team, a reminder of what Sarah could become if she sold her soul completely. Beautiful, terrifying, alone. Janet had survived three purges, two mergers, and a metastatic cancer diagnosis. She didn't give a damn about anyone's excuses.

"You're young," Janet said finally. "Forty-two. Young enough to pivot, old enough to know better." Her lipstick was the color of fresh wounds. "What are you running toward, Sarah? Or are you just running away?"

The question hit harder than Marcus's bullying. Sarah thought about leaving corporate America last year—opening that bookstore in Vermont she'd fantasized about since grad school. But she'd bear the mortgage, the student loans, the expectations, until the bitter end. That's what adults did. They endured.

Her phone buzzed. A text from Alex, her on-again-off-again lover: *Can you believe they promoted Dave? The guy who couldn't find his own dick with both hands?*

Sarah almost laughed. Dave—slick as a fox, cunning without substance—had leveraged his MBA and mediocre performance into a director role while she'd worked herself into an early grave. The injustice of it should have outraged her. Instead, she felt something far more dangerous: the urge to surrender.

"Fix it by Monday," Janet said, standing up. The meeting ended without another word.

Sarah sat alone as the others filed out, their cologne and bitterness lingering. She opened her laptop, ready to craft another fiction. Another lie. Another day pretending any of this mattered. The spreadsheet cells waited, empty as her stomach, ready to be filled with whatever half-truths would get her through to the next quarter, the next bonus, the next hollow victory in a game she'd never wanted to play.