The board took up most of the east wall.
Cork stretched wide, too wide for the room it sat in. Names in black marker, layered over each other. Board members. Executives. People who had no business being connected but somehow were. Red dates slashed through them. Votes. Meetings. Disappearances.
Lines tangled everywhere. Crossed over each other. Like veins pulled out of a body and pinned where anyone could see.
Arianne stood in front of it. Marker uncapped. Ink on her fingers.
She stepped closer. Cork brushed her knuckles.
Her pulse had been doing this thing for three days. A slow, heavy thudding she could feel in her throat. In her wrists. Behind her eyes. Not panic. Something older. The kind of feeling that lives in your chest for years before it has a name.
She lifted the marker. Hovered.
The center of the board was empty.
Every line bent toward it. Every connection leaned there like something was missing and everything knew it.
A name should be there.
