Grace stood in the stairwell on the eighteenth floor with the door open a hand's width, and listened to men she hated protect the man she loved.
The rain hammered the roof. Below her, the building was a rush of boots and sobbing, the mob breaking apart and pouring down the stairs in a scramble of dropped pipes and splintered excuses. A woman with a burned sleeve passed within an arm's length of her. A boy with blood on his lip. A man who kept muttering he said it'd be easy. None of them looked at her.
Nobody ever did, when she did not want them to.
