The email arrived at 11:42 in the morning, sitting among the dozen others that had accumulated in Aurora's inbox since she'd last checked it. She almost scrolled past it. Then her eyes caught the subject line — Re: Termination of Strategic Alliance — Executed — and something in her chest went very still.
She opened it.
The language was clean, formal, the bloodless precision of legal correspondence that had been drafted to leave no room for ambiguity. Ashford Technologies formally acknowledged and agreed to the termination of the strategic alliance between itself and Rora AI, effective upon final signature. Attached below, the document.
She scrolled down.
There it was. Liam's signature, the slightly slanted hand she'd seen at the bottom of a dozen contracts over the past months, the same signature that had once authorized the formation of the very alliance now being dissolved by the same pen.
She looked at it for longer than she needed to.
