You blocked Alejandro Lujan before the taxi even reached your apartment.
The moment your thumb pressed the button, the screen went quiet. No typing bubble. No incoming call. No dramatic explanation from the CEO who had spent the last two years telling you that you were “the only person holding the artist division together.” Just silence, bright and clean.
For the first time in months, your phone felt light in your hand.
You leaned your head against the taxi window and watched Manhattan slide past in late-afternoon gold. The glass towers, the yellow cabs, the impatient pedestrians, the steaming food carts on the corners—everything looked exactly the same. That almost offended you.
Your entire life had just changed, and New York had the nerve to keep moving.
Your salary had been $12,500 a month.
HR had reduced it to $730.
Seven hundred and thirty dollars.
That was not a salary. That was a joke with paperwork.
Lucia Vaughn, Head of Human Resources at Lujan Entertainment Group, had sat across from you in her cold little office on the forty-second floor and told you that your performance “did not meet company standards.” She had said it with smooth lipstick, perfect hair, and the dead-eyed calm of someone delivering cruelty she had already practiced in the mirror.
You had not argued.
You had not cried.
