Page 159 of The Exit Strategy

Video evidence of Cole working on the veterans’ memorial. Cole working on a bridge that Meridian debuted last year, naming Natalie as the head architect. And the library, the one Cole designed with light in mind. He created these from his heart, and Natalie destroyed them with hers.

By the time the clock ticks past midnight, I’ve built a file that’s hard to refute. This is what I do. It’s in my pathology. I find holes and document them. I may not always act on them, but I always document them.

And today, I’ve decided to act. Vengeance and heartache make a girl dangerous, and I’m about to become the villain of Natalie’s nightmares.

My shoulders pull away from my ears. My spine unlocks, and my lungs fill with the freshest air.

Everything falls into place once I open my web browser.

I navigate to Meridian’s corporate website and find their Ethics and Compliance contact at the bottom of their About page. Then I click. Just one quick press of my finger, and a pop-up appears.

Then I type.

I attach my file.

I share my proof.

And I pause.

With one more click of a button, everything will change. Again.

The process of hitting Send has the power to create or destroy.

I’ve been on the receiving end of both.

I could choose to close the window, walk away, and go to sleep, secure in the knowledge that Cole will wake up tomorrow to a broken fake engagement to a woman whomay or may not be at The Haven in a week. And Natalie’s career will die at its own pace, on its own schedule, the way careers built on stolen work typically do.

I’ll have done the adult thing.

The mature thing.

The correct thing.

But then I remember who I was. The little girl who lived in the shadows of shitty people’s decisions.

That version of me has been called the poor girl, the charity case, a mistake, and garbage by a woman who broke me down before the real trauma of my life could finish me off. That version had her notebooks destroyed, her lunch thrown in the trash, her name written on bathroom stalls in permanent marker, her number posted on a dating site for disgusting men when she was only seventeen.

That Juniper Mercer sat out of a decade of social functions because the mere thought of being in a room with Natalie Moore or anyone like her was enough to make hives break out across her skin.

That Junie hid.

This Junie will not.

This Junie just learned that for six years, the man she’s loved for more than half her life has been paying Natalie Moore—with his own work, with the mind I fell in love with at every Mercer Christmas—to keep me safe from the very woman who created me.

Cole’s been paying for Natalie’s silence.

With his art.

For years.

No.

If human metamorphosis is a real thing, I’m about to become a motherfucking phoenix.

I type out the message.

To whom it may concern…