The Pin
At Bellwood Media, the "Rising Star" pin was a small thing — a brushed silver crescent no bigger than a paperclip — but everyone in the open-plan office turned to watch when it came out.
Gerald Voss held it up between two fingers like a magician revealing a coin. "Talia Brennan," he announced, and the applause started before he even finished her name. "Youngest strategist to land the Whitmore account in company history."
Talia flushed pink to her ears. Twenty-six years old, three years out of grad school, and already the youngest name on a wall that mattered. She stepped forward, and Gerald pinned the crescent to her blazer himself, the way he always did.
Naomi Castellanos watched from behind a cubicle divider, coffee cooling in her hand.
Eight years ago, this had been her. Same pin. Same crowd. Same Gerald, beaming like a proud father, telling anyone who'd listen that he'd "known from day one" she'd go far.
"Say a few words," someone called out.
Talia laughed, nervous. "I don't — okay. I just want to thank the team. Especially Denny in analytics, who basically built the model I presented. I couldn't have —"
Something happened to Gerald's face.
It was fast. A twitch at the corner of his mouth, there and gone in under a second, like a light flickering behind a closed door. Naomi almost missed it. If she hadn't spent four years standing exactly where Talia was standing, learning every one of his expressions like a second language, she would have missed it.
By the time Talia finished her sentence, Gerald was clapping again, loudest of anyone.
Naomi told herself she'd imagined it.
She went back to her desk, opened her laptop to finish a deck due in the morning, and pulled up the shared drive to grab a template from the Whitmore folder — the account Talia had just been celebrated for.
The most recent file wasn't Talia's.
It was a draft, saved four days ago, titled Whitmore_strategy_FINAL_GV.pptx — authored, according to the metadata, entirely by Gerald Voss.
Naomi's coffee had gone completely cold.