In one corner of the living room, the suitcase he'd brought back yesterday sat untouched, exactly where he'd left it.
He thought of Molly.
For the past three years, he'd been living abroad. Every time he returned, she would greet him with that eager, ingratiating smile. His suitcase was heavy—heavy enough to make her slender frame tilt to one side—yet she'd still haul it upstairs, huffing with effort the whole way.
The way she used to look at him, all shy adoration. Nothing like this time.
He glanced at his phone. Multiple missed calls, most from Felix. None from her.
He called Felix back.
It took a while before the line connected. "Miles, I'm still working."
"Working with Molly?" Miles was skeptical. The factory situation was urgent, but hardly complicated.
"Yeah. Still at the Industrial Park."
Miles frowned. "It's taking this long to handle something that minor? What exactly is Molly doing over there?"
Felix felt a pang of indignation on Molly's behalf. "This wasn't what we thought—some simple mistake by the packaging supplier that could be fixed with a reprint or a new vendor. This was deliberate sabotage, designed to make sure the first shipment couldn't go out. If it weren't for Molly, we'd have been completely screwed."
Harbor City had a traditional preserved fruit specialty with a fixed annual export quota of two billion dollars to Japan and Korea. This year, one billion of that had been entrusted to a trading company under the Vances.
Today was supposed to be the first shipment. But the packaging materials for a hundred thousand units failed to meet standards. The designer had vanished. The manufacturer claimed ignorance. No other company had enough stock to replace or supplement on short notice.
When Miles arrived at the Industrial Park, Felix practically threw himself at him. "Miles, can you even imagine? Every single person in this entire complex has been working overtime, hand-labeling a hundred thousand packages. I've never suffered like this in my entire life!"
Miles pressed his lips into a thin line. He searched for a while before he finally spotted Molly near the entrance of the Sterile Workshop, peeling off her cleanroom suit.
Under the harsh fluorescent lights that made the space bright as noon, the glow fell across her face. Even from a distance, he could see her clearly.