The rain didn’t just fall; it felt like the sky was collapsing, a relentless, freezing assault that turned the world into a blurred watercolor of grey and neon. Each drop that struck my face was a tiny, icy reminder of the performance I was giving—and the reality I was enduring.
“Go back to the gutter where you belong, you filth!”
His words weren’t just spoken; they were hurled, cutting through the roar of the downpour like a serrated blade. I stood there, shivering in a thrift-store jacket that smelled of mothballs and someone else’s despair, watching him loom over me.
Richard Sterling. The CEO of Sterling Tech. The man on the cover of Forbes. The man currently spitting on my worn-out sneakers.
I could feel the warmth of his saliva hitting my shoe, a deliberate, biological act of degradation. It took every ounce of discipline I possessed not to drive my fist into his throat right then and there. My fingers curled into tight balls at my sides, nails digging into my palms until the skin broke. Not out of uncontrollable rage—though the fire was there, burning hot in my gut—but out of a desperate need to anchor myself in the character.
