The sun climbed over the jagged skyline of the city, bleeding a pale, honeyed amber across the glass and steel. It was a soft, deceptive light that ignored the grime of the street below, finding its way instead through the floors-to-ceiling eastern window of the Higgins' twelfth-floor apartment.
The first ray hit the ivory duvet, crawling upward until it found Anne. She stirred as the warmth kissed her shoulder, her skin still humming with the lingering electricity of the night before. She lay there for a moment, tangled in her silk night dress, watching the dust motes dance in the light. Beside her, the bed was a chaotic topography of twisted sheets- a silent testament to a passion that, for a few hours at least, had made the rest of the world irrelevant.
With a contented sigh, Anne slid out of the bed. Her feet hit the cold hardwood, grounding her back into the reality of a Tuesday morning. She moved toward the en-suite, the soft thud-thud of her footsteps the only sound in the quiet room.
"Tom, wake up," Anne called to Tom who is still in bed.
Behind her, Tom groaned, burying his face in the pillow to escape the intrusive sun.
"Five more minutes," he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep.
"Five minutes is the difference between the express lane and a parking lot on the I-95, Tom," Anne called back over her shoulder. She stepped into the bathroom, the click of the light switch punctuating the end of their sanctuary.
The routine was a well-oiled machine. While the shower hissed and steam began to curl around the frosted glass door, Tom finally sat up. He rubbed his face, his mind automatically categorizing the day's tasks: the quarterly reconciliations for Wells International, the 10:00 AM briefing, the mounting emails.
By the time Tom was buttoning his crisp white shirt, Anne was stationed at the vanity. The bathroom smelled of expensive soap and lilac-scented hairspray. She leaned into the mirror, her focus surgical as she applied her eyeliner. This was her war paint-the face of a top sales executive at Trips and Co.
"Did you see the news alert before we went to sleep?" Tom asked, struggling with his silk tie as he leaned against the door frame.
Anne didn't look away from her reflection. "I turned my phone off, Tom. Best decision I've made all week."
"Fair point," he conceded, catching her gaze in the mirror and leaning down to kiss her cheek. "Let's keep it that way for at least another half hour."
Breakfast was a utilitarian affair. They met in the kitchen, a space of stainless steel and minimalist marble that looked more like a showroom than home. There was no time for eggs or a sit-down meal. Tom popped two slices of sourdough into the toaster while Anne poured two glasses of chilled orange juice.
They stood at the kitchen island, side by side, scrolling through their respective professional calendars in a companionable silence. The crunch of toast and hum of the refrigerator were the only soundtrack to their morning. It was a perfect, average morning for a young couple in the climb of their lives.
"Dinner at seven?" Anne asked while grabbing her keys from the marble countertop. "There's that new bistro on 4th I've been wanting to try."
Tom paused, his hand hovering over his briefcase. He let out a long, weary breath as he thought of the 'Miscellaneous' tranches Vane had warned him about and the piles of offshore audits sitting on his server.
"Make it nine... maybe later," Tom replied. his voice tinged with regretful edge. "Vane is breathing down my neck about the quarter-end. These logistics accounts are a mess, and I've got a mountain of reconciliations that won't move themselves. Don't wait up for me."
Anne's smile faltered for a fraction of a second—a tiny crack in her professional mask—before she nodded. "Right. The grind continues. I'll see you when I see you, then."
They descended to the parking garage together but parted at their respective vehicles—Tom to his silver sedan, Anne to her charcoal SUV.
As they pulled out of the garage and onto the main artery of the city, the "normalcy" of the apartment evaporated. The highway was a stagnant river of brake lights and chrome. The rush hour was in full swing, a cacophony of honking horns and the low rumble of thousands of idling engines.
Above the gridlock, the landscape had changed since last month. Every hundred yards, the skyline was interrupted by the giants of the season.
A massive billboard on the right showed Frank Davis leaning against a tractor, a heavy wooden cross visible on a hill behind him. "RECLAIM OUR SOIL. RECLAIM OUR SOUL," the bold red text screamed. His eyes, fixed in a permanent squint of suspicion, seemed to judge every car passing beneath him.
Two miles down, a digital screen flashed with the bright, corporate teal of the Catherine Hayes campaign. Her smile was radiant, professional, and slightly hollow. "PROGRESS FOR EVERYONE. NO ONE LEFT BEHIND," the caption read, scrolling over a montage of diverse faces in a sanitized city park.
Tom switched on the radio, but the moment the commentator mentioned "polling margins," he hit the seek button until he found a station playing mindless synth-pop. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, eyes fixed on the bumper in front of him.
Like Anne, he wasn't looking at the billboards. He was looking at his watch. The election was coming, but for the Higgins, the only thing that mattered was making it to the office on time.
The sterile, climate-controlled air of Wells International was a sharp contrast to the humid morning outside. Tom swiped his badge, the familiar beep signaling the start of his nine-to-six existence.
By 9:15 AM, he was standing in the doorway of his superior's office. Marcus Vane, a man whose blood seemed to consist entirely of black coffee and market projections, didn't look up from his three-monitor setup.
"Higgins. Tell me the Q3 reconciliation for the logistics accounts is finished," Vane barked, his fingers flying across a mechanical keyboard.
"Almost, Marcus. I'm finishing the final audit on the overseas subsidiaries today," Tom replied, maintaining a neutral, professional posture.
"Good. Because with the election coming up, the volatility is going to spike. Clients are twitchy. They're moving capital like they're expecting a war, not a vote. I need every cent accounted for before the FEC starts poking around our larger donors' portfolios. Focus on the 'Miscellaneous' tranches—they're bloated this month."
Tom nodded, his mind already visualizing the rows of data. "I'll have the preliminary report on your desk by EOD."
Ten blocks away, Anne Higgins was in a different kind of battlefield. The office of Trips and Co. Traders was a cacophony of ringing phones and the frantic hum of high-speed printers.
Anne adjusted her headset, her eyes darting between a shipping manifest and a currency converter.
"Listen, Mateo," she said into her mic, her voice dropping into the persuasive, rhythmic lilt of a seasoned closer. "The tariffs on Egyptian cotton are locked for another thirty days. If we don't clear the port in Alexandria by Friday, the Davis campaign's new trade rhetoric is going to spook your insurers. I need those ten thousand units of raw twill on the water now."
She hung up, only to have the line blink again immediately. A domestic client from Ohio.
"Hi, Mrs. Gable. Yes, I saw the news. No, the Hayes proposal on textile labor won't affect your winter shipment. We've already factored in the overhead. You're safe."
Anne leaned back for a split second, rubbing her temples. She was the bridge between the world's looms and the country's closets, and today, every bridge felt like it was swaying in the wind.
At noon, the paths of the two worlds diverged completely.
In the Wells International cafeteria, Tom sat with Jayden Johnson and Sasha James. The space was a sea of navy blue and charcoal suits.
"I'm telling you," Sasha said, stabbing at her kale salad with a plastic fork, "if Davis wins and pushes that 'Internal Security' act, my commute from the suburbs is going to involve three checkpoints. It's theater, but it's annoying theater."
Jayden shrugged, leaning back with a sandwich. "Man, I don't care about the checkpoints. I care about the interest rates. My sister is trying to buy her first house. If the markets tank because Hayes loses and the 'stability' crowd panics, she's priced out forever. What about you, Tom? Who's the 'Accountant's Choice'?"
Tom took a slow sip of his water, looking at the muted news flickering on the TV across the room. "The one who keeps the spreadsheets green, Jayden. Honestly? I haven't looked at a platform in weeks. I'm just trying to survive the quarter."
"Classic Higgins," Sasha laughed. "Apoliticism is a luxury, my friend."
While they laughed, Anne didn't leave her desk. Her lunch was a lukewarm chicken wrap she ate with one hand while her other hand scrolled through a spreadsheet of Southeast Asian shipping lanes.
A notification popped up on her screen—a message from Alicia in their group chat: 'Are we up for today night? Let hang at The Tap.'
Anne ignored the notification. A client from Vietnam was calling. The election was a headline; her commission was a reality. She took a bite of her wrap, cleared her throat, and hit 'Accept.'
"Good evening, Mr. Nguyen. Let's talk about the silk shipment..."
The sun had long since dipped below the skyscrapers, leaving the city in a neon-soaked twilight. While the streetlights hummed to life, the day's professional masks began to slip, replaced by the clink of glassware and the low thrum of bass from the bars lining the downtown district.
Inside The Gilded Tap, a dimly lit pub known for its heavy mahogany bar and expensive craft brews, Anne, Bella, and Alicia occupied a corner booth. The air was thick with the scent of hops and roasted malt.
Anne leaned back, finally unbuttoning the blazer of her suit. She felt the tension in her neck start to unravel as she took a long, cold sip of her Chardonnay.
"I think I spoke to four different continents today," Anne sighed, setting her glass down. "If one more person asks me about the 'election-adjusted' shipping rate, I'm going to throw my laptop into the harbor."
Isabella "Bella" Romano laughed, though her eyes looked tired behind her stylish frames. As a dentist, her "office" was a battlefield of a different kind.
"At least your clients are on the phone, Anne. Mine are sitting in my chair, bleeding and complaining," Bella said, swirling the ice in her gin and tonic. "Do you know how many patients canceled this week? They're terrified. The health insurance premiums just jumped again. People are choosing between a root canal and their mortgage because the private providers are hiking rates before the new administration takes over. It's disgusting."
"It's more than disgusting, Bella. It's calculated," Alicia Hayes chimed in. She looked every bit the high-powered lawyer, her sharp gaze cutting through the pub's amber haze. She didn't just drink her beer; she seemed to hold it with a sense of purpose. "The system is designed to squeeze the life out of anyone who isn't sitting on a board of directors."
"Here we go," Anne teased gently, though she listened.
"I'm serious," Alicia countered, her voice dropping an octave as her passion flared. "At Miller and Brown, I see the filings. The insurance lobbies are poured into Frank Davis's pockets because he'll deregulate them into oblivion. And Catherine? She's better, sure, but she's still playing the game. Meanwhile, people like me—women who don't fit the 'traditional' mold Davis keeps preaching about—we're just line items to them. My rights are a 'debate topic' on the news, but my taxes are still paying for their security detail."
While the women debated the merits of a broken system, five blocks away, the lights were still on at Wells International.
The office was a ghost town of empty cubicles and glowing monitors. Tom sat at his desk, the blue light of his screen reflecting in his tired eyes. He was alone in a sea of silence, the only sound the rhythmic click-clack of his mechanical pencil as he checked a row of figures against a physical ledger.
He checked his watch: 9:45 PM.
His eyes blurred for a second. The "Miscellaneous" tranches Marcus Vane had mentioned were indeed bloated. He found a series of transfers—small, unremarkable amounts—moving from a logistics subsidiary to a blind trust. On paper, it looked like a standard tax hedge. But something about the frequency felt off.
He rubbed his eyes, closed the folder, and leaned back. He was too tired to be a detective. He just wanted to go home, see Anne, and sleep without dreaming of numbers.
As the elevator doors began to hiss shut, Tom's eyes drifted to the crumpled front page of The State Sentinel lying facedown on the carpet. A heavy boot print had partially obscured the masthead, but the lead image was unmistakable.
It was a wide-angle shot of a dusty town square in Oakhaven, the heart of the rural district. In the center stood Samuel Miller. He wasn't the focus of the article, but he was the face of it—captured mid-cheer at a local stump speech, his weathered hand gripping a "Davis for President" placard. Beside him, Caleb, looking younger than his seventeen years, stood with a rigid, solemn pride that bordered on defiance.
The headline, printed in a stark, aggressive font, read:
"THE SILENT VOTE SPEAKS: WHY THE HEARTLAND IS BETTING ON DAVIS."
The sub-header provided a snippet of the sentiment Tom was so determined to ignore: "In districts like Oakhaven, families like the Millers say they are tired of being the nation's 'flyover' conscience. For them, Davis isn't a politician; he's a final stand against an urban elite that regulates their farms into the dirt while subsidizing a city they don't recognize anymore."
There was a quote attributed to a 'local farmer'—Samuel—near the bottom of the fold: "We don't want their handouts, and we don't want their 'progress.' We just want our country back."
Tom's reflection in the polished brass of the elevator door flickered over the image of the Miller men. To Tom, they were just a "demographic trend," a data point that might cause a two-percent swing in the textile markets Anne traded in. He didn't see the desperation in Samuel's eyes or the burgeoning anger in his son Caleb's.
The elevator chimed, the doors sealed, and the newspaper was left behind in the fluorescent hum of the empty office. Tom stepped out into the cool air of the parking garage, his mind already shifting to the drive home, leaving the "Heartland" to rot or rise on the floor of the twelfth floor.