I collapsed from overwork and woke up in the ICU, and while my family used my money to fly to the Bahamas to scout my sister’s wedding venue, a stranger stood outside my glass door every night until the nurse handed my mother the visitor log and I watched the color drain out of her face.

Chapter 1: The ATM

The clock on my dual monitors read 11:50 PM. The corporate boardroom on the 32nd floor of my firm’s downtown Chicago headquarters was dead silent, save for the frantic, aggressive clacking of my mechanical keyboard. The air smelled of stale, burnt coffee and the metallic hum of the building’s massive HVAC system.

My name is Jessica Pierce. I was thirty-two years old, and I was the Senior Financial Officer for a tech company that was forty-eight hours away from launching a massive, high-stakes Initial Public Offering (IPO). Our CFO had suffered a sudden, stress-induced heart attack three weeks ago, and the board had unceremoniously dumped the entire weight of the billion-dollar audit directly onto my shoulders.

I hadn’t slept for more than four hours a night in a month. I was surviving on protein bars, adrenaline, and a deep, pathological fear of failure.

My head was pounding with a dull, rhythmic throb that seemed to sync perfectly with my heartbeat. My vision kept blurring around the edges, forcing me to blink hard to focus on the endless rows of financial data illuminating the dark room.

My phone, resting next to my empty water bottle, lit up with a new notification.