Chapter 2 - Nowhere Safe
Three hours later, Maya’s apartment door was splintered open.
She stood in the hallway of her Brooklyn building with her keys still in her hand, staring at the broken wood around the lock. Inside, drawers had been pulled out, clothes cut from hangers, books thrown across the floor, and framed photos smashed face down on the rug.
The nursery catalog she had circled with Preston two nights earlier had been torn in half.
Maya stepped inside slowly, one hand braced against the wall.
This was not robbery.
Her laptop remained on the desk. Her television had not been taken. Jewelry she rarely wore sat untouched in a dish near the mirror.
This was a message.
Nowhere is safe.
Her phone buzzed. A news alert.
LOCAL SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR LINKED TO EMBEZZLEMENT INQUIRY.
Her name was in the second line.
By dawn, paparazzi were outside the building.
They shouted through the lobby glass, calling her an extortionist, an addict, a fraud. Someone asked if she was selling her baby to the Hartwell family. Someone else yelled that Celeste Ashford deserved better than “a gold digger with a criminal record.”
Maya backed away from the window and slid down against the broken front door.
For the first time since the boardroom, she cried.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just the quiet, breathless kind that comes when the body realizes there is no obvious direction to run.
Preston owned the company.
Celeste owned the press.
Elliot owned the paperwork.
Maya had a baby inside her, a ruined apartment around her, and a fake criminal record being fed to reporters before police had even knocked.
Then her phone vibrated against the floorboards.
Unknown number.
She almost ignored it.
Then something in her made her answer.
“Don’t look out the window,” a man said.
His voice was deep, rough, and controlled.
Maya froze.
“Who is this?”
“Pack a bag. Only what you absolutely need. I’m parked in the alley behind your fire escape. You have five minutes.”
Her blood turned cold.
“I’m calling the police.”
“No,” he said. “Hartwell already called them first.”
Maya gripped the phone tighter.
“Who are you?”
There was a pause.
“Jonah Hartwell.”
Preston’s older brother.
May you like
The man Hartwell Innovations never mentioned unless forced.
The one Preston once called dangerous.
