The vintage landline phone on the oak desk began to ring.
The shrill, sudden sound made Ayla jump. This was a Gilliam Group safe house. Nobody was supposed to have this number.
She stared at the phone. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Slowly, she reached out and lifted the receiver.
“Hello?” Ayla whispered.
“Did you really think a cheap hotel room on Long Island could hide you from me, Ayla?”
It was Heda. Her arrogant, suffocating voice poured through the speaker, dripping with absolute power.
Ayla’s knuckles turned bone-white around the receiver. “How did you get this number?”
“The majority shareholder of this state’s largest telecom provider plays bridge at my country club every Sunday, you stupid girl,” Heda said, her tone laced with aristocratic disdain. “Every single line you attempt to use is monitored by my people. The frozen trust fund is just a small taste of what happens when you embarrass my family. You have until sunset tomorrow to withdraw the divorce petition and issue a public apology.”
“I have the medical records,” Ayla fought back, her voice shaking with desperate rage. “I will expose the doctors Axel bribed. I will burn your charity foundations to the ground.”
Heda laughed – a light, effortless sound that made Ayla’s blood run cold.
“Expose them to whom?” Heda asked. “Half the judges in New York and the entire medical review board sit on my charity committees. They eat at my dining table. They will bury your evidence before it ever reaches a courtroom.”
She paused, letting the silence crush Ayla’s hope.
“If you do not comply by sunset,” Heda continued, delivering her final, lethal blow, “I will release the sealed dossier on your biological parents. The real one – the one that proves your mother was a violent felon and your father was a cartel enforcer. I will make sure every news outlet in America knows you carry the blood of murderers. You will be a pariah.”
The line clicked. The dial tone buzzed loudly in Ayla’s ear.
The receiver slipped from her numb fingers and clattered onto the desk.
Her knees gave out. Ayla slid down the side of the desk and collapsed onto the thick Persian rug, pulling her knees to her chest, struggling to breathe. The sheer, terrifying scale of the Farrell family’s power was suffocating her. They controlled the banks. They controlled the courts. They controlled the truth.
“Are you done crying on my floor?”
Ayla’s head snapped up.
Cassius was leaning against the doorframe of the study. He had removed his suit jacket. His dark eyes watched her with a mixture of clinical observation and cruel amusement.
Ayla scrambled to her feet. Her eyes were red, but a sudden, violent spark of anger ignited in her chest.
“Did you know?” she demanded, pointing a shaking finger at him. “Did you know Heda would freeze the trust? Did you know she could bypass your security?”
Cassius walked slowly into the room and stopped directly in front of her. He crouched slightly, his large hand reaching out to grip her chin. His fingers were warm, but his hold was iron.
“Welcome to the real world, Ayla,” he said, his voice a dark, ruthless rumble. “Capital games don’t care about the law. The law is just a suggestion for people with enough money.”
He tilted her face up, forcing her to meet his eyes.
“That fake passport I gave you only buys you time,” he warned. “If you sit on this floor and cry, you are useless to me. And the Gilliam Group does not protect useless assets. I will throw you to the wolves myself.”
Ayla violently slapped his hand away.
She stepped back. The despair in her chest burned away, replaced by a cold, manic, absolute resolve. She had nothing left to lose. They had taken her money, her name, and her freedom.
She turned and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. She looked out at the pitch-black ocean.
“They want to destroy my identity?” Ayla whispered, her voice dropping to a lethal, icy calm. “Then I will destroy the only thing they care about. I will kill the Farrell Tech IPO.”
She spun around to face Cassius.
“I need a military-grade laptop,” she said, her eyes burning with absolute fire. “I need three encrypted offshore servers. And I need them right now.”
Cassius stared at her. The cruel amusement in his eyes vanished, replaced by a dark, deeply dangerous flash of approval.
He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
The study door opened. Vance walked in, carrying a heavy black titanium laptop. He set it down on the oak desk, pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up his nose, and regarded Ayla with his usual cold disdain.
“The equipment is ready,” Vance reported. “But you have a new problem, Miss Joyce. Axel Farrell just issued an industry-wide NDA warning. He has effectively blacklisted you from every PR firm, corporation, and landlord in the country.”
Ayla didn’t blink. She walked to the desk, flipped open the laptop, and placed her fingers on the keyboard.
“I don’t need a PR firm,” she said, her fingers beginning to fly across the keys in a blur of motion. “I am going to burn his house down from the inside.”
Miles away, in a luxury Manhattan penthouse, Axel sat alone in the dark.
He held a glass of whiskey in one hand and a glowing tablet in the other. Displayed on the screen was a highly detailed satellite map of the Long Island coastline. A red blinking dot pulsed steadily over the Gilliam safe house.
He hadn’t tracked her phone – she was far too intelligent to leave a digital footprint like that. Instead, he had exploited Farrell Tech’s illegal backdoor access into the state’s Department of Transportation traffic camera network. By running a predictive vehicle recognition algorithm on the armored Bentley that had collected her from the courthouse, he had traced her exact route to the coast.
Axel took a slow sip of whiskey. In the darkness, a sick, twisted smile stretched across his face.
The pale morning light filtered through the bulletproof glass of the Long Island safe house. Ayla sat frozen in the leather desk chair. She hadn’t slept. Her eyes burned from ten straight hours of staring at the glowing screen of the military-grade laptop.
She moved the cursor and clicked “Submit” on the Manhattan luxury apartment rental portal. She had used the European Union passport Cassius had provided, hoping to secure a small, anonymous studio in the city.
The screen loaded for three seconds. Then a massive red banner flashed across the display.
APPLICATION DENIED. SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER FLAGGED FOR HIGH-RISK CREDIT DEFAULT.
Ayla’s breath hitched. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
She quickly opened a new tab and logged into her credit monitoring portal. Her stomach twisted into a violent knot. Her credit score – flawless for years – was completely decimated. It sat in the gutter.
Axel hadn’t merely frozen her bank accounts. He had used Farrell Tech’s deep data access to hack into the credit bureaus, fabricating massive unpaid loans and defaulted mortgages under her name. He had digitally erased her ability to participate in normal society.
Ayla grabbed her burner phone and dialed the number of a high-end property manager she had worked with during her time as Axel’s wife.
“Hello, this is Marcus,” the voice answered.
“Marcus, it’s Ayla,” she said quickly, fighting to keep the desperation out of her voice. “I need a short-term lease. I can pay cash upfront.”
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.
More Kickass Romance Reads
Dive into irresistible romance stories packed with possessive heroes, forbidden passion, billionaire obsession, mafia intrigue, and heart-stopping twists. One chapter is never enough—your next addiction starts here.