“Hack the city’s traffic cameras!” he screamed, his chest heaving. “Tear the grid apart. Find her!”
Ayla sat in the back of the cab as her breathing slowly steadied. She got off near Central Park and walked into a small, dimly lit tea room tucked behind a bookstore.
Chloe was already there, sitting in a private booth at the back, nervously shredding a paper napkin. When Ayla slid into the seat across from her, Chloe let out a massive sigh of relief and threw her arms around her neck.
“Thank God you’re okay,” she whispered.
As she pulled back, her eyes darted nervously toward the window, her body rigid with unnatural tension. She reached under the table and pushed a heavy, unmarked brown paper bag across to Ayla.
“One hundred thousand dollars,” Chloe said, her voice trembling slightly. “I had to use a shadow broker in Chinatown. My accounts are heavily monitored, but I managed to secure this through a back channel. The bills are unmarked and non-sequential. Axel’s financial team can’t trace it.”
Ayla noticed the slight tremor in Chloe’s hands and the evasive shift in her gaze, but in her exhausted state she attributed it to the paralyzing terror of defying Axel’s financial blockade.
“Ayla, Axel is acting like a rabid dog,” Chloe said. “He has private security tearing the city apart. He’s using his connections with the local syndicates.”
Ayla let out a cold, sharp laugh. “The harder he looks, the more mistakes he’ll make. He’s bleeding money, and his ego is driving him insane.”
She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I got the job at Gilliam Group. I start Monday.”
Chloe gasped. “Ayla, are you crazy? Cassius Gilliam is a monster. He’s worse than Axel. He destroys people for fun.”
Ayla looked out the window at the grey sky over Central Park, her eyes hard and unyielding.
“In Wall Street, you don’t survive by playing nice,” she said, her voice completely devoid of fear. “You survive by finding the biggest, most vicious predator in the jungle and feeding your enemies to him.”
She grabbed the bag of cash and stood.
“I have one last thing to do before Monday,” she said. “I have to get my driver’s license back from Cassius. And I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Ayla sat at a small wrought-iron table outside a cafe directly across the street from the Gilliam Group headquarters. The cold wind whipped her hair across her face, but she didn’t move. She kept her eyes locked on the massive revolving glass doors of the building.
The heavy brown paper bag containing one hundred thousand dollars in cash rested securely between her feet.
She couldn’t simply walk through the front doors. Vance had her face memorized and would have security remove her before she reached the elevator banks.
Ayla pulled out her burner phone and dialed the internal HR extension she had saved from her interview.
“Gilliam Group Human Resources,” a polite voice answered.
“This is Ayla Joyce, the new Senior Director of PR,” she said, her voice sharp and authoritative. “Transfer me to the executive penthouse. Vance’s desk.”
A brief pause, a click, and then the line began to ring.
“Executive office,” Vance’s cold, mechanical voice came through the speaker.
“Vance, it’s Ayla. I need to speak with Cassius.”
Vance let out a harsh, dismissive breath. “Miss Joyce. I told you not to call this line. Having an employment offer does not grant you access to Mr. Gilliam. He is currently unavailable to everyone.”
“I am not calling about the job,” Ayla pressed, tightening her grip on the phone. “I am calling to settle the insurance claim for the Maybach. I have the cash. I want my driver’s license back.”
“The legal department handles property damage,” Vance replied, his tone dripping with ice. “As for your identification card, Mr. Gilliam has not issued any directives regarding its return. Goodbye.”
The line went dead.
Ayla lowered the phone. Vance’s wording was precise: Mr. Gilliam has not issued any directives. That meant Vance didn’t have the ID. Cassius was keeping it on his person.
Her eyes swept the street, her mind calculating a new angle of attack.
Her gaze stopped on a sleek refrigerated delivery van pulling up to the side service entrance of the Gilliam building. The elegant, minimalist logo of Le Bernardin – one of New York’s most exclusive three-star Michelin restaurants – was printed on its side.
Ayla’s memory surfaced a detail from her research on Cassius. He suffered from severe PTSD from his military service, which had manifested as a crippling eating disorder. He rarely ate solid food and survived almost entirely on specialized, nutrient-dense liquid meals prepared exclusively by a private Michelin chef.
She grabbed her bag of cash, stood, and crossed the busy street, dodging yellow cabs. The driver – a young man in a crisp white uniform – stood at the back of the van checking a clipboard.
Ayla walked straight up to him, reached into her coat pocket, and pressed five folded hundred-dollar bills directly into the front pocket of his apron.
The driver jumped, eyes widening. “Hey, what are you-“
“I am Mr. Gilliam’s new private clinical nutritionist,” Ayla interrupted, switching to rapid, flawless French to assert immediate authority. “He is experiencing a severe caloric deficit today. I need to personally deliver his thermal meal box to ensure he consumes it. Hand it to me.”
The driver hesitated, visibly unsettled by her perfect French and commanding posture.
“Today’s meal must strictly adhere to his specialized medical directives,” Ayla continued smoothly, “particularly regarding the allergen protocols and lipid content. Give me the box, or I will personally inform the executive chef that you delayed his critical medical intake.”
The driver swallowed hard. He reached into the van and produced a sleek, black, temperature-controlled titanium lockbox.
“Take my jacket,” he said nervously, already shrugging it off. “Security won’t let you through the service entrance without the restaurant insignia.”
Ayla pulled the oversized white coat on over her clothes, raised her black face mask over her nose, and picked up the heavy thermal box.
She walked through the side service doors. The security guard glanced at the Michelin logo on her jacket, recognized the familiar black box, and waved her through without a second look.
Ayla stepped into the stainless-steel service elevator and swiped her hand over the sensor. The elevator shot upward, bypassing the lobby entirely and rising straight to the penthouse level.
The doors slid open with a soft ping.
She stepped into a dimly lit carpeted hallway and heard Vance’s voice echoing from the far end of the corridor – he was aggressively berating two junior executives. Ayla held her breath and moved silently, slipping behind a massive imported indoor palm tree. She waited until Vance turned his back, then crossed the hallway in a few quick strides and slipped through the slightly ajar frosted-glass double doors of Cassius’s private office.
The room was massive and almost entirely dark, lit only by the eerie blue glow of six Bloomberg terminal screens displaying real-time global financial data.
Cassius stood with his back to her, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the Manhattan skyline, a heavy crystal glass of whiskey in his hand. The sheer physical presence of the man made the air in the room feel thin. He radiated a dark, suffocating isolation.
At the soft click of the door, he didn’t turn around.
“Put the box on the desk and get out,” he said. His voice was a low, gravelly rumble that resonated in Ayla’s chest.
She didn’t leave. She pulled the face mask down to her chin, walked to the center of the room, lifted the heavy titanium box, and slammed it down onto the custom-carved rosewood executive desk.
The thud echoed like a gunshot in the silent room.
Cassius’s broad shoulders tensed instantly. He spun around, his eyes flashing with the lethal instinct of a predator whose territory had been breached.
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