Sitting perfectly spaced on the velvet were over a dozen Hermes bags – Himalayan crocodiles, limited edition Kellys, rare Constance bags. Millions of dollars in leather and hardware, bought to make her look like the perfect trophy wife.
Ayla walked to the utility room, grabbed three massive heavy-duty black trash bags, and returned to the closet. She didn’t bother with the orange boxes or the dust covers.
She seized a two-hundred-thousand-dollar Himalayan Birkin by the handles and shoved it into the first bag. Then another. Then another. She swept them off the shelves like cheap groceries.
Just as she stuffed a custom Chanel haute couture gown into the second bag, her burner phone rang.
It was Chloe.
Ayla answered it, pinning the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she tied the bag shut.
“Chloe, I’m almost done-“
“Ayla.” Chloe’s voice was completely broken. She was sobbing.
Ayla stopped moving. Her hands froze on the plastic knot. “What’s wrong?”
“Axel is a psychopath,” Chloe cried, her breath hitching. “He just terminated every single corporate retainer contract the Farrell Group has with my father’s law firm.”
Ayla’s stomach cramped violently. The air in the closet suddenly felt too thin to breathe.
“It gets worse,” Chloe choked out. “He called his friends on Wall Street. They’re initiating a hostile short-sell on my father’s firm. My dad is panicking. He just froze all my personal checking accounts. He told me if I ever speak to you again, he’ll disown me.”
Ayla closed her eyes. The guilt hit her like a punch to the throat.
Axel was employing a scorched-earth policy – destroying anyone who dared to stand near her.
“Chloe, listen to me,” Ayla said, forcing her voice to stay absolutely firm while hiding the tremor in her chest. “Do exactly what your father says. Cut me off. Block this number.”
“But Ayla, you have no money!” Chloe sobbed. “Where will you go?”
“I have a backup plan,” Ayla said smoothly. “I’m safe. Protect yourself. I am so sorry.”
She pulled the phone from her ear and ended the call.
She stared at the black screen. She was completely, utterly alone. There was no safety net left.
She grabbed the heavy plastic bags and dragged them across the hardwood floor to the private elevator. The concrete walls of the underground parking garage echoed with the sound of plastic scraping against stone.
She walked toward her designated parking spot, expecting to load the bags into the Mercedes G-Wagon she kept in the city.
She stopped dead.
A heavy, bright yellow steel boot was clamped firmly around the front left tire of the G-Wagon.
The building manager, a tall man in a grey suit, emerged from the security booth, his face devoid of sympathy.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Farrell,” he said coldly. “Mr. Farrell called an hour ago. He instructed us to immobilize all vehicles registered under your name. You are not permitted to drive them off the property.”
Ayla’s jaw clenched so hard her teeth ached.
She didn’t waste her breath on the manager. Her eyes swept the dimly lit garage.
In the far corner, covered in a thin layer of dust, sat a black Ford Explorer with a Farrell Group fleet license plate on the back – a utility vehicle personally assigned to Jared for executive errands. It was not registered under her name.
The manager turned his back to answer a call on his radio.
Ayla dropped her bags. She moved quickly and silently to the security booth, whose glass door was propped open. She reached inside, her fingers brushing the metal hooks of the spare key box, and closed around a Ford key fob. She slipped it into her pocket.
She walked back, grabbed her bags, hauled them to the Ford Explorer, threw them into the trunk, and slammed it shut.
She climbed into the driver’s seat and hit the push-to-start button. The engine roared to life.
She slammed the car into gear and sped up the exit ramp, leaving the manager shouting in her rearview mirror.
The sky over Manhattan had turned a bruised, dark grey.
Ayla drove deep into SoHo, avoiding the main avenues with their heavy camera surveillance, and pulled up to an unmarked high-end vintage luxury boutique. She dragged the black trash bags inside.
The owner – a sharp-eyed French woman with a tape measure around her neck – looked annoyed at the sight of the garbage bags. Then Ayla unknotted the plastic and dumped fifteen extremely rare Hermes bags onto the glass display counter.
The French woman’s jaw dropped. She stopped breathing for a full second before her eyes narrowed with greed. She could see Ayla was desperate.
“No boxes. No receipts,” the owner said, tapping her manicured nails on the glass. “I can give you forty percent of market value. Cash.”
Ayla let out a cold, sharp laugh. She leaned over the counter and held the owner’s gaze.
“That Himalayan Birkin is one of five in the world,” Ayla said, switching to flawless, rapid-fire French. “The hardware is eighteen-karat white gold. If I walk this over to Christie’s auction house, it will sell for three hundred percent over retail. You know it, and I know it.”
The owner blinked, caught off guard by the perfect French and the absolute authority in Ayla’s voice.
“Eighty percent of market value for the entire lot,” Ayla said, her tone leaving zero room for negotiation. “Or I pack them up and walk down the street.”
For twenty minutes, they waged a brutal, rapid-fire psychological war over the leather goods.
Finally, the French woman let out a heavy sigh of defeat. She walked to her safe and pulled out a heavy checkbook, writing out a bearer check drawn from a Swiss bank – untraceable, unfreezable. She slid the paper across the glass.
Three million dollars.
Ayla’s cold fingers closed around it. The tension in her shoulders cracked and released in a wave of pure, physical relief. She had her war chest.
She folded the check, tucked it into a waterproof pouch in her handbag’s hidden compartment, and walked out of the boutique.
The cold wind hit her face. The check was security – but it was also a target. Cashing a Swiss bearer check of that magnitude required careful handling through a private banker, a process that would take at least twenty-four hours to execute without triggering international money-laundering alarms. For now, it was just paper. She was still exposed.
But she felt lighter. She felt dangerous.
Ayla climbed back into the Ford Explorer, pulled out her tablet, and began searching for a luxury short-term rental in Midtown. She needed a fortress. She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, her eyes fixed on the screen.
She didn’t look in her rearview mirror.
She didn’t see the massive black Maybach Pullman easing slowly out of an alleyway across the street, its tinted windows hiding the predator inside.
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