The Trap

Riya's POV

Mateo stood in the middle of the lobby, and for a moment nobody seemed to remember how to breathe.

He had come down the private elevator without a sound, his expression carved from ice. Behind him walked four of his bodyguards, and the guards who had been about to seize me froze mid-step, as if they had been caught stealing.

He didn't look at them, he walked straight to me, took my chin gently in his fingers, and tilted my face toward the light. "Did anyone hurt you?"

"No," I said, a little breathless. "I'm fine."

He studied me for one more second. Then he turned, and the gentleness vanished as if it had never been there.

"Who gave the order to touch her?"

The receptionist's face lost all its color. "Mr. Rutherfurd, I, she wasn't on the list, she said her name was only..."

"Her name," Mateo said, very softly, "is Riya Lance. She is the only person in this building who never needs to be on a list."

"Mateo!" Lily ripped her arms free of the guards and ran to him, tears already shining on her lashes. "She insulted me. She said such cruel things. I'm your fiancée, and she..."

"I don't have a fiancée."

The lobby went deathly quiet.

Lily's mouth opened and closed. "Our families agreed..."

"Your family proposed. I refused. Twice, in writing." His voice stayed level, which made it worse. "I've been polite because I knew your father. That politeness ends today. If you ever claim that title again, you will hear from my lawyers."

For a moment, Lily looked like she'd been slapped. Then her gaze slid from Mateo to me, and something strange crossed her face. It wasn't only anger. It was something closer to dread, the look of a person watching a nightmare begin again.

"Not again," she whispered, so quietly I almost missed it.

Then she turned and fled through the glass doors, her heels clicking furiously against the marble.

Again? The word lodged in my mind like a splinter. What did she mean, again?

I didn't have time to chase the thought. Mateo had already turned to Hannah, who was edging toward the exit with her pastry box clutched to her chest.

"Miss Garcia." He didn't raise his voice. "You are no longer welcome in any Rutherfurd property. Security will escort you out."

Hannah's face twisted. "You can't..."

"Now."

Two guards moved. Hannah looked at me, her eyes bright with a hatred she no longer bothered to hide, and she hissed, low enough that only I could hear, "You'll regret this."

Then she was gone too, the receptionist was trembling, tears gathering in her eyes. "Miss Lance, I'm so sorry..."

"You're fired," Mateo said.

"Wait." I laid a hand on his arm. He turned to me, his eyes softening. "She was rude, but she was only guarding your door. A warning is enough. Let her learn from it."

He looked at me for a long moment, then sighed. "As you wish." To the receptionist, he said, "Thank her. She's more generous than I am."

***

His office occupied the entire top floor, a sweep of glass and dark wood overlooking the whole city. He guided me to a leather sofa, put a cup of tea in my hands, and waited, without a word, until my fingers stopped shaking.

"I'm sorry I wasn't downstairs," he said at last. "I was in a meeting with my phone off. I should have told them to expect you."

"It's all right."

"It isn't." He ran a hand through his hair. "Do you know I haven't boarded a single plane in three weeks? My assistant thinks I've lost my mind. I've been sending other people to every meeting I should have attended myself, because you asked me not to go."

I stared at him. I had said it once, half in desperation, expecting him to forget by morning. He had listened for three weeks.

"There's news," he went on. "My people found a woman in Oregon who used to be the Davidsons' housekeeper. She says she remembers a baby girl, and a jade pendant. She's agreed to talk to us. We can drive out this weekend."

My cup rattled against the saucer. After a whole life of not knowing, after dying without ever knowing, there was finally a door. "Thank you," I managed. "Mateo, thank you."

He smiled, and it changed his whole face, for a heartbeat I understood why Lily had looked at him that way. Why anyone would.

Then reality came crashing back. Kelvin had smiled at me like that once, too.

The memory landed like cold water. Kelvin, carrying me out of that fire. Kelvin, wiping my tears at my parents' funeral. 

Every gentle word, every steady look, every kindness had been a mask over a knife. How could I trust my own heart when it had been wrong before?

Mateo wasn't Kelvin. Everything in me said so, but my first life had taught me that everything in me was a poor witness.

I set down the tea. "I have to go. My lawyer is waiting."

He rose at once. "I'll send a driver, and a guard."

"No." It came out sharper than I intended. I softened my voice. "I mean, thank you, but I need to learn to stand on my own. Kelvin can't come within ten feet of me. I'll be careful."

He didn't like it. I could see that, in the tight line of his jaw. But he nodded. "Call me when you're home."

"I will."

I would regret that answer for the rest of my life, however long that turned out to be.

The parking garage was cold and half empty. I walked toward my car, my keys in one hand, my other hand resting on the thin silver chain at my throat, the one my adoptive mother had given me. 

Daniel had fitted a tiny tracker into its clasp last week. Two presses, and it would send my location straight to him and to Mateo.

It was a precaution. I'd told myself I was being paranoid.

I heard the footsteps too late.

A van door slid open, a hand clamped over my mouth, thick fingers digging into my jaw, and a sharp chemical smell burned my nose. I kicked and clawed, and my keys scattered across the concrete with a clatter. My fingers scrabbled at my neck, found the clasp, and pressed once.

Twice, then the world went black.

I woke to the smell of rust and cold concrete.

My wrists were bound behind my back. My head throbbed, above me, a single bulb swung from a chain, painting the walls of an abandoned warehouse in sickly yellow light. Somewhere nearby, water dripped in a steady, patient rhythm.

"Awake already? You always were strong."

I knew that voice. I'd have known it in my sleep.

Kelvin sat on a wooden crate a few feet away, his elbows on his knees, his tie loose, his eyes bloodshot and hollow. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in days. He looked, strangely, almost relieved to see me.

"The judge said ten feet," he said, and gave a hoarse laugh. "Look at that. I'm closer than that, Riya."

I swallowed. My mouth tasted like metal. "You'll go to prison for this."

"Will I?" He tilted his head. "Who's going to testify? You?" He stood and began to pace, one hand dragging through his hair. "Do you know what it's like? You followed me for years. You begged me to look at you. You gave me everything, and I was the only man who would ever put up with a woman like you. And then one morning you wake up and look at me as if I'm something you stepped in." His voice cracked. "What did I do? What changed?"

You murdered me, I thought. You just don't know it yet.

"You want my money," I said instead. "That's all this ever was."

His pacing stopped. Slowly, he smiled, and that was the moment I understood that the man in front of me was no longer pretending at all.

"I want your signature," he said. "The company, the house, the accounts. Then you can go back to your billionaire, and I'll disappear." He crouched in front of me, close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his eyes. "Or maybe I won't. Accidents happen to people all the time, Riya."

He rose and strode into the shadows at the far end of the warehouse, murmuring into his phone. A moment later, I heard the scrape of a heavy bolt.

The moment his back was turned, I curled my fingers toward my collar. The clasp was still there. I pressed it, once, twice, three times, and a tiny red light blinked against my skin.

Please. Please let someone be watching.

"You really thought I wouldn't notice?"

I froze.

Kelvin had returned without a sound. He plucked the chain from my neck as easily as picking a flower and dangled it in front of my face, the little red light still blinking. He smiled, almost kindly. Then he dropped it onto the concrete and crushed it beneath his heel.

"Hannah told me about Daniel's little project," he said. "I've had a signal jammer in this place since yesterday. Nobody is coming, sweetheart. Nobody even knows where you are."

He drew something from his jacket. Pen and paper. Behind them, a syringe.

My heart slammed against my ribs. "Kelvin, don't..."

And then my wrist began to burn.

It felt like a brand pressed to my skin. I cried out and doubled over, and through the tears I saw the mark glow through my sleeve, a harsh and sudden white. The numbers that had been ticking calmly downward for weeks, measuring out months, suddenly began to spin. They tumbled backward faster and faster, months into days, days into hours.

FATE HAS CHANGED ITS MIND.

The countdown stopped.

00:09:59.

Ten minutes. I had ten minutes to live.

Kelvin couldn't see it, but he saw my face, and for the first time that night he faltered. "What is it? What's wrong with you?"

I couldn't answer, the numbers were already falling again, second by second, burning into my skin.

Then, somewhere above us, a door slammed open, footsteps rang across the metal catwalks, running, a voice shouted my name, ragged and desperate, a voice I knew, but it wasn't Mateo's.