Chapter 3: The Price of Trust

The smell hit her first—antiseptic, cold and sharp, cutting beneath the steady beep of a heart monitor.

For a few seconds, Maya didn't know where she was. All she knew was that her body ached in a way that felt unfamiliar and wrong. Then the memory returned in fragments: the crack of glass, the floor rushing up to meet her, Julian's weight over her back.

She sat up too quickly.

Pain lanced through her shoulder, stealing her breath.

“Easy. Don't move too fast.”

The nurse didn't even look up immediately. She said it with the casual efficiency of someone who had probably repeated the same warning a hundred times that week, her eyes still fixed on the computer at the foot of the bed.

Maya blinked until the room came into focus—pale walls, blinds drawn against the morning light, an IV stand beside her bed.

Hospital.

Not Voss Tower.

Her hand went to her chest before her mind had caught up with why. When it found nothing there, panic took over.

“Where's my bag?”

The nurse glanced over. “On the chair.”

It was exactly where she'd said.

Maya grabbed it and dug through the contents with unsteady fingers. Relief hit her when they closed around the envelope.

Still there.

Untouched.

Her name was written across the front in her father's handwriting, and beneath it was the sentence that had been circling her mind since she'd first seen it.

Do not trust Julian Voss.

The night came back in pieces after that—the lights dying, the window exploding inward, Julian dragging her down before her mind had even registered the danger, the strange warmth of his body braced over hers.

Then nothing.

A blank space where the rest of the night should have been.

“Where is he?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“Mr. Voss?” The nurse's eyebrows lifted slightly. “He's the one who brought you in. He left before the examination was finished, though. Didn't say where he was going.”

Of course he had.

Maya stared at the envelope in her lap. She hadn't expected devotion from Julian—hadn't wanted it, if she was being honest—but there was something about his absence that unsettled her anyway.

If he wanted to control her, why had he pulled her out of the line of fire himself?

And if he really was the man her father had warned her about, why had he allowed her to see the warning with his own eyes?

The door opened before she could chase the thought any further.

Julian had changed his jacket, but everything else about him carried traces of the previous night. His collar was slightly wrinkled, and a thin red line ran along his cheekbone where a piece of glass had cut him.

It was the first time she'd seen him look anything less than perfectly composed.

The sight did something strange to her chest.

She refused to examine it.

“You're awake,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“You're hurt.”

He touched the cut as though he'd forgotten it was there. “It's nothing.”

“That's what people say when they don't want to explain.”

Their eyes held for a beat.

Then his gaze dropped to the envelope in her hand.

“You opened it?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Her fingers tightened around the paper.

“Why did my father write your name on a letter meant for me?”

“I don't know.”

“That's convenient.”

“I didn't say it wasn't.”

He said it without heat, which somehow made it worse. He pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat down, his movements careful enough to suggest that his injuries were worse than he wanted her to know.

Maya studied him.

“You expect me to marry you after someone shot at us on my first night at Voss Tower, and my father's warning tells me not to trust you. Do you understand how that sounds?”

“When you put it that way, it sounds complicated.”

“It is complicated.” She let out a short, humorless laugh. “My brother is in a hospital bed two floors from mine. My father spent three years being called a thief before he died. Someone is hunting for whatever he left behind, and a billionaire I met yesterday wants me to marry him. Complicated doesn't begin to cover it.”

Julian's expression remained calm.

“Danny's surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

Her heart stumbled.

“You paid?”

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

She stared at him, waiting for the relief that answer should have brought. Instead, something in her chest tightened.

“You could have waited until I signed.”

“I could have.”

“But you didn't.”

“No.”

Maya looked down at the envelope in her lap, wanting badly for that decision to mean something good about him.

She couldn't quite let herself believe it did.

“There's something else,” Julian said.

The change in his voice made her look up.

“The police are treating last night's shooting as an attack on me. They haven't connected it to your father's case yet.”

“Yet?”

His jaw tightened before he answered.

“Whoever fired the shot didn't stay around long enough to be identified. Security found an abandoned car six blocks away. There were no plates, and nothing in the vehicle that could identify the owner.”

Her stomach dropped.

“So it wasn't random.”

“The shooter had a clear line of sight into that room. Nobody gets that kind of angle by accident.”

She could still hear the glass breaking if she let herself think about it too hard.

“Were they trying to kill you?”

“I don't know.”

“Then who?”

His eyes settled on her.

“That's what concerns me.”

The silence that followed wasn't dramatic. It was simply heavy in the way silence becomes when neither person wants to say the next thing aloud.

Maya looked toward the window. The blinds were still drawn, blocking out most of the daylight.

“You think they wanted me.”

“I think it's possible.”

“Because of my father.”

“Possibly.”

“Then how does marrying you protect me from that?”

“It doesn't.”

He said it plainly.

“But it puts you somewhere I can protect you, and somewhere anyone trying to reach you will have to get through my security first.”

“That sounds like the same thing with better branding.”

Something almost resembling amusement touched his expression.

“It isn't. Protection doesn't make the danger disappear. It means someone's prepared when it comes.”

She hated how reasonable that sounded.

She hated even more that some small, traitorous part of her did feel safer with him in the room.

She reminded herself that safety and trust were not the same thing.

“Open the letter,” Julian said.

“I thought you told me not to.”

“Not here.”

“Then where?”

“My apartment.”

She gave him a flat look.

“Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“Because going to your apartment sounds like an excellent way to disappear.”

Something shifted at the corner of his mouth—not quite a smile, but close enough for her to notice.

“You're learning.”

“I've always been smart.”

“I noticed.”

The words landed somewhere they shouldn't have.

Maya looked away first, annoyed at herself for feeling anything at all.

Julian stood.

“I need to speak to the surgeon before he's off shift.”

“You already paid for it.”

“Money doesn't guarantee competence.”

He started toward the door.

Maya let him get almost there before his name left her mouth.

“Julian.”

He stopped.

She wasn't entirely sure why she'd called him. Maybe because she wanted an answer she already suspected he couldn't give her honestly.

“Did my father ever meet you?”

Julian went still with one hand on the door.

“Yes.”

Her breath caught.

“When?”

“Before the investigation. I met him twice.”

“And you never told me that.”

“You never asked.”

“My father's been dead for three years. How exactly was I supposed to know to ask?”

Something moved across his face then—regret, perhaps, or something closer to guilt. It disappeared almost as quickly as it came.

“I should have told you.”

“Yes.”

“I wasn't ready to.”

“Why?”

He looked toward the hallway rather than at her.

“Because the second time I saw your father, he told me someone inside my own family was going to destroy me.”

Maya's pulse quickened.

“He said if I wanted the truth, I should stop looking at the people outside the company and start looking at the ones sitting next to me at the table.”

Her stomach tightened.

“Who did he mean?”

“I don't know.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I expect you to understand that I haven't solved this either.”

Julian opened the door.

“Get some rest. I'll come back tonight.”

“Wait.”

He paused.

“I'm not agreeing to marry you.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you still doing all this?”

“Because your brother needs surgery.”

“That isn't the only reason.”

Something in his posture hardened.

“No.”

“Then what is?”

The pause stretched long enough that Maya thought he might not answer.

Finally, he looked at her.

“Your father once saved my life.”

Before she could ask how, he walked out.

The door clicked shut behind him.

For the first time since waking up, Maya forgot about the envelope.

Her father had saved Julian Voss's life.

Julian had carried that knowledge for three years and never mentioned it—not when he'd sat across from her with a marriage contract, and not when he'd pulled her away from the shattered window while glass rained around them.

None of it fit.

Her father had spent years wearing the label of a thief while Julian's family tore his name apart in the newspapers. Yet Julian believed, apparently, that the man had been framed.

Someone was hunting for whatever evidence her father had left behind.

Someone had put a bullet through a window the night before.

And now the man she'd been raised to distrust had told her he owed her father his life.

Maya sat with the envelope for a long moment before finally sliding her finger beneath the flap.

Inside was a single folded page.

Her father's handwriting filled it.

Maya,

If you're reading this, then something has happened to me, and there's no one left I trust to tell you the truth.

Don't believe everything you've been told about the Voss family.

But don't trust Julian Voss either.

He knows more than he'll ever admit.

Maya's eyes moved quickly over the next lines.

There's a reason they accused me.

There's a reason they needed me silent.

And there's a reason they'll come for you if they find what I left behind.

Her fingers tightened around the paper.

Don't go to the police.

Don't contact anyone connected to Voss Holdings.

And whatever you do, don't let Julian find the key.

Maya stopped.

She read the final line twice.

Then she turned the page over.

Nothing.

She checked the envelope itself, searching for a second note or something hidden inside.

Nothing.

Only the warning.

And the question it left behind.

What key?

A soft knock interrupted her before she could think about it any further.

Maya folded the letter quickly and slipped it beneath her pillow.

“Come in.”

The door opened.

The man who stepped inside wasn't a nurse.

She knew that before he'd even finished closing the door. There was something too deliberate about the way he moved, too much awareness in his eyes as they swept briefly across the room.

“Miss Reed?”

Maya sat straighter.

“Yes?”

He reached into his pocket and placed a small brass key on the table beside her bed.

He didn't explain.

Maya stared at it.

The number 317 was stamped into the metal.

A thin strip of paper had been wrapped around the key.

Three words were written across it in handwriting she recognized instantly.

He doesn't know.

Maya looked up.

The man was already turning toward the door.

“Wait.”

He didn't stop.

Maya threw the blanket aside and hurried after him.

Her bare feet hit the cold hospital floor as she reached the hallway, but the corridor was empty.

He was gone.

She stood there, breathing hard, the key clenched in her hand.

Then her phone rang.

Unknown number.

Maya hesitated before answering.

“Hello?”

For several seconds, there was only silence.

She could hear her own breathing.

Then a man's voice came through the line, calm and unhurried.

“Your father should have taken the secret to his grave.”

Maya's blood ran cold.

“Who is this?”

“You're making the same mistake he did.”

“What mistake?”

A short, quiet laugh.

“Trusting the wrong man.”

The call ended.

Maya slowly lowered the phone.

Across the corridor, the elevator doors opened.

Julian stepped out.

His eyes found her immediately.

Then they dropped to the brass key in her hand.

Something changed in his face.

The color drained from it.

“Maya,” he said quietly.

She closed her fingers around the key.

“Where did you get that?”

For the first time since she'd met Julian Voss, she saw something she hadn't expected to see.

Fear.

And suddenly, Maya knew one thing for certain.

Julian Voss was afraid of that key.