Chapter 2 - THE ORDER THAT LEFT HER IN THE COLD
For several seconds Maya could not answer him.
Elias Conti's face hovered above her through a curtain of snow, sharp and furious and strangely unreal. The city lights behind him broke into halos. She tried to focus on his mouth because the rest of him kept drifting in and out of the white.
"What the hell are you doing out here?"
She wanted to tell him that this was an absurd question. People did not usually choose to collapse in snowdrifts while wearing three-inch heels. She wanted to say she had been trying to go home, that the subway had been closed, that her phone had been useless, that Manhattan had somehow become a maze designed specifically to punish women who worked too late.
Instead, her teeth clicked together so violently that the first sound out of her mouth was nonsense.
Elias swore.
Then his coat came off.
He wrapped it around her shoulders, pulled her against his chest, and shouted over the wind. A black SUV jumped the curb thirty feet away. Two of his men spilled out before it had fully stopped.
"Call Dr. Levin. Penthouse. Now."
One of them stared at Maya.
That was the first moment she understood how bad she looked.
Elias's hand went to the back of her neck. His palm was hot. Or maybe she was simply that cold.
"Maya. Stay with me."
"I'm fine."
His eyes darkened.
"That is the stupidest thing you've ever said to me."
She almost laughed. It came out as a weak cough.
He lifted her.
The movement should have embarrassed her. Maya had spent two years making herself small enough that no one could accuse her of needing anything. She handled emergencies. She found replacement passports. She rearranged meetings after arrests that officially never happened. She remembered birthdays Elias forgot and funeral anniversaries he pretended not to remember.
Being carried through a Manhattan blizzard by her employer was not on any calendar she had ever managed.
Her cheek pressed against his shirt.
He was warm.
That was the last clear thing she remembered.
When Maya opened her eyes again, she was beneath three blankets in a bedroom she recognized only because she had ordered the linens.
The penthouse guest suite.
A gray-haired doctor sat beside the bed checking her pulse. Elias stood near the windows in shirtsleeves, his hair still damp from snow. His party clothes were gone. So was the party.
"What time is it?" she whispered.
"Eleven twenty-three," Elias said.
Her eyes widened.
"The contracts—"
He crossed the room so quickly the doctor glanced up.
"If you say one more word about those contracts, I will personally burn every page."
"That would create compliance issues."
The doctor's mouth twitched.
Elias looked as though murder had briefly become preferable.
"Your temperature was dangerously low," Dr. Levin said. "You're lucky Mr. Conti found you when he did."
Maya frowned.
"Why did you?"
Elias did not answer immediately.
The doctor finished his examination, instructed her to stay warm, drink fluids, and remain under observation for several hours. When the bedroom door closed behind him, the silence changed.
Maya pushed herself higher against the pillows.
Elias remained by the window.
"I saw you leave," he said.
She waited.
"I was speaking to Alessandra Rossi."
"The woman in silver."
His eyes moved to hers.
"Yes."
"I wasn't asking."
"No. You were judging."
"I was leaving."
He ignored that.
"I noticed you weren't wearing the coat you use when it's snowing."
Maya looked toward the chair beside the bed. Her thin camel-colored coat hung there, wet and useless.
"You know my coats?"
"I know what enters my office."
That answer sounded more like him.
He continued.
"Ten minutes later, one of the lobby cameras showed you standing outside trying to use your phone. Then the feed switched."
"Switched?"
"To a prerecorded loop."
The remaining fog in Maya's head vanished.
"What?"
Elias pushed away from the window.
"Someone replaced nine minutes of lobby footage."
She stared.
"Why would anyone do that?"
"That is what I intend to find out."
He picked up his phone.
"Your car service was canceled at 9:51."
"I didn't order a car."
"I did."
That stopped her.
He had returned to the party after their eyes met. Apparently, he had also noticed her leaving and instructed someone to arrange transportation.
Maya tried to reconcile those facts with the man who regularly forgot she required food.
"The request went through the executive transportation account," Elias said. "At 9:52, it was canceled using your employee credentials."
"I was in the elevator."
"I know."
A colder sensation than the snow moved through her.
Elias held up another screen.
"At 9:55, lobby security received a message from the executive office stating that you had been terminated for misconduct and were not to receive vehicle assistance, building access, or staff support."
Maya stared at him.
"Terminated?"
"The message carried my digital authorization."
"You didn't send it."
"If I had fired you, Maya, you would know."
Despite everything, the sentence irritated her.
"Comforting."
"It was meant to be."
"It failed."
His mouth almost moved.
Then she remembered Frank DeLuca standing in her doorway.
You're too dedicated, sweetheart. Get out of here. Live a little.
Maya sat straighter.
"Elias."
His gaze sharpened at the use of his first name. She almost always called him Mr. Conti.
"Frank saw me."
"What?"
"Frank DeLuca. Around nine forty-five. He came into the office and asked why I was still there."
Elias went completely still.
"What exactly did he say?"
She repeated it.
By the time she finished, Elias no longer looked angry.
Anger, she had learned, was loud compared with whatever came after it.
He called someone.
"Bring DeLuca upstairs."
A pause.
Another.
Elias's eyes hardened.
"When?"
He ended the call.
"What?"
"Frank left the building at ten oh-two."
"That isn't strange."
"It is if he never checked out with security and his driver has been waiting in the garage for ninety minutes."
Maya swallowed.
Elias moved to the desk beside the bed and opened a laptop.
"Tell me about the contracts."
"What about them?"
"Why were you still working?"
"You left them with a note."
"I left six contracts."
"There were nine."
His fingers stopped above the keyboard.
Maya felt the room get quieter.
"Nine?"
"Three additional folders were on the bottom of the stack. Same black covers, same priority tabs."
"I did not put them there."
She threw back the blankets.
Elias looked up.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting the folders."
"You are not walking anywhere."
"They're in your office."
"I have men."
"They'll touch my system."
"Your system?"
"My color coding."
For the first time that night, his expression became openly incredulous.
"Maya."
"Red tabs mean signature issue. Blue means financial review. Yellow means legal. Green means something is wrong but I don't yet know why."
He stared.
"You created a color for suspicion?"
"Of course."
"Why?"
"Because working for you requires one."
That did it. A brief, unwilling laugh escaped him.
The sound surprised both of them.
Then Elias called Caleb Moretti, his head of internal security, and ordered the office sealed.
Within fifteen minutes, the folders were brought to the guest suite in transparent evidence sleeves.
Maya sat wrapped in a blanket while Elias laid them across the foot of the bed.
Six were familiar.
Three were not.
The unfamiliar contracts concerned a waterfront redevelopment consortium called Meridian Harbor Group. On paper, Meridian was purchasing abandoned storage buildings in Red Hook for conversion into cold-chain logistics facilities.
Maya pointed to the green tab she had placed on the first contract.
"Look at the insurance clause."
Elias read.
"Routine."
"No. Look at the named loss-payee."
"Northstar Civic Trust."
"Now the second contract."
Same name.
The third.
Again.
Elias searched the company database.
No results.
Maya watched his face.
"Exactly."
"Could be a lender."
"Then it would appear in the financing disclosures."
He flipped pages.
"It doesn't."
"And the signing authority is wrong."
His eyes lifted.
"My name is there."
"Your name is typed there. But the authorization block uses code EC-7."
"So?"
"You stopped using EC-7 fourteen months ago after the Staten Island audit. Current code is EC-11."
Elias stared at her.
"How do you know that?"
"I update your signature packets."
He said nothing.
Maya felt an old irritation sharpen.
"You pay me to know things nobody notices."
"I pay you to manage my office."
"That is the polite description."
His gaze lingered on her longer than necessary.
Then he looked back down.
"Someone wanted these signed tonight."
"Yes."
"By me."
"Or by whoever has access to your signature process."
Elias's phone buzzed.
Caleb's voice came through on speaker.
"We traced the cancellation of Miss Hart's car."
"Who?"
"Request came from Executive Station Four."
Maya knew every workstation in the executive suite.
Her stomach tightened.
"That's Frank's desk," she said.
Caleb continued.
"The termination order came from the same machine."
Elias's face became stone.
"Find him."
"We are."
"And Caleb?"
"Yes."
"Nobody leaves the building."
Another pause.
"That may be a problem."
"Why?"
"Someone already did."
Caleb sent a photograph.
Elias opened it.
Maya saw a black sedan exiting the private garage at 10:06. The camera angle caught the passenger profile.
Frank DeLuca.
But he was not alone.
Beside him sat a man Maya recognized immediately.
Sebastian Conti.
Elias's uncle.
The man who had taught Elias how to shoot.
The man who had stood beside his father at every family wedding and funeral.
The man whose signature appeared on half the syndicate's legitimate holding companies.
Maya looked at Elias.
He did not blink.
Outside the windows, fireworks began exploding prematurely above the river.
Red light flashed across his face.
"Call the garage," he said.
Caleb answered through the speaker. "Already did."
"And?"
"Mr. Sebastian's driver says he was told to take the night off."
Elias closed the laptop.
Maya's heart was pounding.
"Maybe Frank went with him voluntarily."
"He did."
"Then why try to freeze me?"
Elias looked toward the three green-tabbed contracts.
"Because," he said quietly, "someone thought you had seen enough to become dangerous."
Maya felt something inside her change.
For two years, she had believed invisibility kept her safe.
Now she understood the opposite might be true.
Being invisible had allowed her to stand close enough to see everything.
Elias moved toward the door.
"Where are you going?"
"To find my uncle."
Maya pushed herself upright.
"I'm coming."
"No."
"I found the discrepancy."
"You also nearly died an hour ago."
"Because someone involved in this thinks I'm stupid enough to walk into a blizzard and disappear."
"Maya—"
"If you leave me locked in a bedroom while men discuss the documents I found, then whoever did this still gets what he wanted."
He stopped.
She saw the argument forming.
Then he looked at her differently.
Not as a secretary.
Not as an inconvenience.
As someone inside the problem.
"Get dressed," he said.
She blinked.
"You have ten minutes."
"Doctor said—"
"I thought you wanted to come."
"I do."
"Then stop arguing with your own victory."
Maya climbed out of bed slowly.
At the door, Elias turned.
"One more thing."
"What?"
"From this moment forward, you do not leave my sight without Caleb or me knowing where you are."
She folded her arms.
"That sounds disturbingly close to imprisonment."
"It is protection."
"Those are often the same word in your world."
His eyes met hers.
"Not in mine."
Before Maya could answer, Caleb appeared in the doorway, pale beneath his usually unreadable expression.
"Boss."
"What?"
"We found Frank."
"Where?"
"Pier Thirty-Six."
Elias's jaw tightened.
"Alive?"
Caleb hesitated.
"Yes."
Maya released a breath.
Then Caleb finished.
"Barely."
And in Frank DeLuca's coat pocket, they had found a handwritten note.
May you like
Three words.
SHE READ THEM.
