Chapter 6 - The Trap and the Escape
Beside Julian stood Nicole Blake, wearing a sleek, red designer dress that had once belonged to me. She looked at my baggy, stained cleaning uniform with a look of intense, curling disgust.
"I told you she wasn't dead, Julian," Nicole hissed, her fingers clenching around her designer purse. "The hospital said she was in a coma, but her body was gone from the bed. She’s been planning this."
Julian took a slow, elegant sip of his scotch, his eyes scanning me from head to toe. "You look terrible, Evelyn. Honestly, the dark hair is not your style. And that uniform... it really doesn't do justice to the Cross family name."
I stood my ground, my hand tightly gripping the handle of my cleaning bag, hiding the heavy ledgers inside. "You're a monster, Julian. You tried to kill me. You tried to kill our son."
"Our son is a fragile little thing," Julian said, his voice dropping to a low, chilling tone as he stepped closer to me. "He’s doing fine in the NICU. But he’s a ward of the state now, since his mother is 'missing' and his father is too devastated by grief to make legal decisions. Once you are officially declared dead, I will adopt him back. It’s a clean slate, Evelyn."
"You won't touch him," I spat, my voice filled with a venom I didn't know I possessed.
"And who is going to stop me?" Julian asked, gesturing to the vast, empty office. "You? A broken, scarred woman pretending to be a janitor? The police won't help you. The media won't believe you. You are a ghost, Evelyn. And ghosts have a habit of disappearing."
He set his glass down on the mahogany desk, his face hardening into the ruthless, cold mask of the man who had built an empire through fear. He reached into his jacket, his hand disappearing beneath the fabric.
I knew what was coming. He wasn't going to let me leave this building alive.
Without thinking, I grabbed the heavy, brass paperweight from his desk and threw it with all my might at the floor-to-ceiling window behind him.
The heavy glass didn't shatter—it was reinforced, bulletproof material—but the impact triggered the building’s seismic and security alarms. A deafening, high-pitched klaxon began to wail through the office, the overhead lights flashing a frantic, crimson red.
"What are you doing?!" Nicole screamed, covering her ears as the alarm echoed off the walls.
In the confusion, I lunged forward, using my weight to shove Julian back against the desk. He stumbled, his hand slipping from his jacket, the silver revolver he had been drawing clattering to the floor.
I didn't stop to fight. I turned and bolted through the side doors, rushing down the service corridor toward the emergency exit stairs.
"Stop her!" Julian’s roar was muffled by the screaming alarms, but I could hear his heavy, frantic footsteps pursuing me down the hall.
I threw myself through the heavy fire doors, my boots slamming against the concrete stairs as I flew down the steps. My ribs screamed in protest, a sharp, stabbing pain making it hard to draw breath, but the adrenaline overrode the agony. I had the ledgers. I had the flash drive.
I ran down five flights before slipping into the forty-fourth-floor corridor, blending into the confusion of the night-shift office workers who were evacuating due to the alarm.
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I kept my head down, my visor low, as I rode the crowded freight elevator down to the basement.
Within minutes, I was back in the cold, rainy alleyway of Manhattan, disappearing into the dark, crowded streets of the city before Julian’s security team could even block the exits.
