Trapped By The Wrong Man, Stolen by a Secret Billionaire: Part 3 – Separation

The cold air was a slap. It didn’t wake her up; it plunged her deeper into the nightmare.

Audrey stood on the top step of the museum, the sounds of her own implosion echoing behind her. Her emerald gown felt like a shroud. 

Her skin felt too tight. 

She ran. Her heels punished the pavement, a frantic, syncopated rhythm of escape. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to move. 

Taxis flew past her, blurs of yellow light. She ignored them.

She ran until her lungs burned and the thin straps of her shoes dug into her skin. She finally stopped under a streetlight a dozen blocks away, leaning against the cold metal pole to keep from collapsing.

She was a spectacle. A woman in a gala gown, crying on a random street corner.

Her phone. She needed help.

Not Kian. Not Cole. One name. Maya.

Her fingers, clumsy and shaking, found the contact. The phone rang once, twice.

“Audrey? It’s past midnight. Is everything okay?” Maya’s voice was warm, sensible. An anchor.

“No,” Audrey sobbed, the single word breaking apart. “Nothing is okay.” “Where are you?”

Maya’s tone shifted instantly. No more questions. Just action.

Audrey looked up, squinting at a street sign through her tears. “Corner of Lex and 79th.”

“Stay right there. Don’t move. I’m coming.” The line went dead.

Audrey slid down the pole to sit on the curb, wrapping her arms around her knees. She was a refugee from her own life.

Maya’s small, fourth-floor walk-up was a sanctuary.

It smelled of lavender and old books. It was messy and real and safe.

Maya handed her a pair of worn sweatpants and a faded college t-shirt. Audrey changed out of the emerald gown, leaving it in a silk puddle on the floor like a shed skin.

“I’m not asking what happened,” Maya said, pressing a steaming mug of tea into Audrey’s hands. “Not tonight. Just drink.”

Audrey did. The warmth seeped into her bones. She sat on the lumpy sofa, staring at the wall.

Her clutch buzzed on the coffee table. A relentless, angry vibration. She picked it up.

The screen was a galaxy of missed calls and notifications.

Twelve from Kian. Eight from Cole. Texts from both.

Audrey, please, it wasn’t me. I took care of the problem for you.

Cole’s words were a threat wrapped in a lie. It’s not what you think. Let me fix this. I love you.

Kian’s words were a poison she couldn’t afford to drink. With a deliberate, steady hand, Audrey opened Kian’s contact.

She pressed ‘Block’. A small pop-up asked if she was sure.

She was. She did the same for Cole.

Then for his sister, Jenna. Silence.

She had severed the arteries. She was bleeding out, but at least the poison had stopped pumping through her veins.

She put the phone down, face-down, and finally let the exhaustion claim her.

Kian sat in the back of his car, staring at the facade of Audrey’s apartment building. The light in her window was off.

She wasn’t there. He’d called her twenty times. Each call went straight to voicemail after the tenth ring.

Blocked.

The finality of it was a punch to the gut. He couldn’t fix this with words.

She wouldn’t hear them. He had to use actions. He made a call.

Not to his mother, not to his COO. He called a number saved under a single letter: X.

The man who answered was a ghost, a specialist in finding things that didn’t want to be found.

“I have a job for you,” Kian said, his voice flat and dead. “I need you to find the source of an anonymous complaint filed with the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding a curator named Audrey Wells. I need proof. Digital fingerprints, IP addresses, everything. I need it yesterday.”