We Used To Belong Here

Cold Arithmetic

Maya didn’t drop her phone. Her fingers clamped onto the metal casing until her knuckles turned marble-white, her eyes darting from the lead officer’s badge to Julian’s slick, sweating face.

“There’s been a mistake,” Maya said, her voice dropping into the low, clipped register she used when managing corporate crises. She took a step back, her heel catching on the lip of the wooden decking. “I’m a senior consultant at Vanguard PR. I haven’t stolen anything.”

The officer didn’t pause. He instantly grabbed her right wrist, twisting her hand behind her back with an efficient, practiced pressure that made her shoulder joint pop. “Tell it to the detective, Miss Linwood. Your director filed the warrant an hour ago.”

“Julian, do something!” Tasha shrieked, backing away from the table as the metal cuffs clicked cold and tight around Maya’s wrists.

Julian didn't step forward. He smoothed the lapels of his charcoal jacket, his eyes darting toward the crowd of pub-goers currently filming the entire scene on their phones. “Maya!, what did you do? I told you that freelance client was too risky.”

Maya’s head snapped toward him, a sharp shock of adrenaline cutting straight through her paralysis. “What are you talking about? You set up that invoice system for my independent consultancy! You handled the tax filings, Didn’t you?!”

“I handled what you gave me,” Julian said, his voice dropping into a somber, performative quiet that turned her stomach. He looked at the officers with a pained, apologetic sigh. “I’m her partner, or I was. If she has compromised the agency’s accounts, I have absolutely nothing to do with it.”

Chloe let out a soft, breathy laugh from behind her hand, stepping closer to Julian’s side and sliding her fingers casually into his back pocket. “We tried to tell her, officers. She has been living way beyond her means for months.”

The cold steel bit into Maya’s skin as the officer marched her toward the rooftop exit. Her eyes swept over her friends, the people whose birthdays she had organized, whose rent shortages she had covered out of her own pocket, whose secrets she had guarded like gold. Marcus looked down at his shoes. Tasha turned her back entirely, pulling out her lip gloss as if a woman she had known for half a decade wasn't being dragged off in handcuffs.

“My bag,” Maya screamed, fighting against the officer’s grip as they reached the heavy glass doors. “My house keys are on that table!”

“Items will be inventoried at the station,” the officer replied, shoving her through the door and into the narrow, concrete stairwell.

The heavy door slammed shut, cutting off the noise of the DJ booth, the wind, and the voices of the people who had just dismantled her entire existence in less than ten minutes.

Two hours later, Maya sat in a windowless interrogation room at the Peckham police station. The air smelled of burnt instant coffee and damp wool. Across the scarred wooden table sat Detective Inspector Reid, a woman with graying hair pinned into a severe bun and a thick manila folder spread open between her elbows.

“Thirty-two thousand pounds, Miss Linwood,” Reid said, tapping a red pen against a printed bank statement. “Transferred from Vanguard PR’s primary escrow account directly into a personal account under the name Linwood Consulting over the last six months. Every Tuesday morning.”

Maya’s heart hit her ribs like a sledgehammer. “Tuesday?”

“Every single Tuesday at nine in the morning,” Reid repeated, turning a page. “The IP address traces back to your shared residential router in Peckham. The account was opened using your National Insurance number and a digital signature exactly matching yours.”

The room seemed to tilt. Tuesday mornings were the exact windows Julian insisted on working from home to "focus on heavy administration." Tuesdays were the days Chloe claimed Julian was in her bed.

Julian hadn't just been sleeping with her best friend. He had been using her identity to build a paper trail that framed her for stealing thousands of pounds from her own employer.

“I didn't open that account, I honestly have no idea about that” Maya said, her voice shaking violently as she leaned over the table. “Inspector, look at the signature date. Six months ago, I was in Manchester leading a press junket for three days! I wasn't even in London!”

Reid raised an eyebrow, picking up her pen. “Can you prove who had access to your personal documents during those three days?”

“My boyfriend,” Maya choked out, the word tasting like ash in her mouth. “Julian Vance. He had my passport, my tax files, my laptop, everything was in our flat.”

“Do you have independent evidence of this?” Reid asked calmly. “Because Mr. Vance gave a formal statement to our officers outside the venue half an hour ago. He claims you had full control over the home network, and that he has never had access to your banking credentials.”

A cold, suffocating rage replaced the panic in Maya’s blood. She closed her eyes, forcing her lungs to expand, forcing her mind to stop spiraling. She had spent five years fixing disasters for multi-million-pound brands. She knew how narratives were built, and she knew how to break them.

“Check the joint account,” Maya opened her eyes, her tone dropping into a sharp, icy command. “The account we used for rent. Check every transfer from Linwood Consulting into that joint account on the tenth of every month. He was using that money to pay his half of the lease because he was fired from his last sales job in November and was too proud to admit it.”

Reid paused, her pen hovering over the paper. Before she could answer, the heavy metal door clicked open.

A tall man in an unstructured navy blazer and a dark turtleneck stepped inside. He had broad shoulders, short-cropped Black hair, and sharp, observant dark eyes that immediately scanned the room before settling on Maya. It was Kofi, the quiet, aloof designer who worked on occasional branding campaigns for her agency, a man who usually sat at the periphery of Julian’s wider social circle without ever truly joining it.

“She’s not answering any more questions without legal counsel,” Kofi said, his voice deep, calm, and completely devoid of urgency as he placed a high-end leather briefcase on the table.

Reid frowned, standing up. “Who are you? Visiting hours are over.”

Kofi reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a sleek silver card, sliding it across the wood. “Kofi Mensah. I’m her designated representative from Vanguard’s legal defense retainer, and I have the digital access logs from our primary server right here.” He looked directly at Maya, his expression unreadable. “Including the timestamp showing Julian Vance logged into her work profile from his personal iPad twenty minutes ago to delete the server logs.”

Maya’s breath hitched as Kofi pulled a tablet from his briefcase and turned the screen toward the detective.

“He’s at her flat right now,” Kofi added, his tone chillingly level. “Packing her clothes into trash bags and throwing them into the street.”