His Secret Addiction

Chapter Fourteen

Alex's POV

Maya talked for eleven minutes straight.

She told us everything. How she'd been recruited at sixteen by a man named Harlan Voss, a financial criminal who saw potential in a poor, brilliant girl from Queens. How she'd worked her way through college, then into HR at Ross Industries, specifically because Harlan needed someone inside. How she'd spent twelve years building trust, making herself indispensable, becoming my best friend while simultaneously running money through company accounts with surgical precision.

"Your mother found a discrepancy in the books," Maya said, almost fondly. "She was so good at her job. Too good."

"And Harlan had her killed."

"Harlan gave the order. I confirmed the target." She said it the way someone admits to forgetting a birthday. Matter of fact. Slightly regretful. "I was nineteen, Alex. I didn't understand what I was agreeing to."

"But you understood every death after that."

She didn't answer. Which was its own answer.

Damien's grip on my hand tightened. I could feel him counting seconds the same way I was. We needed four more minutes.

"Eleanor," Damien said. "She was seventy-two years old."

"Eleanor started auditing accounts that hadn't been touched in a decade. Harlan panicked." Maya shrugged. "I argued against it. For the record."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"It's supposed to make you understand I'm not a monster. I'm practical." She glanced at her watch. "The money's ready to transfer. I need an answer."

"We said yes," I told her.

"You said yes with conditions. I've met them." She stood. "Account numbers."

Damien pulled out his phone slowly. "Walk me through the transfer process."

I watched Maya and thought about the baby shower we'd been planning. The tiny onesies she'd shown me online three weeks ago. The way she'd cried when she told me she was pregnant.

"Is the baby real?" I asked.

Something crossed her face. The first genuine emotion I'd seen since she pulled the gun. "Yes."

"And the father?"

"Not involved." She kept her eyes on Damien's phone. "The baby has nothing to do with this."

"Then why are you still doing this? You have a child coming. You could walk away."

"People like me don't get to walk away." Her voice went flat again. "Account numbers, Damien."

Two minutes.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I didn't reach for it.

"There's something you should know," Damien said, still stalling over the phone. "Before you disappear with half a billion dollars and leave us with nothing."

"What."

"Harlan Voss died eight months ago. Cardiac arrest in Monaco." Damien looked up. "We checked when Chen first mentioned your network. Which means you've been running this alone for almost a year."

Maya went still.

"No backup," Damien continued. "No one to confirm the order to kill us. No one knows where you are right now." He put the phone down. "You could actually stop. Tonight. Walk out of here and no one comes after you."

"You'd come after me."

"We'd come after the network. But you, specifically, with a baby on the way, in the next six months before anyone untangles the financial trail?" He spread his hands. "You'd have time."

I didn't know if he believed that. I don't think he did. But he said it like he meant it, and for three seconds, Maya's gun hand dropped two inches.

The door came off its hinges.

Chen's team flooded the room. Four officers, weapons drawn, shouting commands. Maya swung toward them and I launched myself sideways, knocking her arm up as the gun fired into the ceiling. We hit the floor together. The gun skidded away. Someone's knee hit my back. Then it was over, Maya's hands cuffed behind her, my cheek against the hardwood floor, breathing hard.

Damien pulled me upright.

"Fifteen minutes," he said quietly.

"Fourteen and a half."

Chen holstered her weapon. "We got everything on the wire. Every word." She looked at Maya being walked out. "She won't be seeing daylight for a long time."

I watched them take her through the door. My best friend. Twelve years of inside jokes, bad blind dates, 2am phone calls and borrowed shoes. All of it real, and all of it built on a grave with my mother's name on it.

Damien put his arm around me. He didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say.

We stood there until the room was empty.

---

Later, we sat on the floor of our apartment with the lights low. No food, no television, no particular reason to be on the floor except neither of us had made it to the couch.

"She was my best friend," I said.

"I know."

"I told her things I've never told anyone. Things I told you." I turned the flash drive over in my hands. "She knew everything about me."

"She knew information about you," Damien said. "That's different."

I looked at him.

"Someone who actually knows you doesn't put a gun in your face." He took the flash drive from my hands and set it aside. "She gathered data and called it friendship. What you felt was real. What she did with it wasn't."

I leaned my head against his shoulder.

"I keep thinking about the baby," I said.

"I know. Chen will make sure there's welfare support. It'll be handled."

"That's not what I mean. I mean I keep thinking about a kid growing up without their mother and I can't decide if I'm sad or angry or both."

"Both," Damien said. "You're allowed both."

We stayed like that for a while. The city noise filtered up from the street below. Distant sirens, a car horn, rain starting against the windows.

"My mother's name was Helen," I said. "I haven't said her name out loud in years."

Damien lifted his head and looked at me.

"She sounds like someone worth saying it for," he said quietly.