MAYA’S POV
The penthouse was too quiet. It was the kind of quiet that hummed, a low, electric buzz just under the surface of everything. I moved through the rooms like I was walking through a museum after hours. Everything was where it was supposed to be, expensive and clean and dead.
Leo was asleep in his room, exhausted from the chaos of the move. My mother-in-law was in the guest suite, her silence a heavier thing than Leo’s. She hadn’t spoken to me since I walked back through the door. She just looked at me with a disappointment so deep it felt like a physical weight. She thought I was weak. She didn’t understand that weakness had nothing to do with it. This was a surrender. A strategic retreat. I had traded my freedom for Liam’s.
But where was my bargaining partner?
Daniel had com
