A sharp buzz rang in my head, and my mind went completely blank.
All the blood in my body felt like it surged straight to my skull in a split second, only to turn to ice the next heartbeat.
'Director Prescott! It's him! It has to be him!'
So this was the price he had warned me about.
He was using my newborn baby, still swaddled and fresh to this world, as leverage against me.
'Call the cops? The note had made that perfectly clear. Don't even think about it. Drop the charges? Publicly apologize? That would hurl me right back into the hell I had lived through in my past life, if not something far worse. And even if I caved, would they really let me and my baby go free?'
Crushing waves of panic and despair were close to swallowing me whole. I collapsed onto the icy floor, surrounded b
