The air on the thirty-fourth floor of Maya’s Midtown high-rise felt thin, quiet, and suffocatingly sterile.
By Tuesday evening, the city below was swallowed by a severe late-summer squall. Wind battered the floor-to-ceiling glass panels of her loft, creating a low, hollow whistle that vibrated through the floorboards. In the past, Maya found solace in the absolute isolation of her home—it was her sanctuary, engineered to withstand the most violent storms without yielding an inch.
Tonight, it felt like a gilded cell.
She sat at her pristine white kitchen island, her laptop open to the structural schematics for the Emory Arts Complex. A glass of cold white wine sat untouched beside her. Her dark brown eyes, shadowed with deep exhaustion, stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. She ha
