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The heavy brass lock clicked. The sound vibrated through the raw drywall, echoing in the tense silence of my ruined living room. Mason looked as if he might faint. His skin had turned a sickly shade of gray, his eyes darting frantically between me, his mother, and the cheap white door. / Chapter 4 / 8

Chapter 4 - THE SECRET WILL AND THE STOLEN IDENTITY

The police arrival was a chaotic blur. Because Mason had lived there for two years, they couldn't immediately arrest him for trespassing due to residency laws, but they forced Linda and a sobbing Chloe to leave the premises. Chloe packed her things in a duffel bag, leaving through the front door without looking back at Mason.

By midnight, the house was dead silent. Mason was locked in the "secret apartment" behind the drywall, and I was sitting on my living room floor, staring at the raw barrier that divided my life.

I couldn't sleep. My mind was racing. How had Mason managed to pull off a hundred-thousand-dollar renovation in four days? Even with a crew of family friends, getting materials, pulling permits (or avoiding them), and framing walls took planning. This wasn't a sudden impulse. He had been planning this for months.

I stood up and walked over to Mason's desk in the corner of the living room—the one area he kept locked. I didn't care about privacy anymore. I grabbed a crowbar from my toolbox, jammed it into the desk drawer, and pried it open with a loud splintering sound.

Inside were stacks of papers.

As I flipped through them under the dim light of my phone, my blood ran cold.

It wasn't just a hidden pregnancy. It was identity theft.

Mason hadn't just used his mother's money. He had opened three credit cards in my name, forging my signature. There were bank statements showing he had emptied my emergency savings account—the $20,000 I had set aside for property taxes and maintenance.

But the most horrifying document was at the bottom of the pile. It was a copy of my property deed, alongside a forged quitclaim deed transferring 50% ownership of the house to Mason Thomas Hale. It was signed with my forged signature, notarized by a stamp that looked suspiciously fake, and dated just last week.

He wasn't trying to live with me. He was trying to steal my house out from under me, using his pregnant mistress and his mother's money as leverage to force me into a legal corner.

A soft footstep sounded behind me.

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Dr. Mercer looked down at the ultrasound monitor, her fingers moving with practiced ease over the trackball. The quiet hum of the machine filled the room, punctuated only by the rhythmic, heavy breathing of Dorian Cross standing near the door. He hadn't sat down once. His tall frame cast a long, imposing shadow across the sterile room, hand resting near the button of his suit jacket—a posture born of years of constant vigilance.

Dr. Mercer looked down at the ultrasound monitor, her fingers moving wit...

The ambulance siren wailed in the distance, a rising shriek that cut through the rainy night like a knife. I didn't wait for them. I held Arianne against my chest, feeling the terrifyingly erratic rhythm of her pulse, and bolted down the grand mahogany staircase.

The ambulance siren wailed in the distance, a rising shriek that cut thr...

The heavy cabin door hissed shut behind me, sealing in the scent of expensive cologne, manufactured corporate harmony, and betrayal. As I stepped back onto the sun-baked tarmac of the private aviation terminal, the stifling afternoon heat hit me like a physical blow. Behind the thick, tinted glass of the jet's windows, I could see Carter’s silhouette—his jaw set in that familiar, arrogant angle of a man who believed he had just successfully disciplined a disobedient pet.

The heavy cabin door hissed shut behind me, sealing in the scent of expe...

I turned around. Mason was standing at the edge of the hallway, holding a heavy glass whiskey decanter. His eyes were bloodshot, completely stripped of the boyish charm that had fooled me for two years.

"You shouldn't have opened that drawer, Maya," he whispered.

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