Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Safehouse
For three days, the entire country was thrown into chaos.
Headlines dominated every news outlet: “STERLING HEIR ABDUCTED BY DANGEROUS FEMALE INTRUDER.” A ten-million-dollar bounty was placed on Maya’s head, dead or alive. Arthur Sterling appeared on national television weeping, playing the grief-stricken uncle desperate for the safe return of his "handicapped, fragile nephew."
Inside an abandoned, underground hunting cabin miles past the estate perimeter, the reality was entirely different.
Leo lay on a wooden cot, sweating profusely. His body shivered uncontrollably as the dark toxin fought against the amber serum. Maya barely slept. She sat by his side, wiping his forehead with damp moss and feeding him bitter herbs boiled over a hidden hearth.
On the fourth morning, Leo woke up to a sound he had never heard in his own body: a muscle twitching in his right foot.
He stared in absolute shock. Slowly, excruciatingly, his big toe flexed up, then down.
“I... I moved it,” Leo whispered, his voice trembling. “Maya... look!”
Maya looked up from scrubbing her bloodied feet with river water. A rare, small smile touched her lips. “I told you. I don’t break promises.”
“Why did my mother trust you?” Leo asked, watching her carefully. “You’re just a girl. How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” Maya said, her smile fading as she looked down at the silver key resting on the table. “And she trusted me because I had nothing left to lose. Arthur burned my village to the ground to cover up her death. He killed my father.”
Leo’s heart hammered against his ribs. The gilded world he grew up in—the silk sheets, the private doctors, the soft music—was built on a pile of corpses.
“What does that key open?” Leo asked.
“The safe inside your mother’s private conservatory at the estate,” Maya replied. “Inside it is the original will, her true medical reports, and the video recording she made the night she escaped. But we can’t get back in. The estate is guarded like a military fortress now.”
May you like
Leo gritted his teeth. He grabbed the side of the cot and pulled himself upright. His legs shook violently under the weight of his torso. Sweat poured off his face as he planted his bare feet on the dirt floor.
“Then we don’t break in like thieves,” Leo spat, his eyes darkening with a fire Arthur had failed to quench. “We walk in through the front door.”
