Kiel
Inside the car, Chloe's hands would not stop shaking. We were driven away from the penthouse with i, breathing angry words beside her, the detective's badge cold against her palm ….. literal proof that she had done something, even if it hadn't yielded rescue. The image of Alicia's face as the door closed would not leave her. Exhausted, hollow, unwilling to fight in front of men with holsters and polite eyes.
"Detective Hale," she started again, leaning toward the plainclothes officer who sat quiet behind the wheel. "You can't just leave it like that."
He rubbed his jaw. "I told you what I told you at the door. Without a statement from Miss Blake, without proof, it's a he-said-she-said. Knight's lawyers could make a circus out of this."
"He has a circus already." Chloe slammed her palm to the dash, startling me "He's got money, influence, a reputation that makes people bend. But so what? That doesn't mean someone is safe in there. You saw her. She was….." Her voice broke.
I reached over and gripped her hand. "Breathe, Chloe. Pissing him off tonight won't save her."
Chloe locked eyes with the detective. "Then help me do something that will."
Hale looked at her hard. He was not a man who took orders from raw emotion, but he was also not a man who liked to leave the vulnerable behind. He'd seen the look on Alicia's face; it sat on him like a weight. "I'll reopen the file," he said slowly. "I'll talk to my sergeant, see what channels we can push. But you have to trust me to do it the right way."
"Trust you?" Chloe snapped, then bit it back because she could see the wheels turning. "Fine. Do it. But call me with anything. I'm not done. I'm not walking away."
Hale nodded. "I'll call you."
Chloe sat back, breathed, and then called her mother to explain, to excuse, to warn. She texted Alicia's brother, trying to sound calmer than she felt. And when she finally let herself relax, it was to make a plan: a list of people who might help, a lawyer who owed her money, a journalist who loved wrongdoing at the top and anyone who could put light where Knight wanted shadow.
She didn't know yet if any of it would move the mountain. But mountains eroded when enough people pushed, and she would be that push.
Detective Hale
My car smelled of stale coffee and duty. The badge tucked inside his wallet sat unusually heavy. I'd expect a simple nuisance call…..worried friend, overprotective roommate…..not the raw pleading of a woman at a marble door. It stuck with him.
At the precinct i sat at my desk under flourescent lights and pulled up the Knight files. Name recognition opened databases for him…..KnightCorp donations, private security contracts, litigation history. Liam Knight was not untouchable; he was well-protected. But he was also a public man with an image to preserve, and his legal team moved fast.
I printed the complaint forms i'd tried to take at the door and wrote notes in the margins. I'd tell my sergeant what i'd see and what Chloe had said. I'd recommend a welfare check with stronger procedural teeth. I couldn't promise immediate rescue, but i could open channels that would make Liam Knight think twice before moving pieces too quickly.
I made the calls: hospital check-ins, old colleagues of Liam Knight's who might be willing to corroborate a pattern, a domestic-abuse liaison who could give him a route for legal protection orders. I left a voicemail for a sergeant who owed me a favor and, most dangerous for the case, I wrote a quiet message to a lawyer at the DA's office, not a public complaint, but a whisper of concern about a high-profile private residence. Whispered concerns, if persistent, drew eyes.
It was procedural, small. It was also the only way i could grant Chloe the sliver of hope she needed.
Kiel
I wanted to cause a wreckage. I have spent lots of nights in the gym, hands raw from a job that taught me to break and build back. I had a temper that liked to act before it thought; tonight i had to be the restraint for Chloe's storm.
"You want to go back?" I asked when Chloe's jaw clenched again. "You want to go knock on that door and shout until someone snatches you away?"
"Yes," she said quietly, the word burning. "And maybe I will. But first…." She unlocked her phone and called Detective Hale. "Find some legal pressure. Find someone who can serve papers at the door. Something that makes him dance in public, not in private."
Kiel watched the Chloe's face. Then he leaned close and said the thing he'd been muttering softly all evening: "If you step foot back there and it goes sideways, I will not stand idle." It was a promise of violence i hoped never to have to keep.
Chloe swallowed. It was all they had: noise, legal friction, and Kiel's muffled threat that at least told Liam they were not afraid to escalate.
Alicia
The signed pages lay on the coffee table like an altar. Ink had dried; his assistant had already moved to call the contacts he'd spoken to. There would be arrangements, scheduled visits, the gentle fiction of care that spared him headlines and assured her family she was "being looked after." He'd made sure of that. He'd phoned a liaison at the hospital, told them he was an authoritative friend arranging a hurried consult. They'd set a room aside, checked an intake, prepared a quietly appointed nurse who would see her mother within the hour. The public narrative would be tidy; the private would remain razor-edged.
It was a small mercy, and also the most terrifying: he could soothe the outside while tightening the inside.
He'd installed more cameras in the penthouse months ago, he'd say, "in case of emergencies." Now those same "emergencies" tracked every entrance, every delivery, every soft step across the marble. His assistant had a schedule; security vetted every vendor; no one came or went without an OK. After the detectives left, Liam had asked Hale, cool as a boardroom, how quickly someone could legally get a welfare court order if there was a complaint. That was his way of reminding himself he could do the same thing in reverse.
I learned the geometry of the penthouse like a trapped animal learns the edges of a trap. There was the living room, the glass wall to the city, his study with the desk where he ran an empire. There was the pantry where he'd hidden a small emergency toolkit, because he wanted everything neat. There was the service elevator only staff used. There was the private elevator that went straight to street level under his control. If I could find a small seam in that web, I could slip through.
Chloe pounding at the door had been a gift that turned into a small, sharp sorrow. I'd seen the way Detective Hale looked at me clearly; the way he'd wanted more. But Lism untangled the law with a smile and a posture, and the detective left with his badge and his unease.
Now all the avenues felt like traps. Social media would not expose me. Knight's social team would drown out crumbs. Legal channels required proof or a fiery, public court fight that I couldn't survive. My passport had been burned, my phone confiscated….. removed incrementally the way a surgeon removes pieces of an organ. They pretended it was for my safety; I felt them wrenching my life away.
I tried to keep calm. I tried to think like Chloe: method, people, leverage. But the air thinned, and in that weight my thinking looped back to small things: the schedule for deliveries, the service door codes, the night attendant's name, the time the cleaning crew arrived. I scribbled notes on a napkin in my head, committed them to memory. I had to be smarter than the trap that held me.
At noon there was a gentle knock at the study door; Liam's assistant had arrived with a folder….. medical notes, hospital clearing confirmations, his phone numbers for all the right people. He'd orchestrated the world out there so the narrative would be "she's safe." Protecting me, he said.
That night, he walked me through the day's choreography. He placed the phone on the table, not to take it from me but to make sure I knew where it was. He calibrated the curtains so the security cameras picked the city but not the inside; he taught me how to smile for visitors so the outside world would never see the tremble I felt. It was a class in domestication under cover of kindness.
I hated him for the kindness. It was the worst part.
When I could steal a moment, after he'd left for a work dinner and the penthouse hummed with curated quiet, I waited. Hale had promised to call. Chloe had promised to find a lawyer who would be blunt and loud. Kiel had threatened a door. The paper at my fingertips burned with choices I'd made in exhaustion and desperation.
I opened my mouth to speak to myself, to remind myself that ink on paper could not measure a person's heart, but the pinch of panic came so sharp that I had to sit down again. The trap was closing but not sealed. A seam remained. There was always a seam.