Jenna practically tackles me the moment I step off the elevator. “Oh my God, you’re alive!” She hugs me hard. “I was starting to think you’d been locked in a tower somewhere.”
“Just working from home.”
“Working from home in your billionaire husband’s penthouse, you mean.” She grins. “How’s married life treating you, Mrs. Volkov?”
I feel my cheeks heat. “It’s good. Really good.”
“I bet it is. Married to the boss. Living the dream.” She leans closer, lowering her voice. “Is it true he has a private jet?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been to Paris and Rome?”
“Yes.”
“I hate you. In the most loving way possible, I hate you.” She links her arm through mine. “Come on. You need to tell me everything. And I mean everything.”
We’re walking toward my old desk when I hear shouting from the lobby.
Everyone stops. Heads turn toward the elevators, toward the noise echoing up from the ground floor.
“What’s going on?” Jenna asks.
I move to the window that overlooks the lobby. We’re forty floors up, but I can see figures moving below. Security in their uniforms. And someone else.
“That’s Mason,” I whisper.
“Your ex?” Jenna presses against the window beside me. “What’s he doing here?”
I pull out my phone and call Pedro.
He answers immediately. “Mrs. Volkov, stay where you are. We’re handling it.”
“What’s happening?”
“Your ex-boyfriend is in the lobby. He got past the front desk somehow and started demanding to see you. Security is removing him now.”
Through the window, I watch as three security guards try to escort Mason toward the door. He’s fighting them, screaming something I can’t hear from this height. Then I see someone pulling out their phone. Filming.
“Oh no,” I breathe.
Mason breaks free from one guard and runs toward the elevator bank. He’s shouting at the top of his lungs, gesturing wildly. More guards appear. They tackle him, and the whole lobby erupts into chaos.
People are definitely filming now. Multiple phones pointed at the scene.
“This is going to be all over the internet,” Jenna says.
She’s right.
Within an hour, the videos are everywhere. Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. Mason in the Kryla Holdings lobby, screaming about how I’ve been kidnapped and brainwashed. How Ledger Volkov is controlling me. How someone needs to save me.
In one video, you can hear him clearly. “She’s been taken! They’re keeping her prisoner! Someone call the police!”
In another, he’s crying. Actual tears streaming down his face as security drags him toward the exit. It would be sad if it weren’t so terrifying.
I met Mason years ago at a coffee shop near my apartment. He was charming, attentive, and everything I thought I wanted.
We bonded over losing parents young. He lost his father to cancer when he was fifteen. I never had a father at all. For a while, it felt like we understood each other. Like we were both broken in complementary ways.
