Deep breaths. Focus.
Safes are often bulky and difficult to transport. The model number indicates her father uses the heavy-duty, old-school type you buy from a department store and bolt to the floor.
I trail my finger over the blueprints, hunting around the third floor until I spot a room in the corner, cut off from the main flow of traffic.
Secluded. Unremarkable to anyone who doesn’t have a keen eye.
Jordan grew up in this giant beast of a mansion. In the lap of luxury. And she still chose to run away. Why? She could have lived a soft, sheltered life. The kind most people dream about.
A mystery, my woman.
Stop that.
I start flipping through the photographs again, intent on steering my thoughts away from that train.
As I do, the third photo nails me in the chest.
A stiff Jordan, maybe ten years old, stands beside her mother at a garden party, a champagne pyramid behind them. Tables sag with tens of thousands of dollars in food in a setting that screams abundance.
But her eyes—the same green as now, but rounder and emptier—appear starved.
Desperate and ravenous amid all that luxury.
“This life. All that money. The power.” I hold the photo up. “Most people would kill for it, yet you ran away. Why?”
She glances at the photograph for a heartbeat, then averts her gaze before drifting to the mirror by the door and checking her lipstick to buy herself a second.
When she answers, her voice is flat. “It wasn’t a home. It was a museum of perfection. And I was supposed to be one of the exhibits.” Her hand traces the diamond necklace at her throat. “But people aren’t pieces of art. I didn’t belong there.”
She doesn’t mention a silver lining. She doesn’t talk about personal growth or energetic alignment, the way she does for her followers. Just the naked, unvarnished truth.
“You could have taken the easy way. Played the game.” I set the picture down, the hollow-eyed kid still staring up from the table. “All that money, all that opportunity…just waiting. Like you always say. ‘Attracting’ whatever you wanted. Would have been simple for someone like you.”
I think of the men who would have lined up for her. A collection of unworthy boys who’d never even recognize the storm brewing inside.
She swallows hard before moving closer.
Close enough that if I reached out, I could trace the shape of her shoulder, but I don’t. I half-expect her to fight back, to recite some script about authenticity or the yearning for meaning. The standard wellness bullshit.
Instead, she grasps the loose ends of my bow tie, her fingers sure as they knot the accessory into place. “I learned how to do this when I was eleven. So many parties. So much talk.”
Up close, I catch a hint of her perfume. The subtle whisper that’s replaced her usual earthy scent of lavender screams money.
Another layer of disguise. Another mask.
She hesitates while smoothing the silk. “It wouldn’t have been easy for me.”
Ah. Now I understand.
She picked the cold and the streets over the lie of comfort. She picked real, gnawing hunger over feasts with too many strings attached. Struggle, with every risk and scar, over a gilded life choreographed by someone else’s hand. A life where all the luxury and excess in the world couldn’t fill the void in her soul.
That’s what she does. She chooses. Again and again, she selects pain over surrender, truth over comfort, even in an ocean full of sharks.
And I’m the one she chose.
That thought is a clarifying shock of ice water to my system.
My plan was to get the files and neutralize the witness.
