If the proposal on the sidewalk was a fire, the morning after was the ash.
I sat at the mahogany desk in the Master Suite, my laptop screen glowing with the red font of a "System Freeze" notification from Sterling Enterprises' internal server. Beside me, my new diamond ring sat on a velvet coaster. It felt heavier than it had yesterday—less like a promise and more like a target.
"They did it," Reid said, walking into the room. He wasn't wearing a t-shirt today. He was back in a black suit, but he hadn't tied his tie yet. It hung limply around his neck like a noose. "Marcus filed an emergency injunction. My personal accounts, the corporate holdings, even the hospice trust—everything is tied up in 'investigatory litigation' until the board meeting on Friday."
I looked up, my heart sinking. "The hospice trust? Reid, if that money doesn't clear, they'll move my mother to a state ward by Monday."
Reid didn't look away. He walked to the window, staring out at the Manhattan skyline that he no longer technically owned. "I know. Marcus wants to starve us out. He thinks if he cuts off the oxygen—the money—you'll realize that a 'real' proposal from a broke man isn't worth as much as a fake one from a billionaire."
I stood up, walking over to him. I didn't care about the suit or the "Ice King" persona. I reached out and grabbed the ends of his untied tie, pulling him gently until he had to look at me.
"He's wrong," I said, my voice low and steady. "He thinks I'm here for the Sterling name. He forgot that I know how to live on tips and black coffee. We don't need his millions to fight him, Reid. We just need to be smarter than him."
Reid's jaw tightened. "Maya, I have exactly four hundred dollars in cash in my wallet and a credit card that will be declined at the first gas station we hit. I've never been 'broke.' I don't know how to be smarter than a man who has the entire legal department of a Fortune 500 company behind him."
"Then it's a good thing you married a girl from Queens," I said, a small, dangerous smirk playing on my lips. "Pack a bag. A small one. We're leaving the townhouse."
"Leaving? To go where?"
"To my studio apartment," I said. "The lease isn't up for another two weeks. It's small, the heater clanks, and the neighbor plays polka music at 2:00 AM, but it's the one place Marcus's lawyers can't touch. And more importantly? It's the one place they'll never think to look for you."
Reid looked at me like I'd suggested we move to Mars. "You want me... to live in a studio apartment? In Queens?"
"Think of it as an 'Undercover Billionaire' reality show, Sterling. Except the stakes are your life's work." I patted his chest. "Now, tie your tie. We have a bus to catch."
"A bus?" Reid whispered, looking genuinely horrified. "Maya, I don't even have a MetroCard."
"Welcome to my world, Mr. Sterling," I laughed, heading for the closet. "I'll lend you mine. But you're paying me back with interest once we take your company back."
The N train to Astoria was a sensory assault that Reid Sterling was fundamentally unprepared for.
I watched him from the corner of my eye as we stood huddled in the middle of the crowded subway car. He was still wearing his thousand-dollar Italian leather shoes, now resting precariously close to a puddle of spilled soda and a discarded candy wrapper. His hand was gripped white-knuckle tight on the stainless-steel pole, his shoulders rigid as a teenager with a boombox blasted drill music three feet away.
"You're staring," Reid muttered, his voice barely audible over the screech of the wheels against the iron tracks.
"I'm observing," I corrected, shifting my backpack. "You look like an alien who just landed in a colony of hostile life forms. Breathe, Reid. It's just public transit. Millions of people do this every day without a panic attack."
"I am not having a panic attack," he snapped, though his chest was heaving in a way that suggested otherwise. "I am merely calculating the sheer number of pathogens currently circulating in this unventilated metal tube."
"Welcome to the real world, billionaire," I said, a small, mischievous smile playing on my lips. "The pathogens are free. The seat—if you can find one—is a luxury."