[Serena’s POV]
The coffee shop is half-empty, afternoon light cutting through the windows in dusty beams. Maya is already seated when I arrive, two lattes waiting, her expression telling me she knows something's wrong before I've said a word.
"You look like hell," she offers as greeting.
"Thank you. That's exactly the energy I was going for." I slide into the booth across from her, wrapping my hands around the warm cup. "It's been a day."
"Tell me."
So I do. The morning replays itself as I talk—stepping off the elevator to find every conversation stopping when I approached.
Debra from accounting crossing to the other side of the hallway. Three emails from HR about "media inquiries." Seventeen Slack messages from colleagues who've never messaged me before, all suddenly wanting to "check in."
"Dominic offered to work through an analysis together," I finish. "Sympathy in his eyes, like I'm drowning and everyone can see it."
Maya's jaw tightens. "It's getting worse."
"The tabloid story is spreading. That woman claiming she knows me—I've never seen her face in my life, Maya. But apparently everyone at work has formed their own opinions."
She's quiet for a moment, stirring her latte with more focus than necessary. "There's something else. I debated whether to tell you, but—"
My stomach drops. "What?"
"You remember Jess? From the Columbia crowd—she was in Priya's circle, we'd see her at those rooftop things sometimes?"
I nod. Our extended friend group from college, cobbled together through shared friendships and random parties. People we weren't close to but knew well enough.
"Someone approached her last week. Said he was from a financial publication, asked about you." Maya meets my eyes. "But his questions weren't about finance, Serena. He wanted to know about your social life back then. Whether she'd ever heard anything about graduation night."
The latte turns to acid in my throat. "Edward."
"That's what I figured. The tabloid wasn't enough. He's building something."
"Brick by manufactured brick." I set down my cup, hands trembling slightly. "What did Jess tell him?"
"Nothing useful. She barely knew you—we all barely knew each other, really. Just the occasional party, mutual friends of friends." Maya's loyalty flares fierce and immediate. "But she gave me a heads up because it felt wrong. Journalist asking personal questions about someone's college hookups? That's not financial reporting."
I almost laugh. "I didn't even have college hookups. One. One reckless night that I can't even properly remember."
"I know." She squeezes my hand across the table. "But whoever this guy is, he's digging. And if he's approaching the extended circle, he might find someone willing to make things up for the right price."
The thought makes my skin crawl. Edward has unlimited resources. How many people from those peripheral college friendships would sell a fabricated story for enough money? How many already have?
"I can't control any of it." The confession slips out before I can stop it. "His father. The tabloids. People at work staring. And now this—strangers from a decade ago being interrogated about my past."
"What happened last night?"
I look at my hands. At the raw patches on my knuckles I've been hiding under my sleeves. Maya notices anyway—she always notices.
"Serena."
"I cleaned." The word sounds pathetic. Insufficient. "I couldn't stop. The counters, the cabinets, the grout between the tiles. Caspian found me past midnight, scrubbing with steel wool until my hands bled."
Maya's expression shifts from concern to something deeper. She knew my mother. Saw the patterns before I could name them.
"Oh, honey."
"I learned it from her." My voice cracks. "When things got bad, she'd reorganize the entire house. I'd find her at three in the morning, bleaching the bathroom floor, and I always knew—it meant something was breaking."
"You're not your mother."
"I feel like I am." The tears are threatening now, hot pressure behind my eyes. "I feel like everything I've built is crumbling and the only thing I can control is whether the fucking counters are clean."
Maya doesn't try to fix it. Doesn't offer platitudes. Just holds my hand across the scarred café table and lets me breathe through the worst of it.
"What did Caspian do?" she asks finally. "When he found you?"
"He stopped me. Physically took the steel wool from my hands." I stare at our intertwined fingers. "Then he held me until I stopped shaking. Said if I'm breaking, we break together."
"That's..." Maya pauses, recalibrating. "Actually not terrible."
"I know. I hate when he's not terrible. It's much easier when he's being an asshole."
She laughs—the good kind, the kind that loosens something in my chest. "Growth. Disgusting."
My phone buzzes on the table. Then again. And again.
Maya's eyes flick to the screen. "Popular."
I flip it over, expecting more HR emails, more concerned colleagues. Instead:
Caroline Davis.
She said yes.
Margaret Okonkwo will meet you.
Tomorrow, 2pm, address below.
Be careful. She's waited 17 years for someone to listen.
I stare at the words until they blur.
"What?" Maya leans forward. "What is it?"
"The widow." My voice comes out strange. Distant. "Richard Okonkwo's widow. Caroline got her to agree to meet me."
Maya knows about Caroline—I told her everything after that diner meeting in Queens. About Edward's former assistant, the Meridian acquisition, the man he allegedly drove to suicide. About Margaret Okonkwo, who kept records while her husband's empire crumbled.
"Holy shit." Maya's grip on my hand tightens. "This is it. This is the thread."
"She documented everything. Every manipulated stock price, every manufactured scandal. Seventeen years of evidence, waiting for someone to care."
"And that someone is you."
The weight of it settles onto my shoulders. Purpose, maybe. Or terror dressed up as determination.
"If I pull this thread, Edward comes for me harder. For Caspian. For Aria." I meet Maya's eyes. "He'll burn everything down before he lets his empire fall."
"He's already burning things down." Maya's voice is steady. Certain. "The tabloids, the fake witnesses, the people digging through your past. He's not going to stop just because you play nice."
She's right. I know she's right.
"So what do you do?" she asks.
"I meet her. Tomorrow." It's not a question anymore. "And I find out exactly what Edward Rothwell has been hiding for seventeen years."
Maya nods slowly. "And Caspian?"
"He'll be there when I get back. Whatever I find." I think of his arms around me in the kitchen, his voice rough with something that sounded like commitment. "We're doing this together now. No more secrets."
"Look at you two." Maya's smile is complicated—proud and worried in equal measure. "Actually communicating like adults."
"Disgusting," I echo, and she laughs again.
We finish our lattes. Talk about lighter things for a few minutes—Aria's new obsession with dinosaurs, Maya's disaster of a date last week—but the weight of what's coming hangs between us.
When we part on the sidewalk, Maya hugs me harder than usual.
"Be careful," she murmurs. "And call me after. I mean it."
"I will."
I walk home through streets that smell like exhaust and early spring, anonymous in a crowd that doesn't care about Rothwell scandals. Just another woman carrying secrets that could bring down an empire.
The thread is in my hands now. Margaret Okonkwo's seventeen years of grief, crystallized into documentation. Caroline's courage in reaching out. Every person Edward Rothwell has broken, waiting for someone to finally make it matter.
Tomorrow, my raw fingers will wrap around evidence instead of steel wool. Tomorrow, I'll channel this desperate need for control into something productive.
Tonight, I go home to Caspian and Aria. To the family we're building despite everything trying to tear it apart.
The thread that could unravel an empire.
Now I need to pull it without getting destroyed in the process.