Chapter 4 - The Apartment With No Lock
Diala returned to her apartment at 6:18 a.m.
She had spent the night sitting in a 24-hour laundromat in Queens, too afraid to go home and too exhausted to think clearly. She had used the last of her cash to buy coffee and a bagel she could not eat.
At dawn, she finally convinced herself she needed clothes.
She needed her brother’s medication paperwork.
She needed to call the hospital.
But the moment she reached the third-floor hallway, she knew something was wrong.
Her apartment door was open.
Not unlocked.
Open.
Diala froze.
Her instincts screamed at her to leave.
Then she heard a sound inside.
A drawer closing.
She stepped backward.
A hand closed gently over her wrist.
She almost screamed.
“Ms. Martin,” Marcus Hall said quietly. “Do not go in.”
Behind him stood two security officers.
And behind them—
Chandler McFarland.
He wore a black overcoat over a white dress shirt, his hair uncombed, his expression stripped of the polished control he wore in public.
Diala stared at him.
“What are you doing here?”
Chandler looked at the broken door.
“Making sure you are safe.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“No,” he said. “You did not.”
Something about the answer made her angry.
The fear.
The exhaustion.
The memory of his hand at her waist.
“You don’t get to appear outside my apartment because you suddenly remember I exist.”
Chandler absorbed the words without flinching.
“You’re right.”
Diala blinked.
“I am?”
“Yes.”
He looked directly at her.
“I should have known you existed before last night.”
Her anger faltered.
Inside the apartment, a police officer emerged with a small evidence bag.
“Nothing stolen,” he said. “But whoever entered searched the bedroom and kitchen.”
Diala’s blood ran cold.
“My brother’s documents.”
“The officer said they were untouched,” Marcus replied. “But your laptop is gone.”
Diala stared at the open doorway.
Her laptop contained nothing about Chandler.
Nothing about the gala.
But it held payroll records, work schedules, and every note she had kept about strange things she noticed inside McFarland Industries.
Two months ago, she saw a man enter a private office after midnight.
A man wearing a McFarland executive badge.
A man who had been meeting someone on the east balcony.
She had written down his name because something about him felt wrong.
Diala looked at Chandler.
“I think I know why they came.”
Chandler’s face became still.
“Tell me.”
She shook her head.
“Not here.”
He nodded.
“Then come somewhere safe.”
Diala laughed bitterly.
“Your company’s annual party was supposed to be safe.”
Chandler’s expression tightened.
“I know.”
She looked at the broken door again.
Then at Marcus and the security team.
Then at Chandler.
For three years, she had been invisible in his world.
Now someone was searching her home because she had looked up at the wrong moment.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m not going with you because you’re my boss.”
Chandler held her gaze.
“Why are you going?”
“Because I need to survive long enough to tell the truth.”
For the first time, he looked at her not as a maid.
Not as an employee.
Not as the woman who had kissed him.
But as an equal standing in the middle of a crisis.
“Then we start there,” he said.
And as Diala walked past him toward the waiting car, Chandler understood something that would change every part of his life:
May you like
She had saved him in public.
Now he had to prove he could protect her without trying to own her.
