17. Talia
Talia
The first camera flashes before I get Flynn’s backpack fully zipped.
For half a second, I tell myself I imagined it.
The morning has already been too loud, too tight, too full of messages I haven’t answered and calls I won’t return until after I get Flynn to school.
But then another flash cuts through the gap between the curtains, sharp and white against the gray morning light, and my body knows before my mind catches up.
They found my building.
Flynn looks up from the kitchen table, one hand still wrapped around the airplane Declan left on our porch.
We had not even finished the kit yet. One wing is painted blue, the other still plain wood because he’d decided “balance is important, but colors need thinking.” Usually, that kind of declaration would make me smile for the rest of the day.
This morning, all I can hear is the low murmur of voices outside.
“Mom?”
I cross the kitchen too quickly, catching myself before I reach the window. The last thing I need is my face appearing in another article because I gave someone the satisfaction of looking scared. Instead, I stand to the side and lift the curtain barely an inch.
There are three of them on the sidewalk. No. Four.
One man with a camera. Another with his phone already raised. A woman in a long coat pretending to check something on her screen while aiming it toward my door. The fourth stands near the curb, talking into an earpiece as if my life has become a live segment waiting for a cue.
My fingers tighten around the curtain until the fabric bites into my skin.
This is different.
The blog posts were terrible. The forged memo was worse.
The school photo had made something inside me go cold in a way I still had not fully thawed from.
But this is my home. My actual home. The place where Flynn leaves socks under the table and builds airports across the living room rug.
The place where we are supposed to be ordinary.
One of the cameras lifts toward the window as I let the curtain fall.
“Mom?” Flynn asks again, quieter this time.
I turn around and force my face into something calm. Motherhood has taught me many things, but the most useful one may be how to lie gently when fear would only hurt him.
“We’re going to wait a few minutes before we leave.”
“Why?”
“Because there are some people outside.”
His eyes move toward the window.
“People with cameras?”
My throat tightens. “Yes.”
He looks down at the airplane in his hand. His thumb rubs over the painted wing, smearing a tiny bit of blue onto his skin. “Like yesterday?”
I hate that he has a yesterday for this.
I kneel beside his chair, careful to keep my body between him and the window. “A little like yesterday.”
“Are they mad?”
“No, sweetheart.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
The question knocks the air out of me.
All the carefully stacked pieces of me give way at once. Not loudly. Not dramatically. There is no room for that with Flynn watching me, his serious little face turned up toward mine, the airplane clutched in both hands like proof he hasn’t meant to break anything.
“Never,” I whisper, my hands coming up to frame his face before I can stop myself. “Flynn, never. You did nothing wrong. Not one thing.”
His mouth trembles, and that small movement undoes me more completely than any headline could have.
“Then why are they looking for me?”
“They’re not looking for you.” The lie tastes awful because he is too smart for it and because I have spent his whole life trying not to lie to him unless the truth would do more harm. “They’re trying to get a story, and sometimes adults make very bad choices when they want one.”
He thinks about that with the solemn concentration of a child trying to understand a world that no longer follows its own rules.
“Can I still go to school?”
I close my eyes for half a second. The school.
My phone is still on the counter. I grab it and see four missed calls from Rebecca, two from Sloane, one from the school, and a text from Declan that I don’t open because if I see his name right now, I may fall apart.
The school voicemail is first and my hand shakes by the time I finish listening.
Reporters had called the front office before seven-thirty.
One had shown up near drop-off and asked whether Flynn was enrolled there.
The school did not confirm anything. Of course they didn’t.
They were careful, professional, furious in the way good educators become furious when children are treated like access points instead of people.
Still, the school had called me, because somewhere along the way this had stopped being about Crossridge or the merger and become something far uglier. Reporters were asking questions about a little boy who should have been worrying about spelling tests and recess instead of cameras and strangers.
My phone buzzes on the counter. It’s Declan. I stare at his name without moving until a second message appears beneath the first.
Don’t leave through the front.
I almost laugh, but it comes out sounding more like a broken breath. Of course he knows. Of course Crossridge knows. Somewhere in the last twenty-four hours, this situation has grown beyond anything I can contain from my kitchen while my son watches me and strangers wait outside with cameras.
Keeping one hand on Flynn's shoulder, I type with the other.
Do not come here.
His response comes almost immediately.
Too late.
Three minutes later, someone knocks on the back door instead of the front. The sound startles both of us. Flynn jerks upright, clutching the airplane kit tighter, and I feel my own pulse jump just as hard.
“Stay here,” I tell him, though I keep my voice calm enough that he obeys without arguing.
When I reach the narrow hallway leading toward the rear stairwell, I check the small peephole and nearly sag against the door.
Declan stands on the other side, dressed in a dark coat, his jaw set in a way I have never seen before.
No charm. No easy confidence. No half smile waiting to turn the situation into something he can manage with words.
Behind him stands a Crossridge security guard I recognize from the executive floor.
I open the door, and the first thing Declan does is look past me.
“Flynn?”
“In the kitchen.”
His shoulders ease by a fraction. Only then does his gaze return to my face. “Are you both okay?”
I want to say yes. I almost do. It’s a habit more than pride at this point. Instead, I shake my head once.
Something in his expression changes, so fast and fierce, I understand immediately that the man standing in my hallway is not the negotiator, the founder, or the billionaire everyone keeps writing about.
He’s Flynn’s father.
“Marcus has a car waiting in the alley,” he says.
“Graham's making sure the reporters stay focused on Crossridge instead of this neighborhood. Sloane is already working the phones with the school and the press, and Adrian found a secure apartment where no one will think to look for you. Private entrance. Secure garage. No connection to either of us.”
I stare at him. He hears the question before I ask it.
“No one will know where you are unless you want them to.”
I should object. I should tell him I don’t need Crossridge moving pieces around my life like I’m another problem on a spreadsheet. But Flynn is sitting in my kitchen with blue paint on his thumb, asking if he did something wrong, and there are cameras outside my home.
Pride has limits. So does fear.
“Give me five minutes.”
He nods. “Take three.”
Under any other circumstances, I might have snapped at him. Today, I’m grateful that someone can still count.
The next few minutes move in a blur of necessary things.
Medication from the bathroom cabinet. Flynn’s backpack.
My laptop. The airplane kit, because he refuses to leave it, and I don’t have the heart to ask him to.
Declan doesn’t crowd me or take over, but he helps in quiet, practical ways that make the chaos feel less impossible.
He zips Flynn’s jacket when my fingers fumble with the pull.
He kneels to meet Flynn’s eyes and tells him they are going on “a temporary mission,” which is apparently the correct phrase because Flynn immediately asks whether airplanes are involved.
“Not this time,” Declan says. “Cars are more discreet.”
Flynn nods as though this makes perfect operational sense.
The security guard goes first. Declan follows with Flynn between us, one hand resting lightly against the back of his coat without pushing. I lock the door behind us and take one last look at the rowhome.
It looks exactly the same, which feels unfair somehow.
We move down the rear stairs. Each step echoes too loudly. Flynn holds my hand on one side and the airplane kit on the other, his small fingers gripping mine with a trust that nearly breaks me all over again. Declan stays one step ahead, speaking quietly into his phone only once.
“We’re moving.”
That’s all he says before slipping the phone back into his pocket. There’s no question in his voice, no request for permission, only a quiet warning to whoever is waiting that we are on the move.
The alley smells like rain, old brick, and exhaust from the black SUV idling. Marcus stands beside it with his phone in one hand and the kind of expression that makes me very glad I’m not the person he’s angry with.
He looks at Flynn first. “Hey, pilot.”
Flynn blinks at him. “Do you have a plane too?”
“Not on me.”
“That’s okay.”
Marcus opens the rear door. “Good to know.”
As Flynn climbs into the back seat, Marcus's phone vibrates again. He glances at the screen, his expression hardening almost immediately.
“Graham says reporters showed up at the school.”
I already knew they were there this morning. It doesn’t make hearing it easier.