When my husband stepped out for a minute, an old woman showed up with money and…

At our first romantic dinner, my husband got up to take a phone call. Suddenly, an elderly woman at the next table, someone vaguely familiar, wordlessly slid a stack of cash toward me and whispered, “Call a cab fast and flee through the window in the restroom. I barely saved my own life.”

“Hello and welcome. Let us know in the comments where you’re watching us from. Don’t forget to subscribe to Clara’s stories and leave a like. Enjoy listening.”

But before all this happened, the evening had been perfect. It was almost ridiculously perfect, like something out of a Sunday afternoon movie.

Lydia Brooks, a Black woman, sat in the city’s most expensive restaurant, the Grand Oak Room, and couldn’t stop smiling. She was thirty-six, and for the first time in her life, she felt like she had finally arrived. Her husband, Elias Sterling, sat across from her. Husband. What a meaningful, what a warm word. Only two weeks had passed since their small but heartfelt courthouse wedding, and she still couldn’t get used to it.

“Lydia, why are you smiling like that?” Elias asked. His eyes radiated warmth in the soft light of the crystal chandelier. “Did I say something funny?”

“No.” She shook her head, sipping her ice-cold champagne. The bubbles fizzed pleasantly on her tongue. “I’m just looking at you and realizing how lucky I am.”

And it was the pure truth. After the death of her parents two years ago, Lydia had been completely alone. She had her job, her beloved flower shop, where she was the head florist and the heart of the team. She had her parents’ apartment, a cozy nest in an old but solid building downtown. But in the evenings, the silence in that apartment pressed on her ears.

And then Elias had appeared, tall, charming, forty, with lightly graying temples that suited him astonishingly well. He had come into her shop to buy a bouquet for his mother and simply stayed. Their romance developed quickly, yet felt so natural, as if they had known each other their whole lives. He courted her beautifully, not giving her cliché roses, but bringing her beloved daisies because he knew that meant more to a florist. He listened to her stories about her parents, her work, her childhood dreams. He seemed so reliable, so decent.

“I was the lucky one,” Elias countered, placing his hand over hers. His palm was warm and strong. “To find a woman like you in this day and age is a real miracle. My mother raves about you. She keeps asking when we’ll finally bring your things to our new family fortress.”

Lydia laughed. They jokingly called their future shared two-bedroom condo, into which Elias would soon move, their family fortress. He was currently still living with his mother, Johanna Sterling, a woman highly respected in the city. She held an important position at city hall and exuded a mix of composure and authority. Lydia liked her very much, too. Johanna had immediately welcomed her with warmth and maternal affection.

The waiter, a young man with perfectly straight posture, refilled their champagne. The restaurant manager, a solid man in his fifties, had already come to their table twice to personally ensure everything was to their liking. He spoke exclusively to Elias, calling him by name and looking at him with such reverence that Lydia felt almost embarrassed. Elias took it in stride. He knew how to command a room.

“You know, I spoke to my mother today,” he continued, taking a sip of wine. “She’s so happy for us. She thinks I’ve finally settled down and that you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

It felt good for Lydia to hear that. She knew Elias had had other relationships before her, but he never got lost in details, only vaguely mentioning that their personalities didn’t fit, and she didn’t need those details. The past was the past. The main thing was that he was with her now.

Suddenly, his cell phone vibrated in his suit pocket. Elias pulled it out, glanced at the display, and a shadow of annoyance flitted across his face.

“Forgive me, darling,” he said, standing up. “That’s business. Very persistent people. I’ll just step into the lobby for literally two minutes. It’s quieter there. Go ahead and order dessert. Wait—your favorite. The one with the raspberries.”

He leaned over, kissed her on the forehead, and quickly hurried toward the exit. Lydia watched him go, admiring how elegantly he moved, how expensive his suit was. She smiled again to herself. Everything felt right. Everything was good.

She glanced around the room. Wealthy patrons, quiet music, the muted clinking of glassware. At the table next to hers, quite close, sat a lone, elderly woman. She was barely eating, just stirring her cup of tea with a spoon, and for some reason she was looking intently at Lydia. Lydia gave her a polite smile, but the woman didn’t return it. Her face seemed vaguely familiar to Lydia. Where had she seen her?

And then it hit her. Of course. She was a regular customer from the flower shop, the sweet old lady who always bought orange gerbera daisies and who all the girls affectionately called “Gerbera Elsa” behind her back. Elsa Miller, she believed. She was always so kind, quiet, always thanked them and wished them a good day.

But now she was a different person. The moment Lydia recognized her, the old woman seemed to have been waiting for it. She quickly looked toward the exit where Elias had gone, leaned heavily on the table, and stood up. She took two steps toward Lydia’s table and bent down low to her. She smelled of valerian root and fear.

“Honey, listen closely,” she whispered, her voice trembling. Her face was white as paper, and there was such terror in her eyes that a chill ran down Lydia’s spine. The woman reached into her old handbag, pulled something out, and forcefully pressed it into Lydia’s palm. It was a thick wad of bills tightly wrapped with a rubber band.

“He’s a monster,” the old woman gasped. Her icy fingers gripped Lydia’s hand like a vise. “My daughter married him. She’s not alive anymore. Do you understand? She’s gone. She’s vanished. Quick, call a cab now and run through the window in the restroom. Run, honey, run.”

Lydia froze. She sat thunderstruck with the bundle of cash in her hand, unable to utter a word. What nonsense? What daughter? Was the woman just confused? Had she mixed her up with someone else?

“I think you have the wrong person,” Lydia stammered.

“No,” the old woman breathed, her eyes welling up with tears. “I am not mistaken. Run.”

She released Lydia’s hand, quickly turned, and shuffled toward the exit.

Lydia remained seated, staring after her. Her mind was in utter chaos. Was this a sick joke? A prank? But the money in her hand was real, and the terror in the woman’s eyes was absolutely genuine.

She looked up and saw the restaurant entrance. And at that moment, her heart skipped a beat, then began to pound wildly.

Standing in the doorway were two men. Two massive, bald guys in dark, ill-fitting leather jackets that completely clashed with the chic interior of the place. They weren’t looking for a table. They slowly, predatorily scanned the room, and their gaze settled on her. They were staring directly at Lydia.

She had never seen these men before. Elias had mentioned cousins, but these guys did not look like relatives at all. The threat was no longer the confused ramblings of a crazy old woman. It became real. It stood thirty feet away and looked her in the eye.

Lydia stopped thinking. Instinct screamed louder than any rational thought. She jumped up, grabbed her purse, stuffed the cash inside, and, knocking over a chair, rushed toward the corridor where the restrooms were located. She heard someone gasp in surprise behind her. She didn’t care.

The ladies’ room. She flew inside, bolted the heavy door shut, and leaned her back against it, trying to catch her breath. Her heart hammered somewhere in her throat.

What was happening here? My God, what was happening here?

A cab. A window. The old woman’s words pounded against her temples. She pulled her cell phone from her purse. Her hands trembled so badly that she dropped it several times on the tiled floor before she could press the taxi app icon.

Address? What address? Not home. Absolutely not. To the shop. To work. The only place she felt safe.

While the app searched for a car, she looked around. The window was small, frosted, right up near the ceiling. She climbed onto the marble vanity of the sink to look out. Her heart sank. The window had thick metal bars set into the wall. Her escape route was cut off.

A notification popped up on her phone: a white Ford Focus, license number 730, was on the way. The car would be there in three minutes.

Three minutes.

She jumped down to the floor. She had to use the main entrance. No matter what those two guys were doing, she would break through, run onto the street, get in the car, and drive away.

She took a deep breath, mustered her courage, and turned toward the door. But as she reached for the bolt handle to open it, she saw someone standing in the doorway, blocking the exit entirely.

There stood the restaurant manager, Victor Sterling, the same man who had given Elias such a kind smile just ten minutes ago. Now not a shadow of friendliness lay on his face. He looked at her coldly, with undisguised contempt.

“Excuse me, I… I need to get out,” Lydia muttered, trying to move around him.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a moment,” he replied in a calm, indifferent voice, not moving from his spot.

And then, from the corridor behind his back, she heard Elias’s quiet, painfully familiar voice.

“It’s all right, Mr. Sterling. My wife is just a little worked up, tired after a long week. I’ll talk to her myself.”

The manager nodded silently, stepped back from the doorway into the corridor, and pulled the door shut. Lydia heard the most horrible sound of her life: a dry metallic click. The sound of a key turning in the lock from the other side.

She was locked in. She was trapped. And outside the door, she could already hear the approaching footsteps of her husband.

Lydia ripped at the handle once, twice. The door didn’t budge. Heavy oak wood. It had become a prison wall, and beyond it, Elias’s voice, so calm, so reasonable, as if soothing a capricious child.

“Lydia, please open up. What happened? You scared me. Mr. Sterling, don’t worry. She just has a migraine. She acts like this sometimes. I’ll calm her down right away.”

Migraine?

He was lying. He was lying so easily and naturally that cold sweat ran down Lydia’s back. This man, her husband, was a complete stranger to her. Everything she knew about him, all that warmth, care, tenderness, it was all a lie. The truth was the locked door, the bald guys in the dining room, and the icy terror in the old woman’s eyes.

Panic began to flood her consciousness, taking her breath away. She looked around the restroom again. White tiles, gilded faucets, a huge mirror reflecting a pale, confused woman with frantic eyes.

That wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her. Lydia Brooks, the head florist, the calm, sensible Lydia, who knew how to handle every capricious flower and every demanding customer—she didn’t get into these kinds of stories. This only happened in bad television shows.

She had to do something. Think. Think.

The window was barred. The door was locked. Screaming, calling for help—but who? The manager was in on it with Elias. The restaurant patrons would only hear his concerned voice explaining that his wife had a migraine. If she started screaming and banging on the door, everyone would think she was hysterical. They would be led away by those so-called bald cousins, put into a car. And she didn’t want to imagine what would happen then.

Her gaze darted over the walls, searching for anything, any leverage.

And she saw it.

On the wall next to the door hung a small red box with a black button under glass. The fire alarm.

For a second she hesitated. This would be a scandal, a false alarm. But then she realized her life was already a scandal, and this alarm was the only thing that could save her.

The decision was instantaneous, discarding all doubt. She wouldn’t be a victim passively awaiting her fate. She would act.

Lydia ripped her purse from her shoulder, heavy with a massive metal buckle. She swung with all her might and struck the glass with the buckle. The glass didn’t give way. It only covered itself with a web of cracks.

“Lydia, what are you doing?” Elias’s voice behind the door grew sharper. “Stop immediately. You’re putting me in an awkward position.”

Awkward position? She was losing the ground beneath her feet, and he was worried about his convenience.

The rage gave her strength. She struck again and again. On the third hit, the brittle glass shattered into tiny fragments. Without a second’s hesitation, she pushed the large red button.

At that very moment, the world exploded in noise. A deafening, broken siren wail blared through the room, making her ears ache. It roared and howled, bouncing off the tiled walls and filling the entire space. It was the most beautiful sound Lydia had ever heard.

Behind the door, there were curses.

“What the hell?” the manager roared. “She set off the alarm!”

“Calm down, everything is fine,” Elias shouted, trying to drown out the siren’s wail. “It’s a false alarm, my wife—”

But no one was listening to him anymore. In the corridor, there were hurried footsteps, frightened women screaming, chaos.

That was her chance.

And then a new smell joined the deafening siren—a biting, bitter smell of smoke. It was coming from the ventilation system somewhere. Apparently, something had burned in the kitchen from all the commotion. But for Lydia, this smoke was a true gift from heaven. The panic in the restaurant reached its peak. Now, no one doubted that the alarm was real.

“Open up, you idiot!” someone shouted at the manager. “We have a room full of people!”

Lydia heard the key grind in the lock again. She stepped back, fists clenched, ready to sprint. The door flew open. Standing in the doorway, red with fury, was the manager. Behind him, waiters scurried and guests screamed. He tried to say something to Lydia, to grab her, but she didn’t give him the chance. She shoved him aside with all her might and burst into the corridor.

The dining room was in sheer pandemonium. People were jumping up from tables, knocking over chairs and glasses. Women pressed napkins to their faces. The faint smoke that had only been a smell in the restroom had already turned into a translucent haze hanging beneath the ceiling.

She saw Elias. He was standing in the middle of the room, looking around in confusion. He was looking for her. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. In his gaze, there was neither warmth nor shame, only cold, calculating rage. He saw her and took a step in her direction, but it was already too late.

Lydia plunged into the crowd, rushing toward the exit, oblivious to her path. She pushed and elbowed her way forward, ignoring indignant shouts.

“Excuse me, let me through, please.”

Just outside into the air. She ran down the grand staircase and greedily inhaled the cold autumn air. The siren continued to wail. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of a fire truck could already be heard.

Lydia didn’t wait. She ran down the steps and along the street, away from that cursed restaurant. She didn’t look back. She knew if she turned around she would see him and her legs would simply stop obeying her. She ran for one block before she dared to stop. She turned the corner, leaned against a cold brick wall, and tried to catch her breath, suffocating with sobs.

Her phone in her hand vibrated. A message from the cab service: a white Ford Focus was waiting for her. She looked around and spotted it by the roadside a little further down the street. The driver, a middle-aged man with a tired look, eyed her with surprise as she jumped into the back seat.

“Young lady, are you all right? You look like you’re running from something.”

“I’m fine,” Lydia gasped. “Please drive faster.”

She gave the address of the flower shop. The car pulled away. Lydia leaned back and closed her eyes. The adrenaline began to subside, replaced by an icy emptiness.

Who was Elias? What did he want? And most importantly, what had happened to the daughter of the old woman, Elsa?

“She’s not alive anymore.” Those words echoed in her mind like a dull, terrible sound.

She was silent the entire ride, watching the lights of the night city pass by the window. Mechanically, she pulled the wad of cash Elsa had given her from her purse, counted out the necessary amount, and handed it to the driver when they stopped in front of the shop.

“Keep the change.”

She jumped out of the car and froze before the familiar door. Lydia’s Flowers. Her world, her fortress. Every vase, every ribbon, every flower here had been chosen and arranged by her. With trembling hands, she pulled the keys from her pocket, taking a long time to hit the keyhole. Finally, the lock clicked.

Inside it smelled of soil, roses, and lilies, a familiar, homely scent. She stepped in, locked the door with all the deadbolts, and turned on the dim light in the back room. This was her true hideout. A small couch, an old table, her laptop, and a water kettle.

She sank onto the couch, and for the first time that evening, she began to tremble uncontrollably. She had to calm down, pull herself together. She sat like that, hugging herself for about ten minutes until the shaking subsided slightly.

What now? Go to the police? And what would she tell them? Hello. My husband locked me in a restaurant bathroom and an old woman gave me money and told me to run. They would laugh at her, dismiss it as a marital spat, telling her, “Deal with it yourself.”

She only had the cash Elsa had given her. All her savings, everything she had accumulated over years was in her bank account. She urgently needed to secure it, transfer it to another account, another card, anywhere, so Elias couldn’t access it. She didn’t know if he could, but after this evening, she was ready for anything.

She turned on her old work laptop. It hummed for a long time, taking its time to boot up. Lydia opened her bank’s website, entered her username and password. Her fingers disobeyed her. She had to repeat it several times.

Finally, she was in her personal area. For a second, she felt relief. There it was, her account. All the money was present, down to the last penny. She opened the transfers tab and selected the option to transfer to another debit card. She still had an old payroll card she hadn’t used in a long time, but its validity hadn’t expired yet. She entered the number, the amount, everything down to the last penny.

A confirmation text message arrived on her phone. She entered the code in the corresponding field and pressed “Transfer.” A loading wheel appeared on the screen, spinning and spinning. Lydia held her breath.

Suddenly, the wheel vanished and a red notification popped up on the screen instead, a small, neat window with a few lines of text:

Transaction denied. Your accounts have been temporarily frozen due to a report of suspicious activity. The report was filed by your lawful husband, Elias Sterling.

Lydia stared at the laptop screen. The red letters of the notification glowed in the semi-darkness of the back room, burning the words into her brain. That word, the word that had seemed so warm and reliable just an hour ago, was now a brand, a steel trap snapping shut on her life.

He had thought of everything, calculated everything. While she sat happily and unsuspecting in the restaurant, he had already acted. He didn’t just want to scare her or restrain her. He wanted to neutralize her, take everything from her.

She frantically closed the notification and tried to perform the transfer again. Again, she entered the card number, the amount, the text message code, and again, the same red banner: Transaction denied.

The coldness that had only touched her skin before now penetrated her, freezing all her organs. She wasn’t trembling anymore. She was petrified. The flower shop was no longer a sanctuary. He knew this place. He knew she would flee here. It was the second place after home where she felt safe. So he would come here. Or he would send his cousins.

She had to leave immediately. But where to?

Only one address remained in her mind. A place he couldn’t take from her. Her apartment. Her parents’ apartment. Her fortress. He could block her money, but he couldn’t take the walls she had grown up in.

She turned off the laptop, tucked it into her bag along with Elsa’s wad of cash, put on her coat, and slipped out onto the street, turning the key twice in the lock of her beloved shop.

The nighttime city was deserted and cold. She called another cab, trying not to look around, flinching at every passing car. As the car drove her through the familiar streets, images of the past few weeks raced through her mind. Here, Elias helped her wallpaper the hallway. There, they laughed together, picking out a new couch. Here, he brought her coffee in bed last Sunday. Each of those images, so warm and real, was now poisoned. Everything had been part of the plan. Every gesture, every word, every smile, everything was a calculated lie leading up to this evening.

The cab turned onto her street, the old five-story building, the sprawling maple tree by the entrance, all so familiar, so painfully known. She paid and leaped out without waiting for the driver to wish her good night.

Her heart pounded in her chest, but now it wasn’t just panic. It was hope. Soon she would go into her apartment, lock herself in with all the deadbolts, and be safe. And tomorrow morning—tomorrow—she would figure something out.

She ran up the stairs to her third-floor unit. There it was. The brown faux-leather door number 27, her door. She fumbled in her bag and found the keys. Her fingers wouldn’t obey her. The key ring fell to the floor with a loud clang. The echo resonated through the quiet stairwell. She quickly picked them up, selected the right key, and inserted it into the keyhole.

The key wouldn’t go in. She pulled it out, turned it over, and tried again. The same result. It only went about half an inch deep and hit something hard, as if something was lodged in the lock. Lydia tried the second lower lock. Same story.

It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t be.

She pushed the key into both locks again and again with growing desperation, uselessly. A wild thought tore through her mind. Had someone stuck matches in the locks? But why?

The panic she had almost overcome returned with renewed force. She began to knock—first quietly, then louder and louder.

“Open up! Please open up! This is… the police! What’s going on?”

No answer.

She listened. No sound. Then she began hammering on the door with her fists and feet.

“Open up! This is my apartment! I live here!”

Her scream was full of despair.

At that moment, the lock on the opposite landing clicked and a door opened slightly. Standing in the doorway was Tamara Davis, the neighbor Lydia had known since childhood.

“Lydia, is that you? What happened? Honey, why are you shouting?”

“Tamara Davis, I can’t get into my home,” Lydia gasped, turning to her. “The locks, they won’t open.”

And just then, the door to her apartment slowly opened. But standing on the threshold was not Elias, nor a police officer. Standing there was a completely strange woman in her fifties in a faded bathrobe and worn slippers. Her hair was carelessly tied up in a knot, and her face expressed extreme dissatisfaction. Behind her, it smelled of fried potatoes.

“What do you want?” she asked rudely, sizing Lydia up from head to toe. “Why are you making such a racket in the whole stairwell? Have you looked at the time?”

Lydia froze. She just stood there staring at the woman standing in the doorway of her apartment, her home. She couldn’t utter a word. The air is out.

“I… I live here,” Lydia finally whispered.

“What?” The woman chuckled. “I rent here. And who are you? I don’t know you.”

At that moment, other doors in the stairwell began to open. Old Mr. Nelson from the fifth floor peeked out and the young couple from the fourth. Everyone watched the unfolding scene with curiosity.

And then steps and voices were heard from below on the stairs. Lydia turned around. Two people were coming up the steps: Elias and his mother, Johanna Sterling.

Elias looked concerned and distressed. Johanna Sterling was, as always, the embodiment of composure and dignity. A sorrowful concern was etched on her face.

“Please excuse the noise,” Elias said, addressing all the neighbors simultaneously. His voice was calm and convincing. “Lydia is a bit overwhelmed. Overworked. A nervous breakdown. We were just on our way to pick her up and bring her home.”

Johanna Sterling stepped toward Lydia and gently took her arm. Her fingers were ice cold.

“My dear Lydia, come on. You don’t have to make a scene. Come to us. You’ll rest. Everything will be all right. We are only trying to help you.”

The neighbors who had previously watched the situation with confusion now exchanged knowing glances. Of course. Johanna Sterling, a respected woman, deputy chair of the Metropolitan Housing Authority. She couldn’t lie. And Lydia, yes, she had been a bit nervous lately. Probably really a breakdown.

The looks they gave Lydia changed. There was pity and suspicion in them.

“This is my apartment!” Lydia screamed, tearing her arm away. “From my parents. What is this woman doing here?”

“Lydia, my dear, you must be mistaken about something,” Tamara Davis said gently but firmly, stepping out of her apartment. “You yourself said you were having problems, debts. It’s probably embarrassing for you, Lydia, to suspect such a respected woman as Mrs. Sterling. She only wants to help you.”

Elias sighed sadly, as if it pained him deeply to have to explain all this.

“Tamara, you’re right. Lydia had some financial difficulties. To prevent creditors from seizing her apartment, we temporarily transferred the rights to my mother. It’s just a business arrangement to protect her property. And while we resolved the problems, my mother officially rented the apartment to this woman so it wouldn’t stand empty. Everything is completely legal.”

The woman in the bathrobe immediately confirmed, “Yes, yes, I rent from Mrs. Sterling. I have a contract. All official.”

This was such an outrageous, brazen lie that Lydia was momentarily stunned.

“What creditors? What debts? You’re all lying!” she screamed, her voice cracking. “I haven’t transferred anything. I haven’t signed anything.”

Elias looked at her with deep sadness. Then he turned to his mother.

“Mom, I didn’t want to do this in front of everyone, but I guess I have to. She leaves me no choice.”

He calmly opened the expensive leather briefcase he held and pulled out a neat folder. From the folder, he withdrew a document, an official form, several stapled sheets.

“Here,” he said, holding the document so all the neighbors could see the notarized sales contract. He walked up to Lydia and unfolded the last page in front of her face. “Look, Lydia, you simply forgot.”

She lowered her eyes and saw it. At the bottom of the page, beneath the lines of official text, was her signature. Clear, sweeping, painfully familiar. Brooks, Lydia.

And at that moment, a memory flashed through her mind. Two days ago in the evening, they were sitting on the couch with Elias, watching a movie. He came to her with a stack of papers.

“Sweetheart, this is for the utilities, for the registration, lots of formalities after the wedding. I need your signature in a few places so I can run to the offices myself without bothering you.”

She had been happy. She had trusted him. Without looking, she had signed everything he had presented to her at the marked spots.

The signature wasn’t forged. She herself had signed the verdict with her own hand. She had given this man her home. The paper was right in front of her face. Lydia stared at her signature, at those familiar handwritten letters, and the world around her ceased to exist. The sounds vanished—the judging whispers of the neighbors, the sympathetic voice of Johanna Sterling, the disapproving sniff of the woman in the bathrobe. All of it became a distant, incomprehensible buzz, like the sound of the ocean in a seashell.

She only saw her signature, the signature that had crossed out her entire life. She herself had given them her home with her own hands, with a smile on her face.

“See, darling.” Elias’s voice penetrated the ringing silence in her head. “You just forgot. Overwork. No problem. Come to us, have some tea, get some rest, and everything will be fine.”

Johanna Sterling took her arm again. This time, her grip wasn’t gentle. It was iron. It was the grip of a jailer.

“Come, Lydia, don’t be stubborn.”

And at that moment, her petrification gave way. It was replaced by an animal, primal fear. Going with them into their house after all that had happened…

Elsa’s words from the restaurant: “My daughter married him. She’s not alive anymore.” They struck her head like a club.

If she went with them now, she wouldn’t be alive either.

She tore herself away with all her strength, ripping her arm free from Johanna Sterling’s iron grip.

“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, backing away toward the stair railing.

Her movement was so sudden that both Elias and his mother were confused for a second. That second was enough for her. She turned and rushed down the stairs, ignoring the steps, leaping over two steps at a time, clinging to the cold railing.

“Lydia, stop!” Elias yelled after her. In his voice, there was no more feigned concern, only a nasty, commanding snarl. “I said stop!”

She didn’t listen. She ran past her floor, past the second, past the first. She heard them starting to stomp upstairs as they took up the chase. The heavy front door slammed shut before her nose. She pushed it open with all her might and stumbled out onto the street into the damp night chill.

She ran without looking back. She didn’t know where, only forward, away from that yard, away from those windows that had been her home just this morning. The wind whipped her face. Tears blurred her eyes and mixed with the light drizzle. She ran several blocks until her lungs burned. Only then did she stop, hide in a dark alley between the buildings, and slide down the wall, choking on sobs.

She had nothing left. No home, no money, no husband whom, it turned out, she had never known. She was alone in this huge cold city, humiliated in front of her neighbors, painted as a crazy hysteric, homeless.

She sat in that alley for maybe an hour, trembling from the cold and despair. Gradually, the sobbing subsided, leaving behind only a dull, nagging pain. She had to do something. She couldn’t stay on the street.

She remembered the money in her bag. Elsa’s money, the only thing she had left. She pulled out her phone. The screen was wet with rain.

Where should she go? A hotel was too expensive. She didn’t know how long she would have to make this money last. She searched the internet for a cheap hostel. The phone displayed several addresses. One was relatively close at the other end of downtown. She called a cab, tried to speak as calmly as possible, and stepped out onto the street into the icy wind.

The hostel turned out to be a shabby place with a worn-out sign. Inside, it smelled of dampness and chlorine. A sleepy administrator took the money for one night, without asking many questions, and gave her the key to a tiny room with an iron bed and a nightstand. The window faced the blind wall of the neighboring building, but Lydia didn’t care. There were walls here and a lock on the door.

She locked herself in, sat down on the squeaky bed, and pulled out her phone again. She scrolled through her contacts, not knowing who to call. A friend? What would she tell them? That her husband was a fraud who had taken her apartment two weeks after the wedding? They wouldn’t believe her. They would think she had gone crazy, just like the neighbors.

Work? Her boss, a strict and decent man, wouldn’t tolerate such scandals.

And then her finger stopped on a name in the phone book: Elsa Miller. Gerbera Elsa. She had saved her number a few months ago when Elsa called to order a bouquet for her neighbor’s birthday party. The only person in the entire world who knew the truth, the only one who had tried to warn her.

She pressed the call button, her heart hammered. What if Elsa didn’t pick up? What if all this had just been a strange impulse and now she didn’t want to talk to her anymore?

After a few long rings, a quiet, shaky voice answered on the other end.

“Hello…”

“Elsa Miller,” Lydia whispered, her voice breaking. “This… This is Lydia from the flower shop.”

Silence hung on the other end of the line. For a second, Lydia thought the connection had been cut.

“Honey, finally,” Elsa said, and there was so much relief in her voice that tears welled up in Lydia’s eyes again. “You’re alive? Where are you? Are you all right?”

“No,” Lydia gasped. “I’m not all right at all.”

She told her everything, haltingly and sobbing, in a few words about the blocked accounts, the changed locks, the woman in the bathrobe, and the sales contract with her own signature. Elsa listened in silence without interrupting her.

When Lydia finished, she only said three words, but she said them in such a firm and convincing tone that a tiny spark of hope ignited in Lydia.

“Give me the address. I’m coming.”

Forty minutes later, there was a quiet knock on the door of her shabby room. It was Elsa. She stepped in, looked over the room, then looked at Lydia, and without a word, she simply walked over and hugged her. And in that maternal, awkward hug, there was more warmth and compassion than in all of Elias’s words over the last month.

“Come to my place,” she said. “You don’t belong here.”

Elsa’s apartment was small, modest, but very clean and cozy. It smelled of herbs and old books. Many photos hung on the walls, mainly of the same young woman with big, bright eyes and a kind smile. In one photo, she had braids and a bow. In another, she wore a graduation gown. In a third, she was laughing with a huge bouquet of orange gerberas in her hands.

“That’s Vera,” Elsa said softly when she noticed Lydia’s gaze. “My daughter.”

She led Lydia into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and got jam from the cupboard. Lydia sat at the table, silent. She couldn’t take her eyes off Vera’s portrait, which hung directly across from her.

“She loved your shop very much,” Elsa began, pouring tea into the cups. “She said you were the only one who had the freshest flowers and the finest taste. That you weren’t just a salesperson, but a real artist. That’s why I recognized you immediately. Not you, me—but I you.”

Elsa sat down opposite her. Her face was drawn. Deep shadows lay under her eyes.

“What happened to you is almost the same thing that happened to her. One for one. He also appeared so suddenly, charming, attentive. After three months, he asked her to marry him. Vera had her own place, a small studio apartment her grandmother had left her. A month after the wedding, he persuaded her to sign the apartment over to him. He said it would be easier that way to get a bigger mortgage for a shared family home. That it was just a formality. She believed him. She loved him.”

Elsa fell silent, taking a sip of tea. Her hands were trembling.

“And another month later, they were supposedly out on a boat. That’s what he said. A storm came up. The boat capsized. Vera couldn’t swim well. He said he tried to save her, but couldn’t. They found him on the shore, shocked and hypothermic. They found her two days later. The police said it was an accident.”

“Oh my God,” was all Lydia could whisper.

“He was such a grieving widower.” Elsa scoffed bitterly. “Everyone felt sorry for him. The apartment went to him as the sole heir. He sold it three weeks after the funeral, and I… I didn’t believe him for a second. I started secretly investigating, slowly, gathering information, and I understood that my Vera wasn’t the last one. When I saw him next to you in your shop, I knew you were next. I tracked you, waited for a moment. And when I saw you in the restaurant today, I knew it was my only chance to warn you.”

Lydia sat there stunned. Vera’s story was her story. Only her ending, the one with the boat and the accident, was still missing.

“But how?” she whispered. “How do they pull this off? These documents, the notary public—it all looks so legal. They must have connections, some patrons.”

Elsa looked at her with a long, heavy gaze.

“Patrons? That’s exactly the point. He is not alone. He’s just the bait, the handsome face. The entire operation is run by his mother, Johanna Sterling.”

Lydia could hardly believe it.

“But she’s such a respected woman. She seems so caring.”

“That’s a mask,” Elsa countered sharply. “Do you know what she really does? All her public activities are just a facade. Johanna Sterling, deputy chair of the Metropolitan Housing Authority.”

Lydia froze, clutching her cold cup.

Housing authority. The place where all real estate transactions are registered, where all the archives are kept, where all the official stamps are placed.

“She has access to all the databases,” Elsa concluded, her voice sounding like a verdict. “She has all the necessary forms, all the stamps, and all the authority to make any forged contract look like a perfectly legitimate document. She can make it look like your apartment never belonged to you, and no one will believe you because she is the power.”

Elsa’s words hung in the air of the small, dimly lit kitchen. Housing authority. Deputy chair. Every detail that had seemed strange or suspicious before now fit together, forming an outrageous but perfectly logical picture. The submissive behavior of the restaurant manager, Johanna Sterling’s calm confidence in front of the neighbors, the perfectly filled-out, notarized contract that appeared from her briefcase—all of it was not coincidence, but links in a chain forged in the corridors of power.

“So that’s how it is,” Lydia whispered into the void. “This is… this is the perfect crime.”

“Exactly,” Elsa nodded, her face even more sunken. “She has everything. Power, reputation, access to documents. She can create any paper, confirm any lie. And Elias is her handsome facade, her tool. He finds lonely women with property. He gains their trust. And then—then it’s just technique. Her technique.”

Lydia stood up and began pacing the kitchen. The passive despair that had held her captive in the hostel was gone. It was replaced by a cold, ringing anger. She had been betrayed, used, thrown out of her own life like a useless thing, and all with a smile on their faces in front of everyone while she herself was framed as the culprit.

“We have to go to the police,” she said, stopping abruptly. “We have to tell them everything. Vera’s story, my story. They have to listen to us.”

“They will listen to us,” Elsa replied bitterly. “They’ll take everything down in a report and then they’ll make an inquiry where? To the Metropolitan Housing Authority to verify the authenticity of your apartment documents. And do you know what answer they will get? They’ll get an official response with a signature and a stamp that citizen Lydia Brooks voluntarily, in sound mind and full awareness, sold her apartment to citizen Johanna Sterling. And they will attach a certified copy of the contract. They will dismiss all your words as the slander of a respected public official. At best, they will just wave us away. At worst, they will open a case against you.”

Every word from Elsa was a nail hammered into the coffin of her hopes. She was right. Against an official document, their words counted for nothing. They were just two women, one insane with grief, the other an unstable hysteric.

“So, we need proof,” Lydia pressed. “Irrefutable proof. Something they can’t refute. Something that proves these are not isolated incidents, but a system. Where are we going to get that?”

Elsa sighed. “She has all the documents. All the threads converge with her.”

Lydia sat back down at the table. She thought. She had to think. Who? Who could help her? Someone close but not part of this nightmare, and only one name surfaced in her mind.

Val. Valerie Jenkins. Her assistant. Her friend from the flower shop. Val was quiet, even a little timid, but she was an honest and decent person. She had known Lydia for many years. She certainly wouldn’t believe the nonsense about a nervous breakdown and creditors. Maybe she could find something out, hear something. After all, Elias had often stopped by the shop. Maybe he had said something when Lydia wasn’t around. Every little thing, every detail could be a clue.

That was the only chance.

“I have to meet someone,” Lydia said decisively. “My colleague Val.”

“That’s dangerous, honey.” Elsa shook her head. “They might be watching your friends, the shop.”

“I’ll be careful,” Lydia promised. “I’ll call her from your phone and arrange a meeting in a quiet spot. She’s my only hope.”

She dialed Val’s number. Val answered almost immediately. Her voice sounded worried.

“Lydia, thank goodness. What happened? Your Elias was here this morning looking for you, saying you ran away from home, that you were unwell. I was so worried.”

“Val, I’m fine. I urgently need to talk to you. It’s a matter of life and death, but please, not a word to anyone. Can you meet me in an hour somewhere in the park behind the market?”

“Yes, of course,” Val answered without hesitation. “I’ll be there.”

An hour later, in Elsa’s old coat and with a scarf tied around her head to make her harder to recognize, Lydia stepped onto the street. She decided to take a slight detour to the meeting place past her shop. She wanted to at least catch a glimpse of her little world, which she had also lost.

As she approached the familiar street, she saw something unusual from a distance. A small crowd, ten to fifteen people, stood at the entrance to her shop. She saw a car with the logo of a local newspaper. Beside it stood a photographer with a large camera.

Lydia’s heart clenched painfully. She moved closer, hiding behind the onlookers, and saw something that made her feel nauseous.

In the center of the crowd, under the camera flashes, stood Johanna Sterling. She wasn’t wearing house clothes, but a severe business suit with a perfect hairstyle. She was giving an interview. Beside her stood a young journalist with a notepad. She spoke in her typical voice, the voice of a public figure concerned about the city’s well-being.

“That’s why working with the citizens is so important,” she was proclaiming. “We at the housing authority strive to be closer to people, to solve their urgent problems. Take for instance this wonderful flower shop here. We help small businesses. We support entrepreneurs.”

Lydia listened to this nonsense and couldn’t believe her ears. She had come here—to her shop—to put on a show against the backdrop of Lydia’s misfortune. What blatant hypocrisy.

And at that moment, Johanna Sterling seemed to sense her gaze. She looked up and saw directly through the crowd to her. Her eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second, but immediately a wide, joyful smile appeared on her face.

“Lydia, my dear, thank goodness,” she cried out loudly across the street, walking directly toward her, pushing the crowd apart.

Lydia froze like a rabbit before a snake. It was too late to run. Johanna came very close and grabbed her hands; her grip was again iron. She turned Lydia to face the journalist and photographer.

“Look, there’s our runaway. We were so worried,” she said, her voice trembling with sincere relief. “Lydia, please come home. Stop listening to that poor, grief-stricken old woman who is confused. Elias has forgiven you everything. He’s not mad that you took the money. We understand everything. You’re under stress. We will help you.”

It was a devastating blow. In one fell swoop, in front of witnesses and the press, she painted Lydia as a thief who had stolen from her own husband, as an unstable person who had fallen under the influence of a crazy old lady. A whisper started in the crowd. The journalist quickly scribbled something in his pad. The photographer clicked the shutter, capturing the scene: the respectable official and the disheveled, frantic-looking Lydia.

At that moment, the shop owner, Peter Walsh, stepped out of the flower shop door. He saw the scene, saw the reporters, and heard Johanna Sterling’s words about the stolen money. His face turned red.

“Brooks!” he roared, striding toward her. “What are you doing here? A scandal in front of my shop, dragging my name through the dirt next to theft in the newspapers. You’re fired. I never want to see you here again. Understood?”

He roughly grabbed Lydia by the shoulder and pushed her aside. Away from the entrance, away from the cameras.

“Get out of here, lady!” he yelled, turning to Johanna. “Sort out your family problems somewhere else.”

Lydia staggered from the shove. The humiliation was complete. She had lost everything—her home, her money, her reputation, and now her job. She stood in the middle of the street, crushed and dishonored, and the people around her looked at her with contempt and pity.

She was pushed out of the crowd. A man roughly said, “Don’t stand in the way.”

And at that moment, as she passed the pale, deathly white Val, who was standing right in front of the entrance, Val made a quick, inconspicuous movement. She slid something cold and metallic into Lydia’s palm and quickly squeezed her fingers shut.

“I’m so sorry,” Val whispered so quietly she could barely be understood. Her eyes were full of horror. “My cousin works as a cleaner at the housing authority. She gave me this just in case. Johanna is terribly paranoid. She keeps everything real in her office. She has a personal gray ledger there. I beg you, Lydia. Don’t tell anyone where you got this.”

Overwhelmed, Lydia opened her hand. Inside was a key—an ordinary metal office door key. The cold metal of the key dug into her palm. Lydia stood in the middle of the sidewalk, and the world around her disintegrated into disjointed pieces. Her boss’s angry face, the clicking of the camera, the pitiful, scornful glances of the passersby who were already dispersing, losing interest in someone else’s suffering.

Johanna Sterling, having fulfilled her task, majestically climbed into the waiting black government car. Lydia clenched her fist, hiding the key. She turned and walked away, not paying attention to her path. She wasn’t running. She didn’t have the strength for that anymore. She walked quickly, almost marching, forcing herself forward, away from this place of total humiliation.

In her ears, Val’s whisper still rang. Gray ledger—don’t tell anyone.

She returned to Elsa an hour later, wandering through backyards and dark alleys like a real criminal. When she entered the apartment, she went silently into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and opened her fist. The key fell onto the oilcloth with a dull thud.

Elsa looked first at the key, then at Lydia’s deathly pale face.

“What is that?”

“It’s a key,” Lydia replied hoarsely. “To her office at the housing authority.”

She told her everything that had happened in front of the shop—about the reporters, the public accusation of theft, the firing, and Val’s desperate whisper. Elsa took the key in her wrinkled hand, weighing it in her palm. Her eyes, usually filled with quiet grief, shone with a hard, determined fire.

“The gray ledger,” she repeated Val’s words. “If it exists, that’s our only chance. Everything must be in there. Names, addresses, dates, proof. But how do we get in?” Lydia asked. “They won’t let us in. And even if they did, what would we do?”

“We can’t get in during the day,” Elsa said firmly. “So, we go at night.”

Lydia winced. “Breaking into the housing authority at night, Elsa Miller, that’s crazy. They’ll catch us. And then what?”

“And then what, honey?” Elsa interrupted her. “What more can they take from you? They took your home. They took your money, your job, and your good name. They took my daughter. We have nothing left to lose. This key is our last card in this game. And if we don’t play it now, it might be too late tomorrow. They won’t leave you alone now that they’ve started the press smear campaign. They’ll find you.”

She was right. After today’s spectacle for the journalists, they wouldn’t stop. They would corner her, put her in a mental institution, or… or there would be another accident.

“Fine,” Lydia nodded, a cold resolve filling her. “We go tonight.”

They spent the rest of the day in tense planning. Elsa got an old but detailed city map from the cupboard, and they studied the location of the housing authority. It was a massive gray building from the 1950s taking up an entire block, an impregnable fortress. But Val had said her cousin worked there as a cleaner, meaning the building had to have a service entrance that the staff used, and the nighttime cleaning had to start late in the evening when all the employees had left.

They waited until eleven p.m. The city grew quiet. They put on dark, inconspicuous clothes. Lydia put the key in her pocket, and it reminded her, like an icy burden, of the madness of their undertaking.

They walked, avoiding well-lit streets. The housing authority building looked even more sinister at night than during the day—a dark monolith with rarely lit windows on the upper floors. They circled it and, as expected, found an inconspicuous metal door in the inner courtyard. Trash containers stood next to it.

They hid in the shadows and watched. Around midnight, two women in work overalls approached the door. They were smoking and talking, and one of them wedged the door open with a brick so it wouldn’t close and disappeared around the corner, presumably to her post.

That was their chance. Lydia’s heart pounded like crazy. She and Elsa exchanged glances, slipped out of the shadows, and darted through the ajar door.

Inside, a long, dimly lit corridor that smelled of chlorine awaited them. The hum of a floor polisher could be heard somewhere at the end. On tiptoes, they moved in the opposite direction toward the central part of the building. The corridors were empty and echoed. Every step they took created a sound. They passed endless doors with signs: Department of Privatization, Legal Department, Archives.

Johanna Sterling’s office was on the third floor. The sign on the door read: Sterling, Johanna. Deputy Chair.

Lydia pulled out the key. Her hands trembled so much that she didn’t hit the keyhole right away. She held her breath and turned the key. There was a quiet, almost silent click. They stepped inside and firmly closed the door behind them.

The office was immaculate—not just tidy, but absolutely perfect, like something in a magazine. A huge polished desk of dark wood on which there was not a single speck of dust. An expensive leather chair, perfectly straight stacks of paper on the edge of the table. A pencil holder with sharply sharpened pencils. No personal items, no family photos, just cold, flawless order.

“Search,” Elsa whispered.

They began the search quietly, careful not to make a single sound. Lydia tackled the desk drawers. Everything was in its place. Folders with official documents, office supplies, a notebook written in clean, fine handwriting—nothing resembling a gray ledger. Elsa checked the massive bookcase. On the shelves were law books, collections of statutes, reference works. No secret books, no hidden compartments.

Twenty minutes passed. Their despair grew. Had Val been wrong, or did Johanna keep it somewhere else?

Elsa walked over to the wall opposite the desk, annoyed, and tapped lightly on it with her knuckles.

“Hollow… empty,” she whispered in frustration.

Lydia looked up and saw that wall. It was Johanna Sterling’s wall of fame. It was covered in plaques, thank-you notes, and framed photos. Here, she shook the mayor’s hand. Here, she spoke at a forum. Here, she received an award for her impeccable service.

And then Lydia noticed a detail, a detail that only the eye of a florist accustomed to perfect symmetry and compositional harmony could notice. One of the photos, the largest one, in which Johanna Sterling stood next to the county executive, hung ever so slightly crooked, literally by a few millimeters. In this realm of perfectionism, such a small thing seemed impossible.

“Wait,” Lydia said, walking to the wall.

She reached out her hand and instead of just straightening the frame, she took it with both hands and pulled lightly, and she felt the frame give way with a faint click. It wasn’t a photo. It was a door—the door to a small safe embedded in the wall.

Elsa gasped. The safe was small and had a combination lock, a round dial with numbers.

“The code,” Elsa breathed. “We’ll never crack that.”

But Lydia wasn’t listening. She looked at the wall next to the safe. There, among other awards, hung a heavy bronze plaque in a frame: Metropolitan Housing Authority, founded in the year 1955.

Paranoid people, as Val had said, didn’t use random numbers. They used something they would never forget. What could be more significant to Johanna Sterling, whose entire life was built around this place, than the founding date?

Lydia reached for the dial. Her fingers slowly turned the knob with clicking sounds. 1… 9… 5… 5.

Inside, something clicked dully. Lydia pulled the small handle. The heavy metal door yielded and opened silently.

Inside, on the single shelf, lay a small but thick gray ledger in a sturdy gray cover, completely blank on the outside. Lydia took it out with trembling hands and placed it on the table. She opened the first page. Her breath caught.

This was more than just proof. It was a verdict.

The book was neatly divided into columns: Name, Object Address, Perpetrator, Status, Notes. In the Perpetrator column, the same name was written everywhere: Sterling, E. J.

The first entry, the second, the third. Under number three, Lydia saw a familiar address, the address of Vera, Elsa’s daughter, small studio apartment. In the Notes column, it was short and cold: Accident. Property realized.

She frantically flipped through. The fourth entry, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh. There were eight in total. Eight apartments, eight marriages or business agreements with Elias. Eight fates next to which were notes: Vanished without a trace. Overdose. Traffic accident. And all of this was sealed with copies of documents certified with the housing authority stamp and her mother’s signature.

The last entry, number eight, was hers: Brooks, L. Address of her parents’ apartment. And in the Status column, in neat handwriting, it said: In progress.

Those two words, written in even, emotionless handwriting, sent a cold shiver down Lydia’s spine. She was just an unfinished item on a to-do list. Her life, her home, her future—all of it.

Elsa looked over her shoulder. She saw her daughter’s name, the short note about the accident, and a quiet, suppressed sound escaped her chest. She swayed, and Lydia had to steady her.

“Easy, Elsa Miller, take it easy,” Lydia whispered, although the ground was giving way beneath her own feet. “We found it. We found what we were looking for. We need to act fast. Take the book.”

“Madness. They’ll notice it’s missing immediately. We need to copy it. The whole thing front to back.”

The phone, Lydia commanded herself. She pulled her old smartphone from her bag. The screen had been cracked six months ago, and the battery was almost dead, but the camera worked. She turned it on and feverishly began to photograph the contents of the gray ledger page by page. Her hands trembled so much that some shots were blurry. She had to repeat them. The click of the shutter in the dead silence of the office seemed deafeningly loud.

Elsa stood next to her, clinging to her shoulder, staring intently at the pages where the fate of her daughter and seven other unfortunates was recorded.

“Faster, honey, faster,” she whispered.

Lydia turned another page. Click. Another one. Click.

She was already halfway through when both of them froze, hearing a sound that made the blood run cold in their veins. Footsteps were heard in the corridor—not the steps of a night cleaner. They were fast, confident male steps, and they were coming directly toward their door.

Lydia rushed to the table, grabbed the gray ledger to push it back into the safe, but it was already too late. The key turned in the lock. The door flew open.

Standing on the threshold was Elias. He wasn’t wearing the expensive suit from the restaurant, but a simple black turtleneck and jeans, but he didn’t look any less dangerous. On the contrary, without the polish and charm, he looked like a predator. His eyes burned with cold rage.

He wasn’t alone. Peeking anxiously from behind his shoulder was Val. Her face was wet with tears, her lips trembling.

“I’m sorry, Lydia,” she cried, her voice breaking into a sob. “I’m so sorry. They found out about my cousin, the cleaner. They threatened my whole family. I didn’t mean to—”

Elias roughly shoved her aside, and she stumbled and fell to her knees in the corridor where she continued to weep. He stepped into the office. His gaze darted around the room. He saw Elsa, then Lydia, and then the open safe in the wall and the gray ledger on the table.

All his composure, all his charm, all his mask fell away in a second. Standing before them was no caring husband, no respected businessman. Standing before them was a cornered, furious animal.

“You,” he hissed, and there was so much hatred in that word that Lydia instinctively took a step back. “You two old women ruined everything. Everything.”

He lunged forward, not at Elsa, but at Lydia. She was the one holding the phone with the evidence. He wanted to snatch it from her. Destroy it. Obliterate it. He was strong and fast. He grabbed Lydia’s wrist and twisted it with such force that she screamed in pain. The phone flew onto the floor. With his other hand, he buried his fingers in her hair.

“You’ll regret the day you were born,” he snarled directly into her face.

And at that moment, what he hadn’t expected at all happened. The quiet, frail old woman, Elsa, who barely seemed able to stand, turned into a fury. There was no fear on her face, only wild maternal rage over her destroyed daughter. She grabbed the heavy glass water carafe from the table and slammed it with all her might onto Elias’s head.

There was a dull, wet thud. The glass didn’t break, but the blow was terrible. Elias’s eyes widened in surprise. The grip in Lydia’s hair loosened. He staggered and crashed onto the carpet like a sack, releasing her arm.

“Run!” Elsa screamed, grabbing Lydia’s arm.

Lydia, beside herself with shock, bent down, snatched the phone from the floor, and rushed out of the office with Elsa. They ran past Val, who was weeping in the corridor and didn’t even raise her head.

“Security!” They heard Elias’s hoarse cry behind them. “He’s already coming too. Third floor! Stop them!”

They rushed toward the staircase. Down. Just down. They ran, leaping over steps. Their footsteps echoed loudly in the night silence. From above, they could already hear the pounding of multiple feet.

They ran to the first floor, to the main exit. Huge glass doors that were always open during the day, but now a heavy chain and a padlock hung on them. They were trapped.

Behind them, screams were already heard from the stairs.

“They’re here! Block all exits!”

“This way,” Elsa gasped, pulling Lydia by the sleeve.

She pushed her toward an inconspicuous door under the stairs. A sign hung on it: Utility Closet.

The door was unlocked. They stumbled inside into the narrow closet crowded with buckets and mops. It smelled of dampness and chemicals.

“What… What now?” Lydia whispered, trying to catch her breath. In the corridor, the pounding of feet could already be heard. They were very close.

Elsa looked at Lydia with a long, penetrating gaze. There was neither fear nor hatred in her eyes, only firm, icy determination.

“Now, honey, you do what I tell you,” she said quietly but authoritatively.

She grabbed Lydia by the shoulders.

“They’re looking for the gray ledger and those who saw it, but the proof is on your phone. You are the only proof.”

She turned Lydia around and forcefully shoved her back into the closet. Then she followed, positioning herself between Lydia and the approaching security guards.

“I’ll hold them off,” she said without turning around.

“No!” Lydia screamed. “Elsa Miller, don’t do this.”

But Elsa, as if she hadn’t heard, shoved her into the closet again.

“Tomorrow at noon sharp, there’s a forum at the Civic Center auditorium. His mother will receive an award there. Go there. Go and show everyone what you have on your phone. I’m buying you time.”

And before Lydia could reply, Elsa slammed the closet door shut. There was a click of the old rusty lock that she had turned from the outside.

Lydia rushed to the door, beginning to hit it with her fists.

“Open up, Elsa Miller, open up!”

But in response, she only heard the approaching footsteps and Elias’s voice, full of rage.

“She’s in here! Grab her! Where’s the other one?”

Lydia pressed her eye to the keyhole. She saw the two huge security guards rushing toward Elsa. She stood in the middle of the corridor, small, petite, but with her head held high, looking directly into the eyes of Elias, who was holding his head.

“Where is she?” he snarled.

Elsa remained silent. He signaled to the security guards. They roughly grabbed her by the arms and dragged her toward the exit. She didn’t resist. She only turned her head for a second toward the closet, and Lydia thought she saw her wink.

And she, Lydia, was left alone, locked in the dark utility closet, helpless, while she heard the steps of her only friend and her enemy retreating.

Lydia spent the entire night on the floor in the cold, dark closet. She didn’t cry. The tears had dried up. Inside there was only a burned-out desert, in the middle of which stood an icy obelisk of rage and determination. Again and again, she repeated Elsa’s words in her head: Go there. Show everyone.

It wasn’t just a farewell. It was a command, a legacy. Elsa had sacrificed her freedom, perhaps even her life, to give her this chance, and Lydia had no right to squander it. She pressed the phone to herself as if it were the most valuable treasure in the world. In it, in that small piece of plastic and glass, the lives and deaths of eight people were stored. In it lay her only hope for justice.

In the early morning, when the gray sky behind the small barred window near the ceiling grew lighter, footsteps were heard in the corridor. The early shift of cleaners arrived. They talked loudly, clattering buckets. Lydia heard someone trying to open the door to her closet.

“Locked again?” a woman’s voice grumbled. “What’s with this? This lock keeps sticking.”

“Oh well, let’s open it later.”

She waited until eight o’clock when the building began to fill with employees. First, a murmur of voices, the tapping of heels. She waited another half hour until the main flow of people had subsided, and then she made her decision. She tapped lightly on the door. No one answered. Then she knocked harder.

“Hello, is anyone there? Open up!”

Behind the door, footsteps were heard. Then a mutter and the grinding of a key in the lock. The cleaner from before opened the door. When she saw Lydia, disheveled and with bags under her eyes, she stepped back in shock.

“Who… Who are you? How did you get in here?”

“Got locked in by accident,” Lydia tossed out, and without giving the cleaner time to think, she slipped into the corridor and walked quickly toward the exit. No one paid attention to her. In the morning rush of the offices, everyone was busy with their own affairs.

She stepped out onto the street. Freedom. But she had no strength to rejoice. She knew that Elsa had most likely already been taken to the police, accused of assaulting Elias, perhaps even more. And Johanna Sterling remained untouchable. Today, she would be center stage, accepting an award as a pillar of the community.

This thought gave Lydia strength. She had only a few hours left.

She ran and she didn’t hide. She began to act. First, she went to the nearest coffee shop and ordered the cheapest coffee just to get access to an outlet. Her phone battery was almost dead. While it charged, she searched the internet for information about today’s forum. Everything was, as Elsa had said: the Civic Center Auditorium, starting at 12 p.m. Commemorative ceremony for outstanding service to the city. The mayor was the main guest. The award recipient: Johanna Sterling.

The next step was the evidence. Storing it only on an old phone was too risky. She found the nearest print shop that offered printing services. With a portion of Elsa’s money, she had every page of the gray ledger printed on glossy paper, clear, large, so that every letter, every number, every signature was visible. She made five sets.

Then she made the most important call. In Elsa’s notebook, which she had left on the kitchen table, Lydia found the number of her nephew. She called.

“Hello, you don’t know me,” she began quickly when she heard the man’s voice. “My name is Lydia. I’m a friend of Elsa Miller.”

Someone gasped on the other end of the line. Lydia continued without giving him a chance to say a word.

“I don’t have time for explanations, but I know what happened to Vera. I have proof. Today at 12 p.m. at the Civic Center Auditorium, there’s an event. I will be there. Please come and bring the largest portrait of Vera you have. And do you remember if Elsa ever told you about other families, about people who also lost relatives after they came into contact with Elias Sterling? If you know anyone, call them. Tell them to come, too.”

She hung up without waiting for an answer. She had done everything she could. Now all that was left was to go through with it.

Just before noon, she approached the Civic Center auditorium. Expensive cars were parked outside the entrance. Journalists swarmed around. Inside, in the huge hall with red velvet seats, there were hardly any free seats left. An orchestra was playing. On the stage, the mayor and other important officials sat on the presidium, and among them, in an elegant, bright suit, sat Johanna Sterling. She smiled kindly, nodding to acquaintances in the hall.

Lydia tucked the folders with the printouts into her bag. Her appearance was terrible—disheveled hair, wrinkled clothes from the day before, a bruise on her cheekbone where Elias had grabbed her. She was the living embodiment of a victim going into her final battle.

She entered the hall. The usher at the entrance tried to stop her, but she simply walked past him, her gaze fixed straight ahead. She walked down the center aisle directly toward the stage. The music stopped. People in the hall began to turn around, staring in astonishment at the strange, ragged woman disturbing the solemnity of the moment.

Johanna Sterling saw her, too. The smile on her face froze, turning into an icy mask. She whispered something to the security guard at the edge of the stage. Two strong men in suits immediately stepped into Lydia’s path, blocking her passage.

“Ma’am, you can’t go through here,” one of them said roughly, blocking her way.

Lydia stopped. She was thirty feet from the stage. The whole hall was looking at her. She opened her mouth to scream, to say at least something before she was thrown out, but someone beat her to it.

In the first row, right in front of the stage, a man suddenly stood up. He wore a simple worker’s jacket. Lydia didn’t recognize him right away.

“Let her through,” he said loudly to the hall, addressing the security guards. “Let her speak. That’s my father. The apartment of my father is also listed in that gray ledger.”

The man’s words echoed in the deafening silence like a gunshot. He wasn’t screaming. He said it calmly, with heavy, painfully gained conviction, and that made his words even more weighty.

For a moment, there was absolute, deadly silence in the huge hall. The orchestra froze with bows raised. The journalists who had been filming the presidium abruptly turned their cameras onto the man in the worker’s jacket. The security guards blocking Lydia’s way stood undecided. Their order was not to let the crazy woman through. But now she wasn’t just crazy. She had a witness.

The mayor on the stage looked at Johanna Sterling with confusion, awaiting an explanation, but the face of the community pillar had turned to stone. The icy mask of composure cracked, revealing raw animal fury underneath. She understood that the situation was spinning out of control.

Lydia needed exactly that second of delay. She took a step, bypassed the frozen security guards, then another. She wasn’t running, she was walking. She walked down the center aisle toward the stage, and every step she took echoed in the ensuing silence. Hundreds of eyes followed her—this disheveled woman in wrinkled clothes, who was walking toward the city’s most influential person.

“Grab her,” Johanna finally came to. Her voice, usually so calm and authoritative, was sharp and piercing. “Get her out of the hall immediately!”

The security guards flinched, preparing to execute the command, but it was already too late. Lydia had ascended the three steps to the stage. The master of ceremonies, a startled young man, retreated from his podium. Lydia walked over, took the heavy, cold microphone in her hand, and turned to the hall.

In the first row, she saw Elias. He jumped up from his seat. A white bandage flashed under the hair on his head, the result of Elsa’s glass carafe. His face was contorted with malice.

“She’s crazy!” he screamed, drowning out the murmur that arose in the hall. “She needs treatment. She stole money from us and is now talking nonsense. Call the police!”

The police. That was exactly what Lydia wanted.

She brought the microphone to her lips and took a deep breath. Her voice, amplified by the loudspeakers, boomed through the vault of the huge hall.

“My name is Lydia Brooks,” she said.

She paused so everyone could hear and remember her name.

“Two weeks ago, I married this man.” She nodded toward Elias. “And yesterday, he along with his mother, the respected Johanna Sterling, threw me out of my own apartment, the apartment I supposedly sold to her myself.”

An indignant uproar arose in the hall. Johanna Sterling leaped up from her seat on the presidium.

“This is slander. Lies!” she screamed. “I will sue!”

“You certainly will,” Lydia replied calmly.

She raised one of the folders she was holding.

“They called me a thief, a crazy person. And this”—she held up the printed sheet so everyone could see the columns and numbers—“this is the real list of your service to the city, Mrs. Sterling. Your list of properties.”

She didn’t wait for a reaction. She began to read slowly, clearly, so that every word reached everyone in the hall.

“Number one: James Harrison, born 1948, vanished without a trace in 2019. His two-bedroom condo on Gerta Street was inherited by a distant relative and then sold. Perpetrator of the transaction: Sterling, Elias.”

The man in the worker’s jacket standing in the aisle clenched his fists.

“That’s my father,” he said dully, and the people around him backed away.

Lydia turned the page.

“Number two: Samantha Green, born 1977, died in a traffic accident in 2020. Her studio apartment on Peace Avenue went by will to her partner, Sterling, Elias.”

She looked up. There was dead silence in the hall. Everyone listened, holding their breath. Journalists pushed each other aside and stormed toward the stage, clicking their cameras.

“Number three: Vera Jones, born 1988.”

Lydia paused, and her voice trembled.

“Drowned. Accident, in the year… one month after marrying—”

She couldn’t finish speaking. At that moment, the back doors of the hall flew open with a crash, and people appeared in the aisle—Elsa’s nephew and several others. Over their heads they carried a large black-framed portrait of a young smiling woman with huge bright eyes.

From the portrait, Vera Jones looked out at the entire silent hall.

A cry of horror and pity went through the hall. It was no longer just a list of names. The tragedy had a face.

“That’s my sister!” Elsa’s nephew screamed, his voice breaking. “And our aunt, her mother, was arrested yesterday for trying to save this woman.” He pointed to Lydia.

And then the hall erupted into chaos. People were standing up everywhere.

“Michael Baker—that’s my brother!” shouted a woman from the back rows.

“The Wilsons! Those were our neighbors. They moved out so suddenly…” someone nearby whispered.

There was complete pandemonium. People were shouting, pointing fingers at the stage, at the petrified Johanna, and at the staggering Elias in the aisle. The reputation that Johanna Sterling had built over decades crumbled to ashes in five minutes. Her name, which had been a synonym for respect and honor, was now being dragged through the mud.

The mayor, deathly pale, realized he was sitting on a stage with a monster. This scandal could bury his career, too. He abruptly turned to the chief of city police, who was also sitting in full dress uniform on the presidium, and said something authoritative, waving his hand toward Sterling.

Lydia saw all this as if through a veil. She had fulfilled her task. She had taken revenge for Vera, for Elsa, for herself, and for seven other people she didn’t know.

She lowered the microphone. Police officers were already making their way to the stage. They pushed the journalists aside, forming a corridor. Lydia descended from the stage and walked toward the commanding officer. Silently, without a single word, she handed him one of the folders with all the printouts of the pages from the gray ledger.

“Everything is here,” she said quietly. “Names, addresses, dates, and I have the photos of the originals on my phone.”

The officer took the folder and quickly flipped through the pages. His face grew darker with each sheet. He looked up at Lydia, then at the stage, and gave a command to his subordinates.

Lydia stepped aside, leaning against the wall, and watched the end of this nightmare. She saw two police officers approaching Johanna Sterling. She yelled at them, waving some kind of ID, talking about her connections, but that didn’t work anymore. One of the officers calmly took her arm and put handcuffs on her. The second did the same with her other arm. The community pillar had become an ordinary arrested person.

Elias was caught in the aisle when he tried to break through to the exit. He wasn’t so calm. He snarled, pulled away, shouting, “Damn it!” But he was quickly overpowered and also led toward the exit, dragged across the carpet.

As they were being led out of the hall, Johanna Sterling looked at Lydia one last time. In her eyes, there was neither power nor confidence, only pure, helpless hatred.

Lydia stood leaning against the wall, watching the door close behind her enemies. It was all over.

Elsa’s nephew approached her.

“Thank you,” he simply said. “For what you did for her. For all of us.”

Lydia only nodded silently.

The next day, Elsa was released. All charges against her were dropped. A week later, after the intervention of the district attorney’s office, all of the Sterlings’ property transactions were declared null and void. Lydia got her apartment back.

She entered it alone. Inside, it still smelled foreign—of fried potatoes and cheap air freshener. She tore open all the windows, let the fresh wind rush in, and then she did what she did best.

She went to her flower shop. The owner himself had called her, apologizing profusely and begging her to come back. She returned with arms full of white lilies, eucalyptus, and baby’s breath. Back at home, she turned on music and set to work. She sorted the flowers, trimmed the stems, arranged huge cleansing bouquets, and with every flower her hands placed in a vase, she felt all the dirt, the pain, and the fear receding from her home, from her life, leaving behind only purity, light, and hope.

She had reclaimed her home. She had reclaimed her life.

That is an incredibly tense story, dear listeners. A story that honestly still leaves you feeling a bit uneasy. It’s about how fragile our happiness can be and how important it is to find the strength not to give up when the whole world collapses, but to stand up for yourself.

You sit there and ask yourself: did Lydia do the right thing? Was it right to go up against an entire system like that alone, risking the last thing she had—her freedom and her life? Was there perhaps another, safer way? But which one? If the very people who are supposed to protect the law are breaking it themselves, how would you have acted in her place? Would you have shown the same courage?

And how do you judge Elsa’s act? She deliberately put herself in the hands of those criminals, sacrificing herself to buy Lydia time and a chance for justice. Was such a sacrifice justified?

I would be extremely interested to read your thoughts on this. Perhaps you have questions or interesting observations about this story, something that seemed particularly important to you or something you completely disagree with. Please don’t hesitate to write everything you think in the comments under this video. Let’s discuss it together.

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I walked out of that auditorium with my hands still shaking. But for the first time in days, I could breathe again. Everything I’d been through—the fear, the humiliation, the moments when I thought my life was over—brought me to one simple truth. Sometimes the people who smile the widest hide the darkest intentions. And sometimes the smallest act of courage, even when you feel broken, is enough to turn everything around.

If you’re listening to me right now and you’re going through something that feels impossible, I want you to remember this: you are stronger than the trap you’re in. And there is always a way out. Always. Hope has a way of finding those who refuse to let go.

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