Maya's POV
My apartment door is hanging off its hinges.
I stand in the hallway, keys dangling uselessly from my fingers. The wood around the lock is splintered, like someone took a crowbar to it. Or maybe they just kicked it in. Does it even matter?
I push the door open. It scrapes across broken glass.
"No. No, no, no..."
My living room looks like a tornado hit it. The couch is flipped over, cushions slashed open with stuffing everywhere. My bookshelves are empty—hundreds of books I collected since college, gone. The coffee table is shattered.
But worse—so much worse—my research is gone.
The filing cabinet where I kept ten years of field notes, photographs, and documentation stands empty, drawers yanked out and thrown on the floor. My laptop is missing from my desk. The external hard drives where I backed up everything—vanished.
They didn't just destroy my reputation. They erased the proof that I'm innocent.
My phone buzzes again. It hasn't stopped since I left the museum. I glance at the screen and immediately wish I hadn't.
You're a liar and a thief. Hope you rot in prison.
How does it feel to steal from someone who loved you?
Dr. Ashworth is a hero for exposing you.
The messages keep coming, hundreds of them, from strangers who think they know me. My hands shake so badly I almost drop the phone.
An email notification pops up. The subject line makes my stomach drop: IMMEDIATE EVICTION NOTICE.
I tap it open. Sebastian's family owns my building—I got a "special discount" on rent because we were engaged. The email is from their lawyer. I have seventy-two hours to vacate the premises due to "criminal activity and moral violations of the lease agreement."
Three days. They're giving me three days.
I stumble further into the apartment. My bedroom door is open. Inside, my clothes are thrown everywhere, my mattress flipped, my jewelry box dumped out. The engagement ring Sebastian gave me—a massive diamond I never felt comfortable wearing—sits on top of the pile like an accusation.
I should never have said yes. I knew it felt wrong, even then. But Sebastian was charming and successful, and I was so tired of being alone. After my parents died when I was sixteen, I spent years feeling like I didn't belong anywhere. Sebastian made me feel like I finally had a place.
That was the whole point, wasn't it? Make me dependent. Make me grateful. Then take everything away.
My legs won't hold me anymore. I sink down onto the floor next to my ruined bed, and that's when I see it.
Taped to my bedroom wall is a printed photograph.
It's me and Sebastian at the excavation site in Egypt last summer. We're standing in front of the temple where I found the ankh. Sebastian has his arm around me, smiling at the camera. I'm looking at the ground, pointing at something in the dirt.
Someone has drawn a red X over my face.
Underneath, in Patricia's handwriting—I'd recognize it anywhere—are three words:
You were perfect.
My brain can't make sense of it. Perfect for what? Perfect victim? Perfect scapegoat?
The phone buzzes again. I almost ignore it, but Marcus's name flashes on the screen. I grab it like a lifeline.
"Marcus—"
"Maya, where are you?" His voice is urgent. "I've been trying to reach you for an hour."
"My apartment. They broke in. Everything's gone—my research, my backups, everything."
"Get out of there. Now."
"What? Why?"
"Because I've been digging into this, and it doesn't make sense. The 'evidence' Sebastian showed the museum? It's too perfect. The falsified reports, the fake emails—they're dated from two years ago, Maya. Someone's been planning this for a long time."
Two years. That's when Sebastian proposed. When Patricia started being extra supportive, encouraging me to focus on this specific site. When everything in my life seemed to be falling into place.
They were setting me up the whole time.
"There's more," Marcus continues. "I found something weird. Sebastian's family has connections to some kind of historical society. Super secretive, members-only thing. And get this—Patricia's name shows up in their old records from the 1990s."
"That's impossible. Patricia would've been in college then."
"Exactly. So either it's a different Patricia Zhao, or—"
"Or she's been part of this way longer than either of us knew."
The room spins. I press my hand against the wall to steady myself.
"Maya, listen to me. You need to get somewhere safe. Stay with me tonight. We'll figure this out."
"I can't." My voice sounds far away. "I need to think. I need to—"
"You need to not be alone right now."
But I am alone. That's the whole point. They took everything—my career, my home, my reputation. Even the people I trusted most were working against me.
"I'll call you tomorrow," I tell Marcus, and hang up before he can argue.
The apartment is too quiet. I can hear my own heartbeat, too fast and too loud. My phone keeps buzzing with hate messages, but I can't look anymore. I turn it face-down and let it vibrate against the floor.
This is when I'm supposed to cry, right? Fall apart completely? That's what they want. That's what they expect.
But I'm too angry to cry.
I stand up, leaving the phone behind, and walk to my bedroom window. From here, I can see the museum, its lights still blazing blocks away. The gala is probably still going. Sebastian is probably giving interviews, playing the wounded fiancé who discovered his beloved was a fraud.
The ankh is in there somewhere. My discovery. The proof that I'm not crazy, that I found something impossible and real.
They can't have it. They don't deserve it.
A plan forms in my mind—reckless and stupid and probably illegal. The kind of plan I would never normally consider. But normal Maya followed the rules and got destroyed anyway.
Maybe it's time to break a few rules myself.
I grab my darkest jacket and pull it on. In the kitchen, I find the spare keys I keep in the junk drawer—including the old security badge for the museum storage facility that I forgot to return last month.
The museum keeps high-value artifacts in a separate building across town. Lower security. Fewer cameras.
If I'm going to lose everything anyway, I might as well see my life's work one last time.
I'm halfway to the door when my phone rings again—not a text this time, but an actual call from an unknown number.
I almost don't answer. But something makes me pick up.
"Maya Hartwell?" A woman's voice, old and cracked.
"Who is this?"
"Someone who knows what they did to you. And someone who knows what that ankh really is." A pause. "You're planning to go to the storage facility, aren't you?"
My blood runs cold. "How do you—"
"Because that's exactly what they want you to do. It's a trap, child. They need you to touch that artifact again. They're counting on it."
"I don't understand—"
"You will. When you hold the ankh and your blood touches the gold, you'll understand everything. But Maya—once you do, there's no going back. No returning to this life. Choose carefully."
The line goes dead.
I stare at my phone, my heart hammering.
It's a trap. The mysterious woman said it's a trap.
But what choice do I have? Stay here and wait for my life to get worse? Let Sebastian win?
I shove the phone in my pocket and head for the door.
Trap or not, I'm going to see that ankh.
And whoever's waiting for me there is going to regret it.