Chapter 4 - Panic in the Service Corridor
Two floors down, in the chaotic labyrinth of the Harrington Tower service zone, Maria Delgado’s heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped sparrow.
She had finished cleaning the executive restrooms on forty-one, turned around for thirty seconds to grab her spray bottle, and turned back to find the alcove empty.
Pink sneakers. A yellow cardigan. Mr. Buttons. Gone.
“Lily?” Maria whispered frantically, rushing down the carpeted hallway. “Lily, honey, where are you?”
She checked the supply closet. She checked the breakroom. She checked the service elevators, where the digital display showed that car three had just traveled directly to the restricted top floor—the private executive suite of Ethan Harrington himself.
Maria’s blood ran cold.
The executive suite. The place where housekeepers were forbidden to enter unless specifically summoned, and even then, only when the great man was in meetings or away from the floor. To be caught up there without authorization—with a child—meant immediate termination. It meant blacklisting from every commercial building in downtown Chicago. It meant losing the apartment, the rent, and the fragile stability she had fought so hard to maintain since her husband walked out two years ago.
“Oh, God,” Maria breathed, her hands trembling as she grabbed the service stairwell door.
She couldn't wait for the elevator. She pushed the heavy metal door open and began sprinting up the concrete stairs, her rubber-soled cleaning shoes slapping rhythmically against the steps. One flight. Two flights. Her breath came in ragged gasps, but fear pushed her faster.
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What if Ethan Harrington found her daughter? What if he was as cruel as the rumors whispered? In financial circles, Harrington was known as the Iceberg—a man who swallowed failing companies whole, laid off thousands without blinking, and lived alone in a glass tower above a city that both feared and depended on him.
Maria reached the forty-second-floor landing, her lungs burning, and pushed the heavy fire door open into the hushed, carpeted silence of the executive corridor.
