Chapter 30: The Unauthorized Move
The hotel suite’s dressing room was a sanctuary of soft light and plush fabrics, but it felt to Pedro like a holding cell. He stood rigidly before a full-length mirror while a stylist named Leo dabbed powder at the faint shadows under his eyes.
“You’re doing that thing with your jaw again,” Cynna said from the doorway. She leaned against the frame, arms crossed, a mug of tea steaming in her hand. She was trying for lightness, but her knuckles were white around the ceramic.
“What thing?” Pedro asked, his voice tight.
“The thing where you look like you’re trying to crack a walnut with your molars.” She took a sip. “Relax. It’s just Anderson Cooper. He likes you.”
“It’s not Anderson I’m worried about,” Pedro muttered. The interview was a calculated risk—a preemptive strike to control the narrative before Maya’s fabricated medical record could leak. His publicist had booked it, his lawyer had vetted the talking points, and still, every muscle in his back was wound like a spring.
Coco clicked her tongue. “If you don’t relax, this foundation will settle into every fine line and you’ll look like a topographic map of Utah. And not in a cool, rugged way.” She blended with practiced ease. “Deep breath. Think of something peaceful. A waterfall. Puppies. Your incredibly gorgeous and patient stylist.”
Pedro attempted a smile. It felt like a crack in plaster.
His phone, face-down on the vanity beside a jasmine-scented candle, buzzed again. It had been buzzing every few minutes for the last half hour. He saw Cynna glance at it, her own forced calm thinning.
“Probably just Val, confirming the car,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Probably,” Cynna echoed, slowly moving towards the door as Pedro and Coco chatted and his finishing touches were being taken care of, including his outfit by Sweet Baby Janie.
The phone buzzed once more, a harsh brrrp against the marble. Then, a moment later, again. Two calls in quick succession. That wasn’t the publicist.
Pedro picked it up. Three missed calls from Detective Ruiz. Two voicemails. A text: PEDRO CALL ME NOW.
A cold thread of dread pulled tight in his gut. He hit dial.
Ruiz answered on the first ring. “Where’s Cynna?”
“She’s right here. With me. In the dressing room.” He put the call on speaker, his eyes finding Cynna’s. She set her mug down carefully.
“Is she? Look again.”
Pedro and Coco both turned toward the doorway where she had been standing seconds before. It was empty. The mug sat abandoned on a side table in the main suite.
“She was just here,” Pedro said, his voice rising. “Cynna!”
No answer. Just the distant hum of the hotel’s HVAC.
“She tricked my detail,” Ruiz said, the words clipped and furious. “Told the officer outside your room she was going to the business center to print something for you. He escorted her down. She walked in, waited for him to post outside, then exited through a service hallway we didn’t know about.
“She’s gone?” Pedro’s hand clenched around the phone, the sleek metal creaking. The vanity lights felt suddenly hot and surgical. “Why? Where would she even go?”
A heavy silence bled from the speaker before Ruiz answered, her voice low with grim certainty. “My team at Cedar-Sinai just called. A woman matching Cynna’s description just checked in at the main desk, demanding to see Maya Flores. She claimed to be her sister.”
“No.” The word was a punch of air. Pedro was already moving, shrugging off the stylist’s hands, his tailored jacket forgotten on the chair. “I’m on my way. Stop her.”
“I’m en route, but she’s already inside the secure wing,” Ruiz said, the sound of a car engine roaring to life underscoring her words. “Visitor protocols are different from holds. If she’s calm and claims family, they’ll sometimes allow a supervised visit, especially if the patient agrees. And Maya will agree.”
Pedro burst from the dressing room into the empty suite. Cynna’s purse was gone. Her scent—jasmine and that specific, clean shampoo—still hung in the air, a ghost. His own phone, now in his hand, showed the texts he’d ignored in his pre-interview haze.
He opened them. Three new messages, all from Maya, sent to his private number.
The first: You think a lawyer’s letter can erase a soul’s intention? The body follows the heart, Pedro. Always.
The second was a photo. It showed the view from what he recognized as Maya’s hospital room window—a concrete courtyard, a sickly palm tree.
The third, sent twenty minutes ago: I can feel her, you know. Our daughter. She’s a flutter. A secret. You’re missing it.
Cynna had seen them. She’d been sitting right there, watching his screen light up with this poison while he tried to remember his media-trained talking points. The texts weren't just lies; they were a performance, a desperate, grotesque attempt to force her way back into the center of his life, to make her fiction feel real by sheer force of will.
And Cynna, with her joints aching from the stress-induced lupus flare she’d been quietly battling, had simply decided she was done. The fatigue that made her fingers stiff, the deep, systemic pain she’d been hiding behind steely determination—it had all collided with a final, unshakable resolve to end this.
She hadn't snapped. She had calculated. The business center ruse, the service exit. This was a targeted mission.
“She’s going to confront her,” Pedro said, his voice hollow with understanding. He was already at the suite door, barefoot, Leo and Coco staring after him in stunned silence. “Her lupus is bad again. She didn’t say a word. She just… went.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Ruiz replied, her tires screeching faintly over the line. “Maya’s in a controlled environment. She’s the professional victim in there. Cynna walks in angry and in pain? However this plays out, Maya wins. Get downstairs. My unmarked is pulling up, black SUV. Be out front in ninety seconds.”
The hotel corridor was a blur of muted carpet and sconce light. Pedro didn’t wait for the elevator; he shouldered open the heavy stairwell door and took the stairs two at a time, the cold concrete biting through his socks. Each jarring step hammered a single, terrifying thought into his brain: he had been worrying about the court of public opinion while Cynna had marched straight into the war.
He exploded through a service exit into the alley, the sudden Los Angeles sun blinding him. Ruiz’s SUV slid to a halt at the curb, passenger door already swinging open.
He fell into the leather seat, breathless. Ruiz didn’t greet him. She just hit the gas, the force pinning him back.
“Talk me through it,” she demanded, weaving through traffic with aggressive precision. “What set her off? Specifically.”
“The texts. Maya’s texts. She was sending more this morning. Spiritual crap about feeling the baby. Cynna saw them on my phone.” Pedro dragged a hand over his face, the powder from the makeup smearing. “She’s been in a lot of pain. Her lupus. She hides it until she can’t.”
“So she’s physically compromised and emotionally charged,” Ruiz stated, her knuckles white on the wheel. “Perfect. Your friend in there is a manipulator who feeds on genuine emotion. She’ll use Cynna’s anger, her illness, her love for you, as proof of her own narrative.”
The city streamed past the window, a meaningless parade of sun and glass. Pedro’s phone buzzed. An unknown number. He answered on instinct.
“Mr. Pascal?” A woman’s voice, polite and institutional. “This is Nurse Gable at Cedar-Sinai Psychiatric. You’re listed as a contact for Maya Flores. She’s had a visitor, and there’s been… an incident.”
The air in the car vanished. “What kind of incident?”
“The visitor became upset, but did nothing. Whatever was said- Maya...” The nurse’s tone was carefully neutral. “Maya stabbed her visitor. We're treating the visitor right now, but security is wanting Maya out before she causes anymore harm to others.”
“Where is she?” Pedro’s voice was a ragged scrape. “The visitor. Where is she being treated?”
“The ER, but sir, security is—”
Pedro ended the call. “ER,” he barked at Ruiz. “Now.”
Ruiz swore, flipping on the siren and lights. The SUV became a spear of sound and motion, carving through intersections. Pedro’s body was rigid, every tendon standing in relief. The powder on his face felt like a grotesque mask. He scrubbed at it with his sleeve, the fabric coming away beige and streaked.
The Cedar-Sinai ER entrance was a monument to controlled chaos. Ruiz shoved her badge at a wide-eyed orderly and they plunged into the fluorescent buzz of it. The air smelled of antiseptic and stale coffee, underpinned by a metallic hint of fear.
A triage nurse pointed them toward a curtained bay. Pedro’s heart hammered against his sternum. He pushed past the curtain.
Cynna sat on the edge of a gurney, her posture unnervingly straight. A doctor was suturing a long, shallow gash that started just below her collarbone and traced a vicious red line down toward her ribs. Her cream silk blazer was gone, replaced by a hospital gown draped over her shoulders. The blazer lay in a heap on a chair, a dark stain blooming near the lapel.
Her face was pale, but her eyes were clear, focused on the wall opposite. She held her phone in her un-injured hand, thumb moving steadily on the screen.
“Cynna.” Pedro’s voice broke.
She looked up. Not with relief, not with tears. With a fierce, blazing intensity. “It’s on the phone,” she said, her voice steady. “Everything. She’s done.”
The doctor didn’t pause his meticulous work. “She refused sedation. Said she needed to be lucid.”
“I’m fine,” Cynna said, though a fine tremor ran through her as the needle pulled thread through her skin. She looked past Pedro to Ruiz. “You need to see the recording. I set it up before I went in. A pinhole lens on the blazer button. Streamed right to the cloud.” She gestured to the stained garment. “It got… spattered. But the audio is clear.”
Pedro moved to her side, his hand hovering, afraid to touch. The wound was ugly, deliberate. A slicing stab meant to mar, not to kill instantly. “She did this? With what?”
“A plastic spoon,” Cynna said, a hollow laugh escaping her. “She’d been working on it for days, they think. Snapped it, sharpened the handle on the floor. She had it hidden. She was waiting for a tool.”
Ruiz was already pulling gloves on, taking the phone from Cynna with a careful touch. She found the video file. “Play it from the beginning.”
Cynna nodded, wincing as the doctor tied off a stitch. “Play it.”
The video quality was grainier than expected, the angle low from Cynna’s chest. It showed a sterile, beige room. Maya sat on a vinyl-padded chair, wearing hospital scrubs, her hands folded in her lap. She looked gaunt, her eyes enormous, but a serene smile played on her lips.
Cynna’s voice, calm and flat, came from off-camera. “They said you agreed to see me.”
“My sister,” Maya said, the smile widening. “Of course. I’d know your energy anywhere.” The mystical affectation was back, a thin veneer over the calculation.
The view shifted as Cynna sat in the chair opposite, the camera now framing both of them. Cynna didn’t lean forward. She didn’t raise her voice. “I’m not your sister. I’m Cynna. I’m here to tell you it’s over.”
“Nothing is ever over. Energy just transforms.” Maya’s gaze was luminous, unblinking. “He sent you to do his dirty work? To threaten a woman in a hospital? That’s low, even for the new girlfriend.”
“Pedro doesn’t know I’m here.” Cynna’s hands came into frame, resting loosely in her lap. They were still, but the joints were slightly swollen, red. “This is between us. You need to stop. The clinic confirmed the sample was destroyed. Biologically inert. You know this.”
Maya’s serenity flickered. She leaned in, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “You believe their science? Over the science of the heart? Over a soul’s intention? I intended that life. It is already real. He will feel it, in time. When he holds our child.”
Cynna didn’t react to the taunt. She didn’t flinch. She was a wall of pure, quiet fact. “Your intention is fraud. Your soul is facing multiple felony charges. The police have the forged medical record you texted. They have the arson report from the nursery. They have the threats.”
“They have nothing but the panic of a guilty man,” Maya hissed, the spiritual pretense evaporating. Her eyes darted over Cynna’s face, searching for anger, for fear, for any crack to exploit. “You think you’ve won him? You’re a placeholder. A temporary comfort. I am tied to him forever. You can’t compete with that.”
“I’m not competing.” Cynna’s voice was so quiet it was almost lost in the hum of the hospital room. “I’m living my life. And part of that life is a child. My child.”
A beat of silence. Maya’s head tilted, birdlike. “What?”
Cynna looked directly at the hidden lens, her face a mask of exhausted, peaceful truth. “I’m pregnant. I found out this morning. I was going to tell Pedro today. After the interview. On air, maybe, if it felt right.”
The change in Maya was instantaneous and total. The serene mask, the calculated mysticism, the sneering superiority—all of it shattered. Her face collapsed into raw, undistilled hatred. Her breath hitched.
“You’re lying.” The words were a guttural scrape.
“I’m not. It’s very early. But it’s there.” Cynna placed a hand lightly on her own abdomen, a simple, declarative gesture. “So you see, your story is over. There is no ‘our baby.’ There is just you. Alone. With your spoon.”
Maya stared at Cynna’s hand. Something in her eyes snapped. There was no more talk, no more performance.
Her hand shot out from beneath her own thigh. The sharpened plastic handle, milk-white and wicked, gleamed in the clinical light. She didn’t lunge from her chair. She launched herself across the small space, a silent, focused missile of rage.
The camera view jolted violently. There was a grunt, the sound of fabric tearing. The image spun—ceiling tiles, a wall—then stabilized, skewed, showing the legs of the toppled chair and Maya, being pulled back by an orderly who’d burst in at the sound of the crash. Maya’s face, contorted and shrieking soundlessly, filled the frame for one last, horrific second before the video ended.
The ER bay was silent except for the beep of a distant monitor. The doctor had finished. He taped a bandage over the sutures, his job done.
Ruiz lowered the phone. Her face was grim. “She baited you with the pregnancy. To get a reaction.”
“No,” Cynna said, shaking her head slowly. She looked at Pedro, her eyes finally softening with an apology. “I didn’t bait her. I just told her the truth. Our truth. I was going to tell you tonight. The doctor confirmed it after you left for the suite. I wanted it to be good news. Something clean.”
Pedro felt the world drop out from under him again, but this time into a different, bottomless space. A life. Their life. Conceived in the middle of this nightmare. He reached for her, his hand finally resting gently on her good shoulder, feeling the solid warmth of her through the gown.
“The video is everything,” Ruiz said, her voice holding a note of professional awe. “Premeditated weapon. Calm, factual provocation from Cynna. Unprovoked, targeted attack upon hearing a truth she couldn’t manipulate. This is no longer a psychiatric hold. This is attempted murder in a secure facility.” She looked at Cynna with newfound respect. “You walked into the lion’s den and got her to show her teeth. On record.”
Cynna leaned into Pedro’s touch, the adrenaline finally leaving her, leaving behind the deep throb of the wound and the deeper, more profound ache in her joints. “I just wanted her to know she lost,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I wanted to say it to her face.”
Outside the curtain, the machinery of justice was beginning to turn, louder and faster now, powered by the cold, clear evidence on a phone. But inside the bay, there was only the sound of their breathing, the promise of a child, and the long, slow road of healing from a cut that had come far too close to everything that mattered.