Page 4 of Worth the Risk (Worth It All #1)

“Ate Maya, where do you want the sound system?”

I look behind me to see Carlo Martinez wheeling in a portable speaker, his fifteen-year-old frame dwarfed by the equipment. His mother, Rosa, follows behind him with a thermos of coffee and the kind of determined expression that built Highland Community Center one volunteer at a time.

“By the front entrance,” I tell him, checking my phone for the tenth time as I stand in Highland’s main hall surrounded by poster board and enough coffee to fuel a small revolution.

Six AM. In two hours, we’ll march from Highland to Pierce Enterprises, and I have no idea if anyone will show up besides the usual suspects—the core group of families who’ve been with us through everything.

“Anak, here. I made siopao. This one is bola bola. With egg.” Rosa presses a white steamed bun into my hands, still warm from her kitchen. “You can’t lead a protest on an empty stomach.”

This is why Highland matters—not just because it’s a building, but because it’s filled with people like Rosa who show up at dawn with homemade breakfast and volunteer their teenage sons to haul sound equipment. People who call me anak like I’m their own daughter.

“Thank you.” I take a bite, though my stomach is too knotted with nerves to properly appreciate Rosa’s cooking.

The familiar flavors of garlic and ginger should be comforting, but all I can think about is how many people might actually show up, and whether any of this will matter to a man who can ignore eight hundred and forty-three signatures.

“Has anyone heard from the Times reporter?” I call out.

“I’m handling media,” comes the crisp response from across the room.

Lianne Peralta emerges from behind a stack of protest signs, phone pressed to her ear and that familiar look of controlled efficiency that makes her so successful at running Luminous Events.

Even at six AM, coordinating a community protest between client calls, she looks like she stepped out of a business magazine.

Lianne ends her call and gives me a thumbs-up.

“Confirmed—the Times, Channel 7, and KPCC. Plus, someone from the Downtown News said they’d try to make it.

” She consults her phone with the same precision she uses to coordinate celebrity galas.

“We’ve got sixty-seven confirmed on Facebook, but you know how social media goes. ”

I do know. Digital activism doesn’t always translate to bodies on the street.

But as I watch Lianne seamlessly juggle Highland’s protest logistics with what sounds like a high-profile wedding planning call, I’m reminded why we’ve been best friends since college.

Where I’m all intensity and righteous anger, Lianne is pure strategic charm.

Of course, we’ve been planning this protest for weeks. My visit to Pierce Enterprises yesterday was spontaneous frustration, but organizing a hundred people takes time.

“Maya?” A familiar voice makes me turn. Enrique de Leon stands in the doorway, and the expression on his weathered face tells me everything I need to know about why he’s here so early.

Tito Ricky—my father’s closest friend and Highland’s volunteer legal counsel—has been my surrogate father since Papa died. Which means he’s about to give me advice I probably don’t want to hear.

“Can we talk?” He gestures toward the office.

I follow him past the photos lining Highland’s walls—twenty years of community events, graduations, cultural celebrations.

Papa’s smiling face appears in dozens of them, and I catch my reflection in the glass covering his portrait.

Same determined jaw, same fire in our dark eyes.

Same stubborn refusal to back down from a fight.

Tito Ricky closes the office door and settles into the chair across from Papa’s old desk—my desk now, though I still think of it as his.

“I’ve been researching Pierce Enterprises,” he says without preamble. “Their development pattern shows they’ve demolished twelve community facilities in the past five years. Three of those under Declan Pierce personally.”

I stare at Ernesto. Three communities destroyed since Declan took over. So much for thinking he might be different from his father.

“Churches, community centers, affordable housing—all replaced with luxury developments,” Tito Ricky continues. “Their strategy focuses on transit-oriented development, maximizing property values near Metro stations.”

“What’s your point, Tito?”

“My point is that Declan Pierce is exactly who you think he is. Which means polite presentations won’t work. We need to prepare for a real fight.”

Before I can respond, the office door bursts open. Lianne appears, breathless and clutching her phone.

“Maya, you need to see this.” She shoves the screen toward me—Pierce Enterprises’ stock price from yesterday’s close, down three points.

“I don’t understand what this has to do with us.”

“The Metro expansion hit major delays,” Lianne explains, her event planner instincts for timing and logistics in full display. “Underground utility conflicts. Since downtown developments bank on that transit hub, investors are spooked about the whole corridor.”

I stare at the numbers. “If Pierce focuses on transit-oriented development...”

“Then they have bigger problems than Highland,” Tito Ricky says, leaning back with the first smile I’ve seen from him all morning. “Sometimes the best strategy is letting your opponent fight battles on multiple fronts.”

My phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.

Interesting timing with your protest. We should talk. — DP

The air leaves my lungs. DP. Declan Pierce. Somehow, he got my personal number—probably from one of the dozens of emails I sent his company over the past six months, back when I still believed in professional courtesy and proper channels.

“He’s texting you?” Lianne’s eyebrows shoot toward her hairline. “That’s either very good or very bad.”

Another message arrives before I can process the first:

Declan:

Perhaps we should discuss this face to face. Coffee? Name the place.

I stare at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard. This feels like a trap, but it also feels like... what? An opportunity? A sign that maybe the corporate shark has a more human side than his fifteen-minute office meeting suggested?

“Maya?” Tito Ricky’s voice cuts through my spinning thoughts. “What is it?”

I show them the messages, watching their expressions shift from confusion to concern.

“He’s trying to open back-channel communication,” Tito Ricky says. “Classic corporate strategy—divide the opposition by going directly to leadership.”

But something about the messages feels different from corporate strategy. More personal. The casual tone, the acknowledgment of our timing, the fact that he bothered to text at all instead of having an assistant handle it.

Stop it, Maya. He’s the enemy.

Before I can decide how to respond, the main hall erupts in voices. Through the office window, I can see more people arriving—families I recognize, teenagers from our after-school programs, seniors from the cultural preservation classes.

“Maya?” Lianne touches my arm. “People are starting to arrive. We should get out there.”

“Give me a minute,” I tell them.

After they leave, I sit alone with Papa’s photos watching me from the walls and Declan’s messages burning a hole in my phone. I type a response:

I’m busy organizing a protest today. Rain check.

His reply comes almost instantly:

Declan:

I’ll be watching the news. Try not to get arrested.

Despite everything—despite the fact that he represents everything threatening Highland’s future—I find myself smiling at the message. There’s something almost playful about it, like maybe the intimidating CEO has a sense of humor buried beneath all that expensive polish.

The thought unsettles me more than his coldness in the office did. Coldness I can fight. Humanity makes everything more complicated.

I shake my head and tuck my phone away. Highland needs me focused, not wondering about Declan Pierce’s personality or why his unexpected humor sends unwelcome flutters through my chest.

I walk back into the main hall to find it transformed. Sixty-seven confirmed attendees has become nearly a hundred people clutching signs and wearing matching Highland Community Center T-shirts. The energy is electric—three generations of community members united around saving Papa’s legacy.

“Maya,” Rosa appears at my elbow. “Channel 7 just pulled up outside.”

Through Highland’s front windows, I see the news van parking across the street. A reporter emerges followed by a cameraman already filming the crowd gathering on our front steps.

“This is it,” Lianne says, appearing at my other side with that calm efficiency that makes her LA’s most sought-after event planner. “You ready?”

I take a deep breath, thinking about Papa’s legacy, about the families who depend on Highland, about the promise I made to protect what he built.

Then I think about Declan Pierce, probably watching this unfold from his pristine office thirty floors above the city, and wonder if any part of him understands what we’re fighting for.

“I’m ready,” I tell Lianne.

And for the first time since this fight began, I actually believe it.

The march to Pierce Enterprises takes forty-five minutes through downtown’s canyon of glass towers. We move like a river of determination, our chants echoing off the buildings that surround us.

“Save Highland! Save our community!”

I walk at the front flanked by Tita Sol and Rosa, with Lianne coordinating media interviews as we move. She handles the press with the same polished professionalism she brings to celebrity events, all charm and strategic messaging where I’m pure intensity and fire.

The Channel 7 reporter walks backward in front of us, her cameraman capturing every step.

“Thirty seconds, live,” Lianne calls, waving me over.

I move toward the camera, mentally rehearsing talking points I’ve practiced for days. The reporter—young, blonde, professionally sympathetic—gestures for me to stand beside her.

“We’re here with Maya Navarro, director of Highland Community Center, which faces demolition for the latest Pierce Enterprises development. Maya, what’s your message today?”

The red light blinks on, and suddenly I’m speaking to all of Los Angeles.

“Highland isn’t just a building—it’s twenty years of community building.

ESL classes for new immigrants, after-school programs for working families, job training, cultural preservation.

Pierce Enterprises wants to replace our center with luxury condos none of our families could ever afford.

We’re marching to tell Declan Pierce that our community isn’t for sale. ”

“What do you say to those who argue development brings economic growth?”

I look directly into the camera, thinking about Papa’s dream and Declan’s texts and the complex knot of anger and unexpected curiosity in my chest.

“I’d ask them to look at the communities where Pierce has demolished cultural centers before. Did those luxury developments hire local workers? Create spaces for existing residents? Or did they just push people out of neighborhoods their families built?”

The camera light blinks off, and I breathe relief even though the real test lies ahead.

As we round the corner onto Pierce Enterprises’ block, the building rises ahead like a monument to corporate power. But I also see security guards forming lines and barriers being set up to contain our protest.

Of course they were expecting us. Try not to get arrested , he’d said.

“Maya,” Lianne appears breathlessly at my side. “The Times reporter just told me Pierce Enterprises issued a statement an hour ago. They’re calling this an ‘opportunity for dialogue’ and saying they remain committed to finding solutions that work for everyone.”

I frown. That doesn’t sound like corporate stonewalling. That sounds like someone thinking strategically about community opposition management.

As we approach the building, I find myself looking up at the thirtieth floor, wondering if storm-gray eyes are watching through those wall-to-wall windows. Wondering what Declan Pierce is thinking as a hundred people march through downtown’s corporate canyon, demanding he listen to their voices.

My phone buzzes in my pocket—probably another text—but I don’t check it. Not here, not now, not with cameras rolling and my community counting on me to stay focused on what matters.

Even if part of me can’t stop wondering what he’s thinking thirty floors above us, and whether his unexpected humor masks something more complicated than the corporate shark I’ve built in my mind.

The protest unfolds exactly as Tita Sol planned—orderly, passionate, completely peaceful. We set up across from Pierce Enterprises, our chants echoing off surrounding buildings. Media crews capture footage of seniors beside teenagers, three generations united in determination to save Highland.

It’s beautiful. It’s powerful.

And as I stand before the crowd leading chants and giving interviews, I can’t shake the feeling that somewhere above us, the man who holds Highland’s future in his hands is watching every moment of our carefully orchestrated revolution—and maybe, just maybe, starting to see us as more than obstacles to his development plans.