Chapter 27 Rae
RAE
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The whispers start Monday morning and they don’t stop.
I hear them from the second I enter the building.
The bright-eyed and bushy-tailed girl who replaced me in front of Kir’s office on the fortieth floor—Madison, I think her name was?
Mallory? Marcy?—is coming in off the street at the same time as me.
She’s holding the door politely until she realizes who I am.
When she does, her jaw drops and her face goes pale.
She scurries away without so much as a hello, but not before I catch the look on her face.
Pity. Curiosity. A healthy dose of fear.
By Tuesday, people I’ve never met are finding excuses to stare at me on my way to and from work. They don’t say anything. They just gape. Like I’m an exhibit at a zoo.
Here, we have the rare and exotic Office Auction Girl. Note the cheap blouse and the thousand-yard stare. For five million dollars, you can get one yourself!
I’m more grateful than ever that my new job with Lukas has me isolated on the fiftieth floor all by myself. On top of that, I’m even more alone than usual, because Lukas doesn’t come to work a single day this week.
But it doesn’t keep me completely safe. I still have to get there and back.
Wednesday brings the brave ones. A guy from Accounting whose name I don’t know asks me how my day is going in the elevator. His eyes keep drifting to my chest.
“I’m fine,” I tell him succinctly, hoping he catches the implied please leave me alone.
He lingers. “That must’ve been wild, yeah? Saturday night?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Five million bucks, though.” He grins in pervy delight. “What’s a girl have to give up for that, huh?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
His floor arrives and he ambles off. But I hear him cackling with his buddies as he goes.
On Thanksgiving Thursday, I figured I’d have a respite from the madness.
I go in to work even though it’s a holiday because I’d rather save up my days off for something fun.
But the devil takes no vacation time, apparently, because I return from lunch to see that some ballsy asshole has left a copy of the Post on my desk.
On Page Six, there’s a blurry photo of me on stage, mouth gaping open, eyes wide with fear.
The headline reads: LAZAREV FAMILY DRAMA: Billionaire Father Outbids Son in Shocking $5M Auction Win.
I don’t read the article. I throw it in the trash and hope that’ll be the end of it.
But by Friday, it’s everywhere.
My phone buzzes at 2:15 P.M. with an email from an address I don’t recognize. No subject line, just a link. With my heart in my throat, I click it.
It takes me to the online version of the article, straight to the comment section. The things I see there make me want to vomit.
Too ugly to be a gold-digger, but hey, good on this chick for trying
Who the fk is this bitch?
probably sleeping with half the city lol
she looks terrified. kind of feel bad for her tbh
Don’t. She knew what she was getting into. Girls like that always do.
anyone else notice her nipples poking through that dress? What a whore!
I close the browser and feel my eyes start to water.
The whispers have been bad enough. The stares, the not-so-subtle questions from people who have no business asking. But seeing it written down, seeing total strangers pick apart my body and my choices and my life…
Something in me snaps.
I shove back from my desk. My chair rolls into the wall with a thunk. I charge up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Tears blur my vision, but I keep climbing, up and up and up, until I reach the top.
The roof access door is heavy, but I slam my shoulder into it and stumble out into the cold.
Outside, it’s predictably miserable. Late November in New York, who woulda thunk it? I forgot my coat. I don’t care.
I walk to the edge and grip the railing. The city fans out below me. Tiny cars. Tiny people. All of them going about their tiny lives, completely oblivious that mine is falling apart.
“Mom,” I whisper to the wind, “Dad… I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”
The wind doesn’t answer. It never does.
“I thought I was handling things. Gideon’s getting better. That’s something, right? The bills are paid. I’m keeping my head down and working hard.” I let loose a soggy laugh. “But what good has all that done? I’m on Page Six. People I’ve never met are calling me a whore in the comments.”
A pigeon lands on the railing a few feet away. It cocks its head at me like it’s listening.
“You’d hate him,” I continue. “Lukas, I mean. Dad, you’d probably try to punch him. Bad idea, but you’d try. And Mom, you’d give me that look, like, Rae, honey, what are you thinking?”
It’s a great question. The truth is, I don’t know what I’m thinking. I don’t know anything.
“I miss you both,” I croak. “I miss having someone to call when everything goes wrong. Someone who’d tell me I’m not crazy. Or that I am crazy, but they love me anyway.”
The pigeon, having heard enough “woe is me,” flies off. The wind picks up. I’m alone again.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand. My cheeks are wet. When did I start crying?
It doesn’t matter. Nobody’s here to see.
Or at least, that’s what I thought.
But when I turn around, I see, of all people, Kir on the far end of the roof. He hasn’t seen me, I don’t think. His back is to me and his legs are dangling over the precipice.
For a horrifying minute, I think he’s about to jump. Then I realize he’s just sitting, posture broken, looking every bit as miserable as me.
I hesitate for a second. Then I walk over.
My footsteps crunch on the gravel. Kir doesn’t turn around. Either he doesn’t hear me or he doesn’t care.
When I get closer, I see why. His suit jacket is gone, his shirt is untucked and wrinkled, and his hair is a mess. There’s a bottle of something brown leaning against his hip.
“… Kir?”
He flinches. Then he turns his head just enough to see me.
“Rae.” He sounds completely wrecked. “Fancy meeting you here.”
I sit down next to him, though not too close, for fear that, somehow, Lukas will see and react poorly. The concrete is freezing through my skirt.
“You look like hell,” I observe.
“That’s funny. I feel like it, too.” He lifts the bottle and takes a swig. “Want some?”
“It’s three in the afternoon.”
“So that’s a no?”
I don’t answer. I just look at him.
His eyes are bloodshot, as if he hasn’t slept in days. There’s a bruise on his cheek that’s fading to yellow at the edges. It looks like someone hit him.
“Kir, what happened to you?”
He laughs caustically. “What do you think happened?”
“Your father?”
“Give the girl a prize, folks!” He applauds sarcastically, then takes another slug of his drink. “Though I suppose, technically, he already did. Five million dollars’ worth.”
I wince. “I didn’t ask for that.”
“I know.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Doesn’t matter, though. You’re his now. That’s how this works.”
“I’m not his. I’m not anyone’s.”
Kir looks at me. There’s something broken in his eyes. It’s heart-wrenching.
“You don’t get it yet,” he sighs. “But you will.”
“Get what?”
“He’s going to ruin you, Rae.” His eyes cast out over the gray, snow-clad cityscape before us. “Whether he means to or not, he will. That’s just what happens to people he puts his hands on.”
The wind picks up. I shiver.
“You’re drunk,” I say.
“Not nearly drunk enough for what’s coming.”
We sit in silence for a minute. Manhattan chugs along below us.
“This has happened before?” I ask with caution.
Kir goes very still. Then, almost reluctantly, almost imperceptibly, he nods. “My mother,” he croaks.
I shouldn’t have asked. But it’s too late to turn back now.
“What… what happened to her?”
He laughs again. That same hollow, rasping, irretrievably shattered sound.
“She wanted to leave him.” He turns his bleary gaze on me. “Look where it got her.”
My stomach flips. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she’s dead, Rae.” He turns to look at me. His gray eyes are so much like his father’s. But where Lukas’s are cold, Kir’s are just empty. “Eighteen years in the ground. And my father’s the one who put her there.”
I shrink away from him. The deadness in his face makes me feel colder than the air ever could. It’s an all-consuming gray haze, reaching out with frigid fingers to drag me down into it.
Every rational cell in my body is screaming at me to get up, get out, get as far away from the Lazarev family as humanly possible. Buy a bus ticket to somewhere warm. Change my name. Cut my hair. Start over.
“Kir…” I whisper. “Are you sure?”
He finishes the bottle, then throws it carelessly over his shoulder. It bursts into a million shards on the rooftop behind us. He doesn’t even bother to look at it.
Instead, he locks his eyes on me. I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to. All I see are the gray eyes of a Lazarev man, haunted by things I can hardly even begin to fathom.
He rises shakily, batting aside my offer to help. I stand with him, biting my lip and wondering what the hell is happening to this man.
“No one leaves my father, Rae,” he says. “Not my mother. Not you.” And as he totters drunkenly away from me, I hear him add under his breath, “Not even me.”