Chapter 1 #2
At the threshold, I pressed my forehead against the doorframe we’d brought back from Versailles.
The carved oak left indentations on my skin.
Two years of memorizing which floorboards creaked, which wine glasses rang at specific frequencies, which silences meant danger. My keycard hovered above the sensor.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Bettencourt,” the elevator AI chimed.
I stared at my distorted reflection in the brass doors—a raven-haired ghost in last season’s trench coat and ball cap.
When the car hit the lobby, I walked past the concierge without meeting his eyes, my large tote pulling at the collarbone he’d broken last Christmas.
“Heading out, Ms. Bettencourt?”
The concierge’s voice slithered up my spine as the elevator doors parted. My gloved hand tightened around the tote’s strap.
“Just returning some library books.” The lie flowed smoother than the South African syrah he’d force-fed me at our engagement party. “Harrison prefers physical copies.”
Mario’s gaze lingered on my ball cap. I never wore a ball cap. His nostrils flared. Whether at my drugstore perfume or the sweat blooming beneath my polyester blend turtleneck, I couldn’t tell.
“Shall I schedule the Escalade?”
“He’s sending a private driver.”
The lobby’s black lacquer doors swung open on a gust of diesel-tainted air. I stepped into the concrete canyon, my shadow stretching gaunt across Fifth Avenue. Somewhere beyond the sulfur-yellow haze, a Greyhound idled at Port Authority—its plastic seats and rattling windows my chariot to oblivion.
The trench coat’s belt dug into my ribs as I merged with the afternoon crowd. Every man’s shoulder bump became his hand on my neck. Every shouted cellphone conversation his slurred threats. By the time the subway grate blew hot garbage breath through my makeshift bangs, I was running.
Chipped sapphire tiles announced the E train’s approach. A teenager in Air Jordans eyed my tote. I clutched the burner phone’s corpse in my pocket, plastic shards biting into my palm’s flesh. When the downtown local screeched into the station, I let three cars pass before boarding.
Between 42nd and 34th Streets, I transformed from Upper East Side trophy wife to middle-aged tourist to whatever feral creature would emerge in Amarillo.
The bus terminal’s fluorescent lights exposed more than the Penn Station mob.
I kept my chin tilted at precisely fifteen degrees—the angle security cameras rarely captured.
Ticket machines whirred objections to crumpled twenties fed sideways.
Behind bulletproof glass, a clerk with spiderweb eyelashes snorted.
“One-way to Amarillo?”
Her acrylic nails clacked the keyboard. “Got family out there?”
“Something like that.”
The Port Authority’s flickering fluorescents turned every face into a suspect.
I wove through bodies smelling of stale pretzels and desperation, my heavy tote bumping against hip bones still slightly bruised from last month’s “lesson.” A toddler’s ice cream cone smeared across my white sneakers, a vanilla bloodstain on synthetic leather. Good. More camouflage.
“Amarillo, 3:15,” barked a voice through crackling speakers. My new name tasted sour on my tongue when the ticket clerk demanded identification. Julia Harris from Newark smiled up from a library card.
“Transfer in St. Louis?” The clerk’s nicotine thumb dented my precious ticket.
I nodded, throat tight. Every syllable risked exposure. “Final destination’s Amarillo.” Lie nesting within lie—Dairyville didn’t merit printed destinations.
Two men in Rangers caps lingered near Gate 22.
Not his build, not his walk, but the way they scanned the crowd tightened my bladder.
I bought burnt coffee from a kiosk, watching their reflections in the stainless steel napkin dispenser.
Three sugars stirred clockwise—counting seconds until boarding.
I shouldn’t be worried. He wouldn’t have missed me yet. It’s his mistress night. He’d take her to whatever sex club they went to on Tuesdays. His discovery wouldn’t happen ‘til he got home after two in the morning.
A janitor’s cart blocked the women’s restroom. Strategic accident or surveillance tactic? I veered toward the family bathroom, lock clicking like a cocked pistol behind me.
The mirror confirmed what security cameras would see: thrift store pants, Walmart turtleneck swallowing my neck, harsh dye job erasing the woman who once lunched at Per Se.
My fingers trembled applying lipstick—Maybelline’s “Toast of New York” replaced by “Barely Blushing.” The color of forgettability.
Boarding calls echoed. I timed my emergence to blend behind a church group hauling Bibles and bassinets. Their rendition of “Blessed Assurance” drowned fear.
“Ma’am?” A bus driver’s flashlight raked my face. “Ticket stub.”
The paper stuck to my palm sweat. He squinted at fresh ink. No smudges, no hesitations. Clean escape requires clean documentation.
“Window or aisle?”
“Window.” Always window. Only one side available to grab.
The vinyl seat groaned beneath me, cracked leather breathing out decades of dead skin cells. I wedged my tote on my lap between me and the side of the bus. To the right, a grandmother shelled peanuts into plastic bags, salt crystals spraying my forearm.
Engines coughed to life. Across the aisle, a teenager’s AirPods leaked tinny trap music. I counted exits—two front, one rear, windows rated for emergency egress. Plan A: stay vigilant. Plan B: ballpoint pen to the jugular.
As we merged onto the Lincoln Tunnel helix, Manhattan’s skyline pierced the fog like accusatory fingers. My last glimpse of our penthouse, forty-two floors of electrochromic glass where, by morning, he’d likely smash the Baccarat decanters. Let him choke on shattered crystal.
Darkness swallowed us whole. The tunnel’s tiled throat vibrated with secrets. Someone’s phone played a TikTok dance tutorial. Peanut shells crunched. A trucker guy in front of me ordered a pepperoni Hot Pocket from the onboard microwave.
I unzipped my duffel’s secret compartment, fingertips brushing laminated certificates.
CPA license issued to Julia Harris. Notarized transcripts from Columbia where I’d graduated before I’d been sold to Harrison Hastings.
I took extension courses to stay on top of changing laws during chemo rounds—his sister’s chemo, my alibi days.
Mr. Liam Baucaum’s email burned behind my eyelids: Need someone discreet for ledger work. Cash basis. Discreet meant possibly criminal. Criminal meant untraceable. Perfect.
Trucker guy belched meat-scented fog. Grandma offered peanuts. I declined with a headshake, mouthing allergy while calculating how far my remaining money would go in Texas. Protein bars were tossed into my tote, eighteen day’s rations if things went sideways.
Newark’s industrial wastelands streamed by. Factories pumping carcinogens into the rain-slick air. I practiced smiling in the greasy window reflection. Not too eager, not too sharp. Just hungry enough to take shit, competent enough to balance books for bikers.
The woman behind me argued with Medicaid. “…yes, the lesions are back…” Her resignation tasted like my mother’s words when she informed me of my engagement to Harrison.
At 11:47 p.m., when we’d made St. Louis, the driver announced this was our transfer. I followed Grandma to the terminal. There, I bought a Lotto ticket, then counted and recounted the change. Clearly, the look on my face told my story.
“Running from something?” She gestured to my wrinkled Benjamins.
“Toward,” I answered with a shrug, blowing my bangs.
The parking lot’s lights turned everyone jaundiced. Truckers compared CB radios. A meth-eyed teenager hawked bootleg Jordans from a garbage bag. We’d be getting on another bus after what was the equivalent of a layover. An hour later, we were back on the road.
The Greyhound’s diesel growl vibrated through my molars as we merged onto I-76. My thumbnail picked at the vinyl seat’s split seam, counting each exposed spring coil like rosary beads. The shiny white St. Louis Arch loomed in the distance.
I’d taken my seat by the window, my mind drifting as the scenery flew by.
I tore a page from my sketchbook and took out a pen.
Before I realized it, I’d sketched a black wolf standing along a ridge, full moon in the sky.
Odd. He was looking right at me. Through me.
I did that sometimes. Just started sketching.
Let the pencil take me where it wanted to go.
A handsome wolf wanted to say hello today.
We made different stops here and there, Tulsa, I think, maybe Oklahoma City.
Sleep finally took me, and when I awoke, the bus engine hummed like a nervous heartbeat beneath my thighs as Amarillo’s city limits sign blurred past. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass.
New York’s ghosts dissolved in the rearview—cracked crystal decanters, his monogrammed cufflinks glinting like fangs in low light, all shrinking beneath Texas dust. My new driver’s license burned in my sweater pocket. Julia Harris.
A toddler kicked my seatback in rhythm with my pulse.
His mother mouthed sorry through the headrest crack, unaware my smile was rehearsed through years of charity galas.
I’d groomed that smile for shareholders and ER nurses alike—once when he dislocated my shoulder, shoving me into an Italian marble staircase railing.
“Clumsy,” he’d sighed to the patrons attending the art exhibition, thumb rubbing circles over my wrist bone.
Always so tender in public. My parents promised me to him when I turned 23, shortly after I’d graduated from Columbia.
His family, Wall Street royalty, of course.
Things were fine for the first few months.
Then his temper would flare. I tried to tell my mother.
She told me he was in a high-pressure business.
I needed to exercise patience. His family and my family owned each other. So he owned me.
Outside, oil rigs nodded like iron stallions guarding the plains. The Greyhound smelled of diesel and microwaved burritos instead of his Acqua di Parma cologne. No pearls strangled my throat today—just sweat and the brush of my new bangs touching my lashes.
The Iron Valor’s crumpled job offer crinkled in my fist beneath my tote, emailed through three VPNs from a burner account after six months cleaning crypto ledgers for biker forums during his golf weekends.
“Accountant needed,” their president had written below a signature quoting Sun Tzu.
Not what I expected, I almost replied before remembering Harrison once hissed that expectations were shackles.
Rubber screeched as we pulled into Amarillo Station.
My legs were stiff as I stood—new Hey Dudes instead of Louboutins gripping the aisle floor.
I stepped into air thick with diesel and cricket’s song.
An older man built like a house with graying black hair leaned against a pickup sporting an Iron Valor cut.
He was the handsomest man I’d ever seen. And the roughest. Damn.
“Harris?” he drawled, eyeing my ball cap and mom jeans holding every cent I’d could scrabble together from money that Harrison thought was his alone.
“Depends,” I said, tasting freedom on parched lips. “You bring coffee?”
His laugh echoed across cracked pavement. “Oh yeah. You’ll fit.”
I didn’t think I could make it into the enormous truck. He literally almost had to lift me up. The engine roared to life after I’d managed. Then we went barreling toward whatever came next.