Chapter 9
Two days.
I’ve been living in a silent, self-imposed prison for two days.
The shattered remains of my phone lie on the floor where I threw them, a monument to my own impotent fury.
The only sounds are the hum of the refrigerator, the occasional creak of the building, and the frantic, circular thoughts inside my own skull.
The rage has receded. It burned itself out, leaving behind a cold, dense ash of despair. Rage is a luxury. It requires energy. I have none left. I am hollowed out, a walking shell of the woman I was a week ago.
My world has shrunk to the four walls of this apartment. I haven’t spoken a word. I’ve been living on stale crackers and tap water because the thought of facing the outside world, of potentially seeing a face I know, is unbearable.
But reality, the persistent bitch, has a way of intruding.
A white envelope was slipped under my door this morning. Not a threat, not a summons. Just a polite, computer-printed notice from my landlord. Rent is due on the 1st. A late fee of $75 will be applied after the 5th.
I stare at the notice. On the coffee table next to it sits Judge Harrison’s sanction order. Ten thousand dollars. A debt to the court itself.
And next to that, on the scuffed wood of the table, is the black leather folio from Jasper Wolfe. Inside it, a cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars.
The three pieces of paper sit there, a perfect, brutal summary of my situation. The debt. The demand. And the devil’s solution.
For two days, I’ve pretended that check doesn’t exist. It’s blood money. It’s payment for services I didn’t know I was rendering. Taking it feels like the final surrender. It feels like an admission that he won, that he bought me, body and soul.
And I won’t do it. My pride, the last shredded scrap of it I have left, screams in protest. Fuck him. And fuck Marcus and his condescending offer of salvation. I will not be a charity case. I will not be a kept woman. I’ll starve before I take that money.
But the landlord’s notice gleams under the lamp light.
The number for my rent—$2,200—feels like a million.
My paltry paycheck from the Public Defender’s office was deposited.
I check my bank account on my laptop. After paying my student loans and credit card minimums, I’ll have exactly $417. 32 to my name.
The numbers don’t lie. Pride doesn’t pay rent. Pride doesn’t satisfy a court-ordered sanction. Pride is a luxury for people with options. I have none.
The rationalization begins, a slow, insidious creep of logic into the barren landscape of my emotion.
This isn’t a gift. It’s not an offer. It’s restitution.
He took my career. He took my future. He is the direct cause of the sanction I have to pay.
He owes me this. This money isn’t his hold over me; it’s the bare minimum he can do to compensate me for the damage he intentionally inflicted.
I’m not taking his help. I’m collecting on a debt.
The distinction feels important. It feels vital. It’s the only way I can do this without wanting to peel my own skin off.
The decision made, my body moves with a grim, robotic purpose.
I shower, scrubbing myself until my skin is raw, as if preparing for a dirty but necessary task.
I put on the most anonymous clothes I own: a pair of old jeans, a dark gray hoodie, and a baseball cap pulled down low over my face. I look like a shoplifter. Perfect.
The walk to the bank is an exercise in paranoia. Every person I pass on the street is a potential threat, a potential source of recognition. I keep my head down, my eyes fixed on the cracked pavement, my hands shoved deep in my pockets. The city, my home, feels like hostile territory.
Inside the bank, the air is cool and sterile. I wait in line, my heart a dull, heavy thud in my chest. When it’s my turn, I approach the teller, a young woman with a bored expression and brightly colored nails. I slide the check and my ID under the glass. I can’t meet her eyes.
“I’d like to deposit this, please,” I mumble, my voice scratchy from disuse.
She takes the check. Her eyes widen slightly as she reads the amount.
Fifty. Thousand. Dollars. She looks from the check to me, her professional indifference momentarily replaced by a flicker of curiosity.
She sees my shabby clothes, my downcast eyes.
She’s probably wondering if I robbed someone.
The shame is a physical heat that creeps up my neck.
She types for a moment. “There will be a hold on the majority of the funds,” she says, her voice flat. “One thousand will be available tomorrow. The rest will clear in three to five business days.”
“Okay,” I manage to say.
She stamps the check with a loud, final thump-thump, and slides a receipt back to me. “Have a nice day.”
I snatch the receipt and turn, walking out of the bank without looking back. I feel dirty. Tainted. I have just officially entered into a transaction with the devil, and the receipt is in my pocket.
My next stop is the courthouse. The money for the sanction isn’t available yet, but I can get the certified check tomorrow. The thought of having that order hanging over my head is unbearable. It feels like a brand.
The building I used to walk into with pride now feels like a crypt.
I bypass the security guards and offices, heading straight for the clerk’s office for collections.
The woman behind the counter takes my payment information without a word, her face a mask of bureaucratic boredom.
In a few minutes, it’s done. The sanction is paid.
Ten thousand dollars of Jasper Wolfe’s money, funneled through me, back into the system. The irony is sickening.
One fire put out. A hundred more still burning.
My last errand of the day is the most necessary.
I go to a big-box electronics store, a place of loud noises and bright, artificial light.
I move through the aisles like a ghost and buy the cheapest, most anonymous smartphone they have.
A burner. I pay in cash. I set it up in the car, creating a new, generic email address to go with it.
The first thing I do is send a message to my mother.
Subject: My phone
Mom, my old phone broke. Totally shattered. I’ll get a new one soon and will send you the number when I do. Love you.
It’s a lie. A necessary one. I cannot talk to her right now.
I cannot handle her questions, her well-meaning concern that would feel like sandpaper on my flayed nerves.
And I know, with absolute certainty, that if I gave her my new number, it would be in Marcus’s hands within the hour.
Even the thought of his name makes my stomach clench.
My new life is one of secrecy and isolation.
I have his money in my account, and a new, clean phone in my hand.
I should feel a sense of relief, but all I feel is a profound, soul-deep emptiness.
I have solved the immediate problems, but the larger one remains: what the fuck am I going to do with my life?
The next few days drift by in a fog of aimless anxiety.
The money from the check clears. I pay my rent online.
I pay my student loans. I pay my credit cards.
I watch the fifty-thousand-dollar mountain dwindle with every transaction.
The money buys me time. It buys me survival. But it doesn’t buy me a future.
I haven't heard a word from the State Bar. The investigation is a sword hanging over my head, a silent, looming threat that makes it impossible to plan for anything.
I’m trapped. I can’t work. I can’t leave. All I can do is sit in this apartment and wait for the official notice that my life is over.
I’m careful when I have to go out. I go to grocery stores in neighborhoods far from my own, places where I’m just another anonymous face in the crowd.
It’s a strange feeling. Now, I am just… a woman in a hoodie buying milk.
The anonymity is a relief, but it’s also an erasure. It feels like I’m disappearing.
And through it all, there is him. A constant, low-grade infection in my thoughts.
I try not to think about that night in his penthouse, but the memories are invasive.
They ambush me at random moments. The rough texture of his jaw against my cheek.
The weight of his body on mine. The sound of his voice, ordering me to fall apart.
I find myself showering two, sometimes three times a day.
It started the day I got back from his place.
I stood under the spray for nearly an hour, the water as hot as I could stand it, scrubbing my skin with a loofah until it was red and raw.
I was trying to wash him off me. His touch, his scent, the taste of him.
But it was more than that. I was trying to scrub away my own body’s betrayal.
I was trying to punish my skin for the goosebumps it raised when he touched me, for the way I melted, for the screams of pleasure he ripped from my throat.
Now, the feeling has returned, but it’s different.
It’s not about his physical touch anymore.
It’s about the money. A different kind of violation.
A different kind of dirty. Having his money in my bank account, using it to pay my bills, feels like a stain that has soaked through my skin and into my soul.
So I shower, again and again, chasing a clean feeling that never comes.
Tonight, it’s particularly bad. I’m thinking about the dwindling balance in my account, about the fact that I’m now financially dependent on the man who orchestrated my ruin. The bastard. The thought makes my skin crawl.
I strip off my clothes and step into the shower, turning the handle until the water is steaming.
The heat is a punishment. I grab the soap and begin to scrub, my motions methodical, repetitive.
I scrub my arms, my legs, my stomach. I am not washing.
I am trying to erase. To scour away the last few weeks, to get back to the woman I was before I ever heard the name Jasper Wolfe.
I close my eyes, letting the water beat down on my face. The sound of the shower fills the small bathroom, a wall of white noise that almost—almost—drowns out the thoughts in my head.
That’s why, at first, I think I’m imagining it.
A sound. From the other room. A noise that cuts through the hiss of the water.
Thump. Thump-thump.
I turn off the water. The sudden silence is shocking, absolute. I stand there, dripping, my heart instantly kicking into a frantic rhythm. I listen, every nerve ending on high alert.
THUMP. THUMP-THUMP.
It’s coming from my front door.
My apartment is on the third floor of a walk-up. There’s no doorman. No buzzer. For someone to be at my door, they had to get into the building. How?
A cold dread, familiar and specific, washes over me. I know. I know who it is before he even speaks. The arrogance of the knock is a signature.
I stand frozen in the bathroom, water trickling down my body onto the bathmat. My towel is just out of reach. My clothes are in a heap in the bedroom. I am naked, wet, and trapped.
Then his voice comes through the door. It’s not loud, but it cuts through the wood, through the air, and straight into my bones. It’s the same calm, controlled tone he always uses. The voice of a man who never has to raise his.
“Olivia.”
He says my name. A simple statement of fact.
“Open the door. We need to talk about my offer.”