Chapter 1 – Cora #2
Oh, she heard us. She heard us, and she didn’t stop. Now, finally, she makes a move to dismount, but Adrian holds in her place.
“Stay,” he snaps at her.
“Mommy?” Pearl whispers from behind me.
What do I do? My legs don’t work. Neither do my eyes. I can’t tear them away. Delaney’s creamy skin is perfect. Her heart-shaped ass is perfect; her butt crack is a perfect pink. She looks like fan art. Like a horny teenage boy drew her.
Is Adrian in love with her?
Is this what he really wants? I thought he didn’t like the woman on top.
“Get them out of here, Schmidt,” Adrian snarls.
He means us. His family. He’s kicking us out. Delaney gets to stay. On his dick.
My brain still can’t catch up. It’s a broken escalator, and every thought I have immediately slides down into a jumbled heap.
Adrian is fucking Delaney from the office on the corporate apartment’s sofa, even though he’s in love with me.
He doesn’t say it—he told me when we got together that he doesn’t do heart-to-hearts—but he shows me all the time in a hundred ways.
Besides, a man like him would never marry a woman like me if he weren’t head over heels in love.
He married me, even though we’re so different, because I make him happy. He does things for me he’s never done for any other woman. His brothers rag the hell out of him for it. He might not talk about his feelings or show emotion, but that’s his way. He’s infamous for it.
He’s Adrian Maddox. He could have married anyone, but he married me, a foster kid from Baltimore with a GED, because he loves me. It’s the only way we make sense.
Why is he doing this?
I can hear the delusion, but my brain won’t stop. It’s trying to argue its way out of the reality staring us in the face.
Schmidt tries his luck, grabbing my upper arm from behind. “Come on, Mrs. Maddox,” he says.
I jerk my arm forward. “Adrian, what’s going on?”
He’s the one who explains things, who takes care of things.
If I have an issue, I tell him, and it’s fixed immediately, either by him personally, one of his scary brothers, or by the legion of employees and henchmen at their command.
Life doesn’t work for him like it does for everyone else.
Nothing tragic happens in Adrian Maddox’s world. Nothing is a problem.
Oh God, my heart hurts. I go to press my fist against it, to staunch the pain, but Winnie’s there in her carrier, so I uncurl my fingers and rest my palm on her back. She squeals again and stiffens her legs. Oh, no.
Not now.
She’s working on a poop.
“Schmidt,” Adrian growls. “Get them out of here now.” People jump when he uses that tone of voice. Delaney tenses, but she stays put and keeps her mouth shut.
Adrian is in charge. Here and everywhere. When you have as much money as he does, you don’t usually have to ask twice or raise your voice.
“Schmidt!” he barks.
Schmidt murmurs to me, his hand tugging my sleeve, but his words don’t register. It’s like he’s talking underwater.
There’s a glitch in the matrix.
I’m the glitch.
I’m not supposed to be here.
I was never supposed to be here.
I was wrong. I made a terrible mistake. The floor is crumbling under my feet.
Schmidt tugs my shirt harder. I look back over my shoulder. He has resettled Pearl on his hip, her head tucked into his shoulder so she can’t see. Tiller is pushing the button to hold the elevator door open.
“Come on,” Schmidt says, gently drawing me backward. “Let’s take the little ones somewhere else, please, Mrs. Maddox.”
Tiller holds out his hand. I take it. Behind me, Adrian makes a sound almost like a snarl, but I can’t see why. My back is turned to him now.
His face blank and businesslike, Tiller guides me onto the elevator and taps the close button as fast as he can, several times, like a woodpecker.
Adrian didn’t even take his pants all the way off. He didn’t even push them down past his ass. He just unzipped them. He was still wearing a cummerbund and bowtie, too. Where did he go tonight? It’s a Thursday. He didn’t say he had plans.
I look at Schmidt, my forehead furrowing. He drops his hand so Pearl can raise her head. She blinks at me in confusion with wide blue eyes exactly like mine. My eyes are cornflower blue, and my hair is cornsilk blonde. That’s what Adrian always says—cornflower blue, cornsilk blonde.
He loves my blue eyes and blonde hair. Everyone I’ve ever met has, too, but he’s the only one who’s ever called them cornflower blue. Cornsilk blonde. Like those are the rarest and best shades of blue and blonde.
According to Forbes, this year he’s the seventh richest man in the world. He and his brothers are always jockeying with each other for position in the top twenty. He could have a woman with any shade of hair he wanted—two or three or four of them at a time—but he wanted me.
And Delaney, the redhead.
“I’m going to puke,” I mumble.
Immediately, Tiller is at my back, unbuckling the baby carrier and easing Winnie away from my achy boobs.
She’s overdue for a feed, and she’s still stiff as a board and grunting.
I usually pump her legs or rub her tummy to move things along, but I can’t help her now.
I fold over and heave into the corner, retching over and over, but nothing comes up.
I didn’t have dinner. I wasn’t hungry. Even though I wouldn’t admit it to myself until this moment, I was worried.
Adrian sounded off on the phone earlier this evening.
He said he was exhausted, but he’s never tired.
He wakes up at five o’clock in the morning to row for an hour, works at least twelve hours a day, and does another hour or two in the gym.
I remember now.
On the phone, there was a moment when we’d both fallen silent. A fraction of a second. A door must’ve opened in the background. I heard faint music and a woman’s voice calling his name.
It was so quick—and so horrible—my mind refused to register it, but my body did.
My stomach coiled into a knot, and the only way I could make myself feel better was to go see my husband who makes everything okay.
So, I packed my babies into the car and drove an hour into the city, so we could all interrupt his director of finance riding his dick.
My stomach heaves, and I retch, and still, nothing comes up.
“Mama! Mama, are you sick?” Pearl’s voice rises to a wail.
“I’m okay,” I gasp, forcing myself to drag a deep breath down and stand up straight. “I’m okay, sweetheart.”
I reach out my arms, and Pearl dives into them. She clings to my neck, nearly choking me out, while I murmur to her, over and over, “It’s okay. Everything is okay.”
“When can we see Daddy?”
Oh, thank goodness. By some miracle, that scene went over her head. She was so groggy from her nap in the car, Tiller and I were blocking her view, and Schmidt turned her away quickly enough. We got lucky.
I’m trying to think of an answer when Winnie saves the day.
Tiller is holding her carrier by the straps, and she’s dangling with her chubby legs stiff as boards. She toots. It’s a soft sound, but the elevator is small. Her face cracks into a dopey smile. In moments, the stink of baby poop fills the elevator.
Pearl picks her head up from my boobs and scolds, “Oh, Winnie, no!”
Tiller stares at the elevator doors, and stone-faced, he lifts the carrier so it’s as far from himself as he can get it.
I can’t laugh.
This isn’t funny.
If I laugh, I’ll cry.
If I cry, I’ll lose it, and I don’t lose it anymore. I’m better now. I’m a new person.
When I left Baltimore at eighteen, Mrs. Flowers, my social worker, said I had a fresh slate, and I’ve kept it pristine.
I came all the way to New York City, worked nights as a cleaner while I got my GED, and then got a job as an aide at a fancy daycare on the Upper East Side.
I met Adrian Maddox on the sidewalk outside of my work.
We fell in love, six months later he asked me to marry him, and now we have two beautiful children. This is a fairy tale.
The nightmares are behind me.
I’m lucky now, blessed and grateful. I hold Pearl tight as my brain churns up the things I tell myself when I feel insecure and terrified that I’ll inevitably lose everything again.
I should be angry. Devastated. I know that, but I’m slow to process traumatic events and useless in a bad situation and always have been.
The elevator doors whoosh open, and Schmidt says, “Mrs. Maddox, this way please.”
I stumble after him down a thick-carpeted hall. Schmidt swipes a keycard at the first room we reach and holds the door open. When I go to walk in, he grabs my arm. “Let Tiller go first, ma’am.”
I forgot. It took me so long to internalize the security procedures, but eventually I did, and now I’m forgetting them because nothing is forever, and this was never real. How could it be? Adrian Maddox and me?
It’s stupid to be heartbroken. I was delusional. This could never have been real, and I knew it, too, didn’t I? Deep down?
Tiller passes Winnie to his partner and enters the room with his jacket flap pushed behind his side holster, calling “clear” a minute later.
Schmidt gestures for me to enter. It’s a corporate suite, not nearly as well-appointed as Adrian’s personal apartment above, but still nicer than many hotels I’ve stayed in, and I’ve stayed in the best in the world since I’ve been with Adrian.
Tiller is standing at the end of a hallway, holding a door open. “You can change the baby in here, ma’am,” he says.
“Thank you,” I say and try to put Pearl down so she can walk, but she’s clinging to me like an octopus. I should’ve never brought her into the city so late at night. I should’ve hit the close door button on that elevator immediately. My brain is glitching. This is not good.
“I’ll follow with the baby,” Schmidt says.