Chapter 1 – Cora #5
“Cora.” This time, he says it sharply, and when I still don’t oblige, he sighs. “I’ll leave you to collect yourself. Sleep here since the children are already in bed. I’ll see you at home in the morning.”
He waits a little while longer for me to reply, but when I don’t, he stands. “This doesn’t have to change anything. I think when you’ve had the chance to reflect on the situation, you’ll agree.”
And then he’s gone. In short order, he and his people collect their things and file out of the apartment. Schmidt must still be in the bedroom. I hear Tiller moving around the kitchen.
I rise slowly from the sofa and float down the hallway. I feel like an old-timey aquanaut with one of those fishbowls on my head. I can’t see right, and the pressure in my head is growing. I’m going to lose it.
I haven’t lost it in years. Not since Mrs. Flowers picked me up from Villa Theresa and put me on a bus to New York.
I thought I was better. Fixed.
I can’t lose it now. My babies are sleeping down the hall. They need me. They’re so little. So defenseless.
I wander into the kitchen.
“You all right, Mrs. Maddox?” Tiller asks.
I nod. I just need a glass of water, and I’ll feel better. I’ll pull myself together. Come up with a plan.
My brain buzzes. Tiller says something else, but the words are mush.
I take a glass down from the cabinet. I’m sure the fridge is stocked with all types of water. When you’re rich, they ask you what kind of water you want—still or sparkling. Still means flat, but not out of a tap. These people would never drink from the faucet.
I fill the glass at the sink and guzzle the water down. Everything looks wrong. The black and white checked backsplash is bulging like an optical illusion. The air is too thick, and my ears are ringing.
The kitchen is fully stocked. Fancy knives hang from a magnetic holder made of fine wood. The switch for the garbage disposal is off to the side of the sink, but not far enough away that a person couldn’t flip it with their other hand shoved down the drain.
I refill my glass and chug. My little girls are asleep in the next room.
While I was sitting in a wheelchair in the room where I gave birth, waiting to be rolled to the mother and baby floor, and Adrian had stepped into the hallway to take a call, I swore to Pearl that life would be different for her. It would be safe. Good.
Was it Delaney on the phone?
I finish my water and turn away from the sink. Tiller is standing in the doorway, facing down the hall, talking to Schmidt. His lips move, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. The ringing is too loud.
I’m not real.
I’m an interlude. A pretense. A transaction.
I’m a balloon with a cut string. I’m going to drift away until I’m so small, no one can see me anymore.
I open my hand. The glass drops to the hardwood floor, shattering. Tiller’s head whips around.
I step forward. Press my foot down. Shift my weight onto that leg. There’s a crunch. Shards sink into my sole. The sharp pain steals my breath.
“Don’t!” he shouts. I read his lips.
I take another step.
“Mrs. Maddox, stop!” He’s quick, dashing over like Superman, grabbing me, hoisting me up and setting me down on the marble island. His mouth runs a mile a minute.
Schmidt races around the doorway. His jacket is missing, and his tie is thrown over his shoulder. He must’ve been holding Winnie. He does that to try and protect his tie from baby barf.
Fat drops of red blood drip from my feet onto the floor.
It hurts, worse than splinters, but not nearly as bad as the worst pain I’ve ever felt, which was probably the third degree tear I got when I gave birth to Pearl.
It burned like hell, and it took surgery to repair, but I wasn’t mad about it at all. I’d take any pain for my babies.
I’d walk across fire. Glass is nothing. The pain is grounding.
I’m back now. I’m calm. Time is returning to normal speed. No real damage done.
“Here, Mrs. Maddox, swing around and elevate your feet.” Tiller has found the first aid kit.
Schmidt has found a broom. “Do we need an ambulance?” he asks as he sweeps bloody shards of glass into a dustpan.
Tiller gently lifts my foot and examines my sole. “I don’t think so, but we should call Farhadi.”
Farhadi is the concierge doctor that Adrian has on call. He’s a nice man, and he’s perceptive. He’s always asking about my mood.
“No Dr. Farhadi,” I say. “You can handle this, Tiller.”
Tiller frowns at me. He’s arranged my feet over the small sink on the island and is about to pour a bottle of hydrogen peroxide over them. “Ma’am, I would really feel better if—”
“You can take care of it just fine. There’s no reason to get Dr. Farhadi out of bed.”
Tiller opens his mouth to argue.
“He can come tomorrow to check me out. I just want to get this taken care of and go to sleep.” It would help if I could summon up some tears or a chin wobble, but I can’t.
I’m still in that strange place where I feel like a kite with its string cut, flying away from my own life, floating high on a jet stream.
I used to float for hours. Days even. I did things that I couldn’t take back. That’s the past, though. I have a clean slate. This was a small setback, and totally understandable, considering the trigger.
I am in control of myself. My babies are safe in bed. My husband doesn’t love me. He never did. I was mistaken.
It might feel like the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, if I let myself feel, but it’s not, not even close.
I let Tiller carry me to the bedroom after he bandages my feet.
Schmidt has wrangled up a Pack-N-Play, and Winnie is zonked out in her sleep sack.
Pearl is curled up like a shrimp under the comforter.
Her body hardly makes a bump, but her curly blonde hair spills everywhere. It’s cornsilk, too, like mine.
I never knew my father, and I guess he might have been blond, too, but I’m the spitting image of my mother, just like Pearl is the spitting image of me. We’re a daisy chain of beautiful dolls. I hope it does Pearl more good than it’s done Mom and me.
“Do you need anything else, ma’am?” Tiller asks as he lingers by the light switch. His brown eyes are warm with concern. He likes me, much more than he should, but not more than he likes his plum job—or enough to run afoul of Adrian and his brothers.
Adrian is actually the civilized brother. Gideon and Lucian both have connections that no one ever mentions, but everybody knows about, and rumors swirl about Logan’s security company and the things they can do that no one else can.
Tiller isn’t stupid. He’s not going to make a real move on something that belongs to a Maddox. He’s nice and weak. He’ll watch my husband break my heart, pluck glass out of my bleeding feet, and then ask me politely if I need anything else. He’s a good man. Or as good as any man.
I roll over, give him my back, and let him take that as an answer.
I didn’t think I would, but I sleep, deep and dreamlessly. What feels like ten hours later, Pearl wakes me up, pedaling her feet into my calves, whispering, “Mommy. Mommy.”
“Good morning, baby,” I rasp as I check Winnie. She’s still out cold, arms thrown above her head like she’s guiding a plane down a runway.
“Where is here?” Pearl whispers. She’s wriggled close to my side. Her stinky little girl breath is hot in my face.
“We’re at an apartment in Daddy’s building. It was too late to drive home last night. Are you ready to go home now?”
She nods and crawls out of bed backward, lowering herself over the side. It’s a tall bed. A sharp pang of guilt pierces my chest. I should have left the kids at home. I clung to the wool over my eyes and almost walked them into that apartment with that woman and her red-soled shoes.
Never again. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but they’re not going to live the kind of life where they get to watch their mother fall to pieces in front of their eyes. Adrian Maddox is the past. He goes into the box in the back of my head where I shove all the bad stuff.
Luckily, Winnie is awake by the time I’ve helped Pearl use the bathroom and get her shoes on. I change Winnie and put her in the spare onesie from Schmidt’s diaper satchel. If I walk with my weight on the balls of my feet, the pain is tolerable. It feels like my soles have road burn.
I’ve dealt with worse, and as they say, anything you do once, you can do again. I strap Winnie to my chest and take Pearl’s hand. I’ve collected myself. I understand the game I’m playing now.
I walk out the door and smile at Martinez and Johnson. They must’ve relieved Tiller and Schmidt while we slept.
“Coffee, Mrs. Maddox?” Johnson asks. They’re both sipping from mugs in the immaculate kitchen.
“No, thank you. I’d like to go home now.” Home. Yesterday, I thought it was. I thought I’d gotten my reward for all the hard times I’d survived, and it was better than I could have ever imagined when I was a kid back in Baltimore.
I should’ve known better. I do now.
“Yes, ma’am,” Martinez says. “Let me get the baby’s bag, and we’ll get going.”
Johnson calls for the car, and when the driver rings up that he’s ready, we shuffle out of the apartment at half speed, neither of the men reacting to the fact that I’m moving at an unusually slow pace.
The farther I walk, the more my feet burn. They hadn’t bled through the bandages when I looked this morning, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are now. I’m slipping a little in my shoes.
I keep my face blank and focused straight ahead. The pain is good. It’s a tether.
I feel like I’m doing the walk of shame, wearing yesterday’s clothes as I stroll through the lobby full of businesspeople going about their day.
I’m recognized, of course, and I get a few nods and polite smiles, but no one is bold enough to approach me.
Johnson is my biggest bodyguard. He’s in his late fifties, but he’s built like a tank, and his neck is almost as thick as his head, like a hippo.
Yesterday doesn’t fully hit me until we’re in the car on 95, and then it all collapses on me at once.
Red soles.
Red hair.
Adrian scrolling his phone, fully dressed, while a naked woman rides him like it’s her job.
Like it’s a transaction.
It was my job, wasn’t it? I didn’t know to see it like that, but it was, although it wasn’t my main responsibility. That was giving him children.
This is the easy life I get in return. A wave of something horrible, something boiling and dark and sticky as tar, threatens to crash over me. I press my fist against my mouth and curl my toes until the pain throbs.
The driver glances at me in the rearview mirror. Martinez and Johnson are better trained. They both stare out their respective windows. I turn my head, too, my eyes sliding over the sights until one catches my eyes.
A billboard.
A handsome man in a navy-blue suit with his arms crossed.
Above his head, it reads I’ll fight for you. Under his feet it says Drake Chambers, Attorney at Law. Drake Chambers sounds like a fake name.
The Maddoxes employ Nicolet and Burgess, the best lawyers in the city, if not the world.
My lawyer, Brian, wouldn’t shut up about Nicolet and Burgess and how he was a summer associate with them, and how bummed he was when they didn’t pick him up as a first-year associate, but that Winthrop, Winthrop, and Blount was a better fit and still in the Am Law top 10.
I’m sure Nicolet, Burgess, and Brian would all laugh at a lawyer on a billboard, but it sticks in my head.
I’ll fight for you.
What would that feel like?
I’m married to one of the richest men in the world.
I do have the money to find out.