15. Helpless
Chapter fifteen
Helpless
—Marcus—
The rusted springs of the cheap mattress dug sharply into the base of Marcus’s spine.
He sat on the edge of the bare bed, staring at the peeling linoleum floor between his feet.
The apartment was a single-bedroom box situated above a loud intersection on the wrong side of the city.
The suffocating stench of decades-old cigarette smoke and cheap bleach was baked entirely into the drywall.
The air-conditioning unit in the window rattled with a mechanical wheeze, barely pushing tepid air into the stifling room.
It had been four weeks since the dinner party. Four weeks since the entire foundation of his reality had been pulverized in front of his colleagues.
Marcus rubbed his hands aggressively over his face. The heavy shadow of a four-day beard scraped against his palms. The perfection he had maintained for years was completely gone. His tailored suits hung in cheap plastic garment bags from a broken closet rod.
He couldn’t afford the dry-cleaning bill to maintain them. Without the corporate salary, the high-end colognes, the luxury vehicle, and the sprawling suburban house, the golden boy of the financial district had rapidly deteriorated.
He picked up his smartphone from the stained mattress.
The battery icon glowed red in the top corner. He opened his contact list, his thumb hovering over the screen. His chest tightened. A cold sweat gathered at the base of his neck.
Tapping a number, he pressed the phone to his ear and listened to the hollow ringing on the other end of the line.
“Dave,” Marcus greeted, forcing himself to sound relaxed. “It’s Marc. Listen, man, I know you’ve been busy, but I wanted to circle back on that VP position over at Sterling Trust. I have the portfolio ready to send over.”
An uncomfortable sigh echoed through the tiny speaker.
“Marc,” Dave replied. The friendly tone they usually shared over expensive scotch at the country club was completely absent. His voice was flat and deeply strained. “I told you last week. Sterling isn’t hiring right now.”
“They are always hiring senior talent,” Marcus pushed back, his grip on the phone tightening until the plastic casing creaked.
He stood up from the mattress, pacing the three short steps across the cramped bedroom.
“I generated a twenty-percent yield for Sanders last quarter. The numbers speak for themselves. Just get me in the room for one interview.”
“I can’t do that,” Dave stated.
“Why?” Marcus demanded. “We were frat brothers, Dave. We grew up together.”
“Sanders made a few phone calls,” Dave admitted quietly. “He blacklisted you across the entire sector. He told the board at Sterling about the morals clause violation. He told them about the incident at the restaurant.”
Marcus stopped pacing. He stared at the cracked plaster of the wall. The blood drained from his face.
“No firm in this city will touch you,” Dave continued. “If I put your résumé on my boss’s desk, it jeopardizes my own career. Do not call this number again.”
The line went dead. The dial tone hummed in Marcus’s ear.
He pulled the phone away from his face and stared at the darkened screen. His lungs stopped working.
Dave had been his final option. Now, the truth was staring him in the face. It was just as he’d feared, just as Sanders had promised. The career he had sacrificed his entire life to build was permanently extinguished.
Marcus dropped the phone onto the mattress. He turned toward the wobbly nightstand pushed against the wall.
A thick manila envelope rested on the scratched veneer surface. It bore the embossed seal of Julian Sinclair’s law firm. He’d received it yesterday afternoon but hadn’t been brave enough to look inside.
Marcus reached out. His hand trembled as he picked up the envelope.
He slid the stack of legal documents out of the paper casing. The formal stationery detailed the results of the forensic audit executed on his bank accounts. He flipped to the third page. A massive spreadsheet categorized every single dollar he had spent over the last six months.
Every luxury hotel room he had booked for an afternoon. Every expensive dinner he had purchased. The diamond tennis bracelet he had bought for Sylvia’s birthday. The transactions were highlighted in bright yellow ink.
He scanned the final number at the bottom of the page.
It was an astronomical sum. Under the state’s marital waste laws, Sinclair was legally demanding that he repay half of that exact amount directly to the marital estate.
A wave of acidic nausea rolled through his stomach.
The financial trap he had so meticulously built to cage his pregnant wife had snapped shut around his own neck. He had frozen Elena’s access to the funds, believing she’d be helpless against him. Now, his own personal accounts were frozen by a judge, and he was the one with no power.
He gripped the sides of the legal document. His knuckles turned bone-white. He had thrown away a perfect life for nothing.
—Sylvia—
In the cramped kitchen down the hall, Sylvia stood over a cheap cardboard box.
Forwarded from her old address, it had been unceremoniously dumped at the apartment door an hour ago. She stared at the contents. Inside rested her expensive white tennis skirts, her custom-molded golf shoes, and her monogrammed visors.
Sitting right on top of her gear was a watermarked piece of stationery from the Oakridge Country Club Board of Directors. It was a formal notice of expulsion, citing conduct unbecoming of their community standards.
They had literally boxed up her locker and shipped it to the slums.
Sylvia’s hands shook. Her beauty was her currency, but the country club was her bank. It was the absolute foundation of her identity, the stage where she flaunted her superiority. To be packed up in cardboard and discarded like trash was a humiliating execution.
Then again, nothing could be as humiliating as her birthday party. Damn you, Elena.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Marcus walked into the kitchen, holding the paperwork. His eyes were hollow, the shadow on his jaw making him look feral.
Sylvia shoved the cardboard box aside, instantly redirecting her frustration toward the man standing in front of her.
“The water in the shower is freezing,” she snapped, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “And the landlord is ignoring my calls. You need to handle it. I am not spending another week living in a roach motel.”
Marcus stared at her. A harsh laugh echoed off the damp walls of the kitchen.
“You think I care about the water pressure?” Marcus demanded.
He slammed the documents onto the chipped Formica counter in front of her.
“Look at this. Sinclair tallied up every single dime I spent on you. He’s clawing it back in the divorce settlement.
My accounts are zeroed out, Sylvia. I am six figures in debt. ”
Sylvia glanced at the spreadsheet, her lip curling in absolute disgust.
“Then call your brokers,” she retorted. “Liquidate some stock. Move the assets. You told me you were untouchable, Marcus. You told me you managed the money perfectly. Fix it.”
It wasn’t possible. She knew it wasn’t. He was useless now. But still, she wanted to dig the knife in. To make him suffer like she was.
“Vanguard blacklisted me,” Marcus fired back, his face turning an ugly red. “The brokers won’t take my calls. Sinclair froze the portfolio. I have nothing to liquidate!”
Sylvia uncrossed her arms, sneering. “You let her outsmart you. You let Elena—my boring, complacent daughter—play you for a fool.”
“You pushed for the restaurant!” Marcus shouted, stepping forward to close the distance between them. “You demanded the public dinner to show off to your little friends! You had to rent the private room. You had to invite Sanders. You dragged me into this mess!”
“I gave up my comfortable life for you!” Sylvia screamed right back, her finger jabbing his chest. “I lowered my standards for a man who claimed he ran the world. You paraded me around like a prize. You couldn’t handle a real woman, so you married a docile idiot and then begged for my attention.
And now you can’t even afford to put hot water in this dump.
You’re just a middle manager who got outplayed by a housewife. ”
The insult sliced cleanly through his ego. Marcus stared at Sylvia with visible revulsion.
“You didn’t give up anything,” he seethed. “You were a squatter in my guest room. You sucked the money out of my wallet because you’re a parasite. You drained me dry and left me with the bill.”
“I am the prize,” Sylvia shot back, her chin lifting in arrogant defiance. “I am the one men pay for.”
Marcus let out a cold, ruthless scoff, raking his eyes up and down her frame.
“Look in a mirror, Sylvia,” Marcus told her. “You’re fifty. No executive is going to fund your lifestyle. You’re disgraced, you’re aging, and you’re completely broke. You’re not better than I am. You never were. And it’s time you start pulling your own weight.”
Sylvia went rigid. This she hadn’t expected. “What?”
“I paid the deposit on this apartment with the last of my liquid cash,” Marcus continued, pressing his advantage. “I have no income. I can’t cover the rent next month. You’re going to have to find work.”
“Work?” Sylvia repeated. “I haven’t worked in thirty years.”
“Then figure it out,” Marcus snapped, turning on his heel. “Reception. Retail. Waitressing. I don’t care. Because nobody is handing us a check, and you are entirely out of options.”
He stormed down the narrow hallway and grabbed his keys off the hook. The front door slammed shut behind him with a deafening crash, shaking the cheap framed prints hanging on the wall. He was fleeing the squalor, leaving her to deal with the fallout.
Sylvia stood alone in the kitchen.
The silence of the apartment returned, thick and stagnant. The air-conditioning unit rattled. The rusted faucet dripped into the stained porcelain sink. Drip. Drip. Drip.
She looked down at the cardboard box sitting on the counter. The undeniable reality of her new life finally settled over her.
Elena had secured the sprawling house. Elena had secured the financial assets.
Sylvia was right back where she had started at nineteen—isolated, penniless, and staring down the barrel of a minimum-wage job. But this time, she had no youth to leverage, no beauty to trade on, and absolutely nowhere left to run. She was helpless.