Chapter 4
Her phone had blown up with a hundred messages by the time she got in the back of a cab and returned to her hotel.
“CALL ME PLEASE when you have a moment!” “Seriously, I’m dying here. I can’t access one of the folders.” “What’s the password for the Blackbourne reports????”
Sarah sighed, thumb smashing against Abby’s number while her other hand pulled her wig off her head. The cab driver glanced at her in his mirror, but did not comment on her ensemble. When in New York… “Sorry, I’m only now getting back to you,” she said the moment Abby picked up. “I’ve been busy.”
“Oh, my God, you’re saving my ass! Seriously!” Abby’s squeal of relief forced Sarah to hold her phone away from her ear. “I’m supposed to have the updated files to Ms. Moreau by five in the morning, but I lost the password for the files. Do you know them?”
While Sarah walked her through logging into sensitive business information, she gently folded Angel’s wig and pulled the pins from her natural hair.
It would need a thorough washing and combing that night if she didn’t want to look like a wreck on the train back home tomorrow.
There were a lot of things she needed to do to not look like a wreck.
Usually, she took her time unwinding back into her true self.
She’d order a little room service after a night of seduction and engaging in risky, casual sex.
Watch something flippant on TV. Touch herself, if those lovers hadn’t done the job.
Slowly strip Angel’s lingerie and take the wig off last before dipping into a hot bubble bath.
By the time she got out, she was usually ready to go back to being Sarah Clayborn, boring executive assistant.
Sometimes, that went as far as catching up on work in her hotel room while Law & Order played on TV.
Tonight, she was forced back to being Sarah before she reached the hotel.
Abby was off the phone once Sarah was in the elevator, making eye contact with an older woman who looked her up and down as if she were a pricy escort.
Luca thought I was. Sarah fluffed her straight, flat hair and averted her eyes toward the mirror in the elevator.
Her makeup looked ridiculous without the wig.
Probably because the makeup and lingerie belonged to Angel. It was her look. Her “come fuck me” look. Sarah didn’t have those attributes. Without the wig, she was an imposter.
She needed to take her mind off work and Luca. Once she was in her room, makeup off and dressed in the one pair of pajamas she brought with her, Sarah sat at the table by the window and called her brother back home.
He answered before the first ring, as if he had sensed her.
Once, seemingly not so long ago, she and Nigel had been so close they never had to say a word to one another.
A nod of the head, an arch of the eyebrow, and a sigh of the lungs was all it took to say, “Fuck this. I need help. Give me a hug. Isn’t this some bullshit?
Sounds like our mother, doesn’t it? Our boss is at it again. You wanna take this or should I?”
As of late, however, that was gone. Trust was dismantled between them. Nigel had done something so heinous to protect his sister… yet Sarah could not bring herself to condone it. There was no condoning of pushing a woman down a flight of stairs.
Sarah didn’t care if Russell had threatened to kill her. Nigel should have told the Moreaus immediately.
This was also the same brother who learned the truth of Sarah’s miscarriage before she did. He had kept it to himself. To protect her.
“Hey,” Nigel said. “How’s New York?”
Sarah never told him what she was doing on her weekend getaways.
He wouldn’t say anything even if he knew, though.
The only judgment Sarah would feel was the one burning behind his eyes as he looked upon his sister’s life and wondered why the hell he had bothered to go through all that bullshit to protect her.
“It’s fine. Settling in for the night. What are you up to?”
“Just got home from game night. Carly’s here. We’re going to bed soon ‘cause she has work tomorrow.”
Something tightened in Sarah’s chest. “How’s she doing?”
“Good, good.”
They were silent for a minute. Occasionally, Sarah heard the murmur of the TV or her brother’s girlfriend’s voice in the background.
As happy as she was for her brother’s newfound love, she couldn’t help but be…
a little jealous. A tad. A bit. Not enough to make her swallow the green down her throat, but enough to nick the skin covering her heart.
Deep down, she wanted someone to hold her like Carly held Nigel.
We were like that as kids. People told their mother that it wasn’t right, even for twins, to be so inseparable.
Luckily, their mother didn’t buy into the incest rumors.
She let her children share a room until puberty, after which they were given adjacent rooms with a door connecting them.
It was an unspoken vow that they could go through that door whenever necessary.
Well, that vow remained until Sarah went through it one evening and found her seventeen-year-old brother losing his virginity before she had the chance to try out sex for herself.
They were too old for that now. Maybe if society and culture weren’t a thing.
Maybe if people didn’t already make more incest jokes about them when they both worked for the Moreaus.
They thought themselves terribly clever when they went to the same school, took the same courses, and earned the same administration degrees.
They thought the world was theirs when Danica Moreau hired them as her executive assistants shortly after they graduated.
Their mother’s connections in the business world had made that happen.
She couldn’t help them when they turned against themselves two years later, however.
Elizabeth Brown-Clayborn only found out her daughter had been pregnant when Sarah took a leave of absence from work after her miscarriage.
Before that, the only people who had known were Nigel and Russell…
and Russell’s bodyguard, apparently. Sarah could have lived her whole life without knowing that man was responsible for the death of her child.
When the truth came out, more than a few people were made privy to the embarrassing information.
“When will you be home tomorrow?” Nigel asked, cutting into their mutual silence.
“Hopefully around four.”
“Ah.” He went back to being quiet.
Sarah was happy to have the silence. Simply knowing that her brother was on the other line, ready to talk to her whenever she was ready, was enough to alleviate the bad thoughts coming up in the back of her mind.
Then he spoke.
“I… I hope he’s taking good care of you, sis.” Nigel cleared his throat. “I’ll talk to you later. Ja yeop.”
He hung up after saying one of their made-up words for farewell, a phrase that had existed as long as ja lub ke. They hadn’t said “I love you” since the night Sarah found out the truth about her miscarriage.
But that wasn’t what shocked her the most. Rather, she was surprised to discover that her brother thought she was seeing the same man every time she went to New York.
Perhaps it’s not so far-fetched. She turned off her phone and placed it face down on the table.
He must know I’m up to something like that.
Part of the danger of their relationship was how easily they communicated their thoughts and feelings without ever using words.
He knows I’m up to something sexual. It was almost quaint that Nigel assumed she was seeing the same man. He has no idea I sleep with women, too.
Did he think the man was a sugar daddy? Or a real boyfriend she was testing out before going public with him? How deeply did he think about it?
Sarah picked up the TV remote and changed the channel. One of the cable shows was nothing but the usual tits and ass.
Shit. She didn’t want to be reminded of sex so quickly. While her body was more than satisfied after her quick hookup with Luca, the rest of her pined for another round, for more attention, for a clarification on what she meant by, “So that’s your game.”
Ahaha. Like she needed clarification. The woman thought she was trying to garner the most intimacy so someone would fall for her.
So what if she was?
Sarah leaned back in her chair and folded her hands over her stomach.
She had barely known she was pregnant – had barely accepted she was pregnant – when it was over with one of the worst pains of her life.
Only later did she find out she woke up like that because Russell had drugged her and bade his bodyguard beat her.
The miscarriage was intentional. Leaving her potentially infertile was another nice big fuck you to her agency and bodily autonomy.
Part of her spiral into self-destructive habits was intentionally leaving herself open to an “accidental” pregnancy.
Her doctor had told her the odds were so slim she should never get her hopes up.
But what if? What if she could take control of that part of herself again?
What if she could have that normal life that was ripped from her in such a heinously violent way?
She didn’t care about the father. People were pawns in her search for control. A fun fling to enjoy on her road to recovery. Even though women like Luca couldn’t get her pregnant, Sarah would be content with never seeing or hearing from her again. She didn’t want her money.
What she wanted was to be empowered, and she didn’t care what toxic hell she swam through to get there.
Those bastards took it away from me. She stumbled away from the table and collapsed on the bed, hand still on her stomach. They took away my choices. They stole my right to decide what I wanted.
They fucked up me.
Sarah prided herself on how easily she controlled her emotions.
It was one of the reasons the Moreaus paid her so handsomely: always obedient, helpful, and devoid of reactions to whatever they got up to.
Still, she knew how unhealthy it was to bottle up her negativity, her trauma, her screams into the void that made her human.
So every weekend in her final pursuit to purge herself of what made her human, she allowed herself to cry – to scream into her pillow that she was worthy of love and respect.
Nobody knew about these outbursts. Nobody except God.
And as soon as she cried it out? Back to the Sarah everyone knew and appreciated. Quiet, docile Sarah.
She hoped Luca never thought of her again. It was best if nobody remembered Sarah Clayborn and the problems she didn’t ask anyone to care about.