9. Marianne #2
Hazel stood still, taking in the desperate determination radiating from the shivering woman. She glanced down at the swollen curve of the coat, then back up to Marianne’s eyes. The baker nodded once.
“I can work with that kind of hustle,” Hazel said.
She turned her back on the register and marched directly toward the wall separating the storefront from the back kitchen. A landline receiver hung from a mounting bracket. Hazel snatched the handset from its cradle, the coiled cord snapping taut against the drywall.
“You’re officially on the register,” Hazel instructed, dialing a local number with her thumb. “Give me ten seconds to call Elias down the block, because he manages a walk-up above the hardware store that locks tight.”
Marianne pushed through the bakery doors and navigated the icy pavement down the commercial block.
She followed Hazel’s directions, stopping outside a faded brick building that housed a local hardware store.
She walked into the ground-floor shop, pulling a portion of her remaining cash from her purse.
She handed the worn bills to the clerk in exchange for a cheap boxed air mattress.
She gripped the handle of the luggage in her right hand. She clamped the cardboard box against her side with her left arm. She approached the narrow wooden stairwell leading up to the residential units. The incline looked impossibly steep.
She planted her boot on the first tread and began the climb. Her thighs were burning by the time she reached the second floor. The cardboard dug into her ribs, and the luggage banged against the banister.
“Just one more floor,” she whispered to herself.
She halted on the third-floor landing to readjust her grip on the box.
The physical toll of hauling this weight solo sapped her endurance.
Every agonizing step proved she couldn’t afford to pay anyone to carry her bags anymore.
I don’t have a concierge to carry this. It’s just me.
She bit down on her lip and pushed her burning legs up the next flight.
She finally cleared the top step, and her knees buckled. She dropped the luggage and the box onto the scuffed floorboards. She braced her palms flat against her knees, gasping for breath in the drafty corridor.
A tattooed man knelt near the far wall of the landing, wrenching a stubborn fitting on the old cast-iron radiator. He turned his head at the clatter of the box hitting the floor. He stood. He tossed the large pipe wrench onto the wood with a harsh clatter.
He pulled a grease-stained rag from his back pocket and wiped the grime off his hands. The sharp scent of motor oil and cut pine clung to his canvas jacket, piercing the dusty air of the stairwell.
“You should have yelled down to the shop,” the man said, nodding toward the air mattress box. “I would have hauled that cardboard up from the lobby for you.”
“I can manage it,” Marianne said, standing upright. “I just needed to catch my breath.”
The man crossed his arms, scrutinizing the frayed seams of her luggage and her pregnant belly.
“Hazel called me,” he said. “I’m Elias. You’re Marianne? Look, you’re shivering, and that luggage is practically shredded. Give it to me straight—do you have some violent ex hunting you down who’s going to end up pounding on my front glass?”
The bluntness of the question startled Marianne.
Tristan’s security teams were paid to protect the corporate brand above all else, always looking the other way when her husband lost his temper.
Yet this inked stranger was willing to block a doorway for her without a second thought, offering the kind of unflinching defense she had never known.
Watching the landlord square his shoulders toward the stairwell, she finally stopped anticipating an attack.
“I’m completely alone, Elias,” Marianne said, meeting his eyes. “I just need a secure room for the night, and I swear no one is tracking me here.”
“If someone was, you wouldn’t be the one getting tossed out,” Elias said. “I’ve handled plenty of arrogant pricks who think they can kick women around.”
The absolute certainty in his voice calmed her. She didn’t have to play guessing games or hunt for hidden insults here. Elias just stated the rules and stood by them.
“Thank you,” Marianne said. “Truly.”
“It’s just common sense,” Elias replied.
He stuffed the dirty rag back into his pocket and gestured toward the nearest apartment door.
“Now, the main heating unit acts up when it freezes, and you just fought those stairs, but the deadbolts are heavy steel and nobody gets past the ground floor without my say-so.”
Marianne unzipped her purse. She reached inside and pulled out her worn wallet, extracting the remaining paper bills she had scraped together from the strip-mall pawnbroker.
The frigid draft whistled through the poorly sealed corridor windows, chilling her damp winter coat.
Her numb fingers struggled to grip the cash, forcing her to carefully recount the small stack twice.
She tallied the twenties and the tens. She was holding less than half of what a normal landlord would demand up front.
“I spent a portion of my travel money on the mattress downstairs,” she stated. She kept her eyes locked on the thin stack of cash. “The bus fare took a heavier toll than I budgeted.”
“You’re shivering in that hallway draft,” Elias said. He wiped a streak of grease from his forearm with the back of his wrist. “Let’s just see what you’re short so I can get you inside.”
He isn’t tossing me out. She leaned heavily against the banister, fighting the sudden urge to beg for a lower rate. She hadn’t walked away from Tristan’s money just to start asking strangers for favors. Elias’s pity would only trap her in a different kind of debt.
Scrubbing floors with an aching back was going to be brutal, but handing Elias her own cash meant this deadbolt would actually belong to her.
She locked her knees to stop her legs from shaking and looked Elias straight in the eye.
“I’m short on the upfront total, but I will stay late to scrub the floors and clear Hazel’s dish pit every evening to make up the rest,” Marianne said. “You can pull the exact difference straight from my paycheck.”
Elias paused, his gaze dropping to the swell of her stomach beneath the coat. He didn’t offer pity, and he didn’t turn down her offer to work. He just accepted her terms.
He stepped forward, reaching into the pocket of his jacket.
“Hazel already staked her reputation on you,” Elias said. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “And I can respect a mother willing to bleed a little sweat to keep a solid door locked for her kid. The place is yours, Marianne.”
He dropped the keys directly into her palm. Her cold fingers immediately closed over them. The solid weight proved it. For the first time in years, she had secured a safe room solely through her own sweat, with no hidden strings attached.
She handed the paper cash over.
“Consider it a firm deal,” Marianne said. “Thank you for the opportunity, Elias.”
Marianne slid the key into the lock and twisted.
The deadbolt retracted. She pushed the wooden door open and stepped over the threshold into her new apartment.
The room was bare. Scuffed baseboards outlined a narrow galley kitchen that opened directly into a small living area, anchored by a radiator beneath a single frosted windowpane.
She dropped the luggage and the cardboard onto the floorboards.
The silence inside the empty unit was deafening, unlike the relentless chaos of the Hawthorne estate.
Eleanor’s venomous insults couldn’t reach her here.
Tristan’s exhausted, patronizing sighs could not reach her across the city.
She was finally free of it. Now, her only immediate problem was the biting winter draft seeping under the windowsill.
Marianne knelt beside the cardboard. She wedged her fingers under the glued flaps and tore the packaging open. She wrestled the stiff, folded plastic of the air mattress onto the floorboards.
“Just need to find an outlet,” she whispered to the empty room.
She unspooled the cord and plugged the built-in pump into a nearby socket. The machine kicked on with a loud, rhythmic hum. The folded plastic began to yield, expanding slowly as the mattress filled with air.
She backed away from the noise and reached into her pocket, pulling out the rent receipt Elias had handed her. The small, handwritten dollar amount proved the room belonged to her. Tristan’s bank accounts couldn’t touch her here.
“Look at this view, Marianne. Top floor, isolated. We own the city from up here,” Tristan had said the day they toured the penthouse.
“It’s beautiful, Tristan. It’s so big.”
She stared down at the handwritten receipt. Tristan’s penthouse had required her absolute obedience just to walk across the rugs. This freezing, drafty room required nothing but the aches in her own hands.
The pump shifted into a higher pitch as the plastic finally stretched taut. Marianne leaned over and snapped the toggle switch down. The machine’s whine died, plunging the room back into glorious, unbroken quiet.
She sat down on the edge of the inflated mattress.
“It’s small, and it’s cold,” Marianne whispered, resting a hand over her stomach. “But it’s ours, baby, and nobody can take it away.”
She pulled her winter coat tight across her chest to trap her body heat against the lingering draft. She lay back against the yielding plastic, curling onto her side. For the first time in years, she closed her eyes and listened to absolutely nothing.