Chapter 3 #2
Dropping this envelope and walking away feels like writing my own eulogy and mailing it to someone who might not check their inbox.
I pull the envelope back from the slot.
I push through the red door and step back into the low-lit corridor. The lounge is to my right, back through the velvet curtain. Back to the marble and the music and the beautiful people who don't care about the horror chasing me through the night.
I turn left.
There's another elevator at the end of the corridor, smaller than the main one, with a biometric panel glowing faintly beside the doors.
I'm three steps from it when a door I didn't notice opens to my right and two guards step out, both of them built like the walls of this building and wearing matching expressions of polite interest.
"Ma'am." The taller one angles his body between me and the elevator. "Can we help you?"
"Yes, actually." I straighten my spine and speak from the heart. "I need to speak to the men who read the wishes. I have one and I'd like to deliver it personally."
They look at each other. The shorter one presses his lips together in a way that might be hiding a smile.
"Ma'am, that area is restricted to authorized personnel only."
"I understand that, but this is an emergency and I really need this."
I lift my chin and push every ounce of stubborn determination into my posture. Good or bad, I’m here now and there is no way in hell I’m leaving without what I came for.
“If you could just take me…”
The taller one scoops me up before I can finish my sentence. The brute just lifts me off my feet like I weigh nothing, and tosses me over his shoulder. His friend starts walking toward the lounge and the lug carrying me follows.
"Hey! Put me down you big lug. So much for telling the truth, huh! This is not... I am a grown woman and you can't just..."
My head swivels around and I call out, “I can walk myself out. He can’t do this!”
“He can and he is.”
I pound my fists against the ocean of black fabric covering his back, but he just lumbers on like I’m not driving my fists into him.
The velvet curtain parts and we're back in the lounge and every head in the immediate vicinity swivels toward the woman slung over security’s shoulder. Sometimes I really do wish I had even a dash of luck on my side and even better fighting skills.
The hostess is waiting by the entrance with her hands folded and a look on her face that somehow manages to be both sympathetic and completely unsurprised.
The security guard sets me down gently, like placing a vase he's worried about breaking, and the three of them form a polite wall between me and the rest of the club.
Heat tears up my neck and hits my face so fast I probably match every red rose in the joint. A heartbeat pounds behind my ears, loud enough that the entire lounge can probably hear it, and if the floor would like to open up and swallow me, now would be a great time.
The elevator doors open. The hostess gestures me inside with a gentle hand on my elbow. Both guards step in with me.
Nobody speaks on the ride down. The classical music plays. I stare at my boots.
Great night.
The second the doors open, the guards walk me to the revolving doors.
Guard Number One clamps a hand on my shoulder and gives it a squeeze that tells me I better not try anything. And in case I didn’t get the message, the dry tone in his next words makes sure I understand. “Have a good evening, miss.”
I give a two-finger salute from the corner of my right temple. “Yeah. It’ll be peachy. Thanks.” I pack up my sarcasm and start pounding pavement. I take a step out of the building before I turn back.
"Actually, wait." My face is still burning but I hold out the red envelope. "Can one of you please put this in the wish box? Please. That's all I'm asking."
The hostess steps forward before either guard can respond. She takes the envelope from my hand with both of hers, holding it carefully, and the smile she gives me is warm and real.
"I'll make sure it gets placed in the box personally. You have my word."
I take in her kind expression and believe her. I don't know why, but I do.
"Thank you."
She nods once, steady and sure, the envelope pressed against her chest. The guards watch me leave. The Chicago night rushes in cold and sharp against my burning cheeks.
Dread sinks in and my palms become sweaty as I think over my options. I head back to the motel and keep calling my sister. My stomach rumbles with hunger and now that I have nothing else to focus on, the pains of not eating storm the front of my mind.
I'm probably going to die tonight. My mother raised us to be careful about the people we let into our lives. Her soul mate broke her. He told her she was his world and then walked out when he couldn’t take the stress and strain of raising a family.
But did I listen? No. I saw beautiful blue eyes, fell in lust with a Russian accent and now I’m running for my life.
Fucking men and accents. Why did they have to be so damn irresistible?
My stomach quivers with hunger again. I splay my hand over my midriff but it does nothing to ease the pain. I can’t keep running and frankly, if I’m going to die it will be with combed hair, clean clothes and a warm meal in my stomach.
I might as well go home and shower before the big finale.
The walk takes forty minutes because I have no money for a cab and too much pride left to hitchhike.
I take the long way, sticking to roads where pools of lamplight overlap.
I cut past open restaurants and late-night convenience stores where enough eyes exist that anyone tailing me would get noticed.
But still, instinct has my head on a swivel.
My apartment door looks the same. I fish the spare key out of a flower pot by the mat and my hands are shaking so badly it takes three tries to get the key into the lock. The click of the deadbolt turning is the most ordinary sound in the world and it nearly breaks me.
I step inside, lock the door, and close my eyes.
The silence wraps around me. The familiar hush of my own space, the ghost of the radio station I leave on low, the residual scent of the lavender candle I burned last Tuesday when the world still made sense.
For a few minutes, the silence is the closest thing to safety I've found since my life turned into chaos.
Keeping the lights off, I make my way to the kitchen counter and grab the phone charger I leave plugged in. I connect my phone.
Before heading to the bathroom, I pull the biggest knife out of the block. It's a chef's knife I bought at a thrift store for six dollars and I've never used it for anything more dangerous than dicing onions, but the weight of it in my hand feels like the first smart decision I've made today.
On second thought…
I grab a rolling pin, too.
I set the knife on the bathroom counter next to the sink, close enough to grab if I need.
“If this is the last shower of your life, Vale, at least make it a good one." I say it to the mirror and the woman staring back at me looks like she's been living in someone else's nightmare.
I peel my shirt over my head and kick off my boots.
The paper in the right boot shifts against the insole and I leave it there.
The water takes a few minutes to warm up, the pipes groaning in the wall and when the heat finally hits my shoulders I press both palms flat against the tile and let the grime and terror run down the drain.
The steam fills the small room, fogging the mirror.
I tip my head back under the spray and close my eyes.
The hot water runs over my face and down my neck and for thirty seconds I let myself pretend that everything is fine.
I grab the shampoo and work up a thick lather like this is just any ordinary night after a long day at work.
Thirty seconds. That's all I get to live in my little fantasy.
The crash comes from the front of my apartment, so loud and so violent that the bathroom walls vibrate. Wood splinters. Metal shrieks against the frame.
I kill the water. My hand shoots for the knife on the counter. Suds drip from my hair onto the tile as I listen.
There’s only endless silence and then heavy thuds roll through the apartment.
Footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate. They move through my apartment. One set. Then two. I press my ear against the bathroom door. No, there’s definitely five sets of boots.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” I couldn’t at least have a minute to rinse the shampoo out? One of my guardian angels must really have it out for me.
My fingers close around the handle of the chef's knife and I grip it so tight my knuckles ache.
Maddening tears burn at the back of my eyes. “This is not how I saw myself dying.”
I at least thought I would be wearing underwear.