The Perfect Ruin

by Shanora Williams

  My stomach began to cramp, ten times worse than menstrual cramps. I stood up, and that was when I heard something pitter-patter on the floor. When I looked down, I saw blood.

  “No,” I whispered. Not on Lola’s premium marble floors—the floors she’d spent sixteen thousand dollars on. I picked up the roll of toilet paper and pulled off a big wad, wiping up the blood, but all it did was smear, and more blood trickled down until eventually it became a small puddle around my feet.

  I knew exactly what was happening. I’d been pushing myself too hard lately, trying to make sure the Maxwell home was stable so that I wouldn’t get fired. But it was too much for my body, apparently. My baby.

  “Georgia!” I heard someone call. It was Lola. “Georgia! Where are you?”

  I waddled to the door with tears in my eyes. She’d help me. I didn’t know what to do. “Lola,” I whisper-hissed as I cracked open the door.

  She spotted me and I waved for her to come. She frowned, rushing my way. “What in the hell are you doing in there? I need you downstairs,” Lola said. “Dinner is supposed to be starting soon.”

  I opened the door and she looked down at the floor and gasped. “Oh my God! What happened to you?”

  “I think something is wrong with the baby, Lola. I need to go to the hospital.”

  “What?” she snapped. She charged in and stared down at the floor. “How could you bleed all over the floor, Georgia! You do realize guests have to come up here too, right?”

  “Lola, didn’t you hear me?” I pleaded. “I’m in a lot of pain. I need to go to the hospital right now!”

  “Georgia, I told you I would need you tonight! Why would you let this happen tonight of all nights? I have really important people downstairs who are about to donate lots of money to my cause. I can’t take you to the fucking hospital right now! I have to be here!”

  “I can drive myself,” I groaned. “It’s no problem. I’ll go myself.”

  “No—you can’t go back downstairs right now. The party is shifting inside. People will notice you and I can’t have this night ruined.” Could she hear herself? I mean, really, could she? I was literally losing my baby and all she cared about was her fucking party.

  “I’ll tell Corey to call Clyde. He’s a good doctor. He can tend to you in your room.”

  “But, Lola, he’ll take a while to get here and I—”

  “GEORGIA!” Lola screamed in my face. She’d turned red, veins appearing on her neck. “Get the fuck out of here! Go to your room! You’ll be fine! I’m fine, aren’t I?” She tugged on my arm, pulling me out of the bathroom and shoving me toward my wing of the house. “Go!” she screeched. “While I find someone to clean up this shit.”

  “Oh my God, why are you acting like you don’t care?” I shouted, turning back to face her.

  “Because I don’t care, Georgia! I really don’t give a shit about you or a baby you shouldn’t even be having! You always need some kind of attention, but I can’t give it to you tonight!”

  “But I wanted this baby!” I cried.

  “And I wanted mine, but you don’t see me wallowing about it, do you?”

  “That’s because you killed two people!”

  A hand struck my face and I released a sharp gasp. She’d slapped me. The slap was loud and it stung. I cupped the left side of my face and stared at her, horrified.

  “You wouldn’t make a good mother anyway, Georgia. Look at you. You’re pathetic. Why do you think I hired you? Someone who has no independence? You work here under contract and I’m damn sure not letting you go. Not after everything you know about me. I let you slide when you married Dion. I figured a lonely girl like you needed a man to get through life, but don’t get carried away with your tongue. Now go to your room and wait for Clyde to get here.”

  This was comical, wasn’t it? Well, in a dark way. I thought Lola’s miscarriage would make her take this matter more seriously. But all she cared about was her party and the money. My baby meant nothing to her. Hell, I meant nothing to her, and I realized it that night.

  Corey’s friend Clyde did show up and checked me over. He wrapped me in a few blankets and, per Lola’s instructions, took me through the kitchen when the guests were outside again, to his car and then to the hospital, but by then it was too late.

  The baby was gone. I’d bled everywhere, tried to stop the blood with a pad. The pad was soaked by the time Clyde showed up.

  He had no words.

  Neither did I.

  I stayed the night at the hospital, sobbing. I was alone, with no one to check in on me or talk to me. I called Dion so I could tell him what had happened, but he didn’t answer. Didn’t even respond to my text messages. Clyde didn’t know me, so of course he didn’t stick around. I thought Lola would come to see me the next morning, but she didn’t. And you know why? Because she didn’t give a fuck about me. She’d said it.

  Instead, I checked out when it was time and caught a bus back to Biscayne Bay. I was still hurting, my uterus raw and achy. As I spotted that mansion on the hill with the terra-cotta roof perched beneath the sun, with the big sapphire ocean behind it, something inside me just . . . snapped.

  It takes a hell of a lot for a loyal woman to snap, you know? I was patient and kind and forgiving before, but I couldn’t forgive this. I’d lost something important to me—the only thing that was keeping me going, pushing me through the long hours at the mansion. Getting me through the constant yelling and scolding and coldness. Through my divorce. That one thing that was keeping me going was gone and I was left with nothing at all.

  Long gone were the days when I cared about Lola’s well-being. Long gone were those memories I’d had of her, when I’d considered her a long-lost sister. I thought I’d take Lola’s secret to the grave, but she didn’t deserve that from me. She didn’t deserve anything from me.

  Though I could have walked away in that very moment and never looked back, that wouldn’t have worked in my favor. I couldn’t just leave, not when I knew I had just as much leverage over her as she had over me.

  I walked into the mansion, and Lola was sitting by the pool in an orange bathing suit. She just sat there beneath the sun like nothing had ever happened—like she hadn’t just told me the night before that she didn’t care about me or my baby, who was now gone.

  She heard me walk out and sat up on the chair. “Oh, Georgia! I’m so glad you’re back home safe, girl!”

  “Yeah,” I murmured. “Me too.”

  She stood and came in my direction. “Listen, I’m sorry about last night. I was stressed and had too many drinks and I let my words and actions get the better of me.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. That was more than her actions getting the better of her.

  “I know miscarrying is hard. Trust me, it’s a horrible pain. Losing something you love instantly and unconditionally.” She sighed. “But . . . take this with a grain of salt. Do what I did and let it empower you.”

  Empower me? Wow. She called herself empowered? She was anything but. She was a straight-up piece of shit.

  “So, this is what I want you to do. I want you to go upstairs and take a long, hot bath, and when you’re done, come back down and I’ll have a nice meal ready for you.” She turned me around, and I trudged ahead, but before I could disappear, I looked over my shoulder at her. “Go on,” she murmured. “I have to go meet Faith in a bit, but I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

  I did take the bath, and I did sit there for a long time. A very, very long time. The water was cold and cloudy by the time I got out. I didn’t sit there and wallow, though. No, if anything, Lola was right about not doing that. I couldn’t accomplish anything by wallowing about a baby I’d lost, no matter how much I’d loved the idea of becoming a mother. But what I could do was change the course of my future so that I wouldn’t suffer again.

  So you want to know what I did? When Lola left to meet Faith, I went out to the shed by the pool. I grabbed one of Dr. Maxwell’s golf clubs and took it
back to the house, then I stomped up the marble staircase and walked right into Lola’s thinking room.

  There was her chandelier—the most prized possession in the house. She’d been in awe of that stupid chandelier since she’d bought it. She’d told me a million times that it was an embodiment of her. It was a representation of her hard work, a treasure. She’d bought it shortly after opening her charity, with her first check from a donor. She was proud of this chandelier that was worth twenty thousand dollars.

  And you know what I did?

  I lifted the golf club above my head and slammed the end of the club right into the crystals of the chandelier. I swung at it over and over again, like a kid bashing a piñata, and I have to say, it was fun. Hella fun.

  The chandelier fell eventually, crashing down on the waxed floor. I felt just like a lucky kid, then—as if I’d broken the piñata open and revealed all the delicious candy inside.

  I was sick of Lola telling me what to do—sick of her for ruining my life. If she’d let me go to the hospital as soon as possible, I wouldn’t have lost the baby to begin with. Clyde had even said I should have gone to the hospital as soon as I felt pain, but I was so consumed with helping Lola for the party and doing my damn job that I decided against it.

  I suppose I should blame myself for that, but Lola wouldn’t have let me leave anyway.

  She came back home just in time for dinner, as she said she would, and I told her I’d heard something crash in her thinking room and discovered that the chandelier somehow had fallen and crashed.

  She was mortified. Hysterical. She started blaming the staff—the maid who had been on duty earlier that day. She fired that maid and for that I truly was sorry. Coco was a good maid . . . but she’d find another job, I was sure.

  I told her I’d clean up the mess, get rid of it, and I swear I saw tears in her eyes as she stared down at her broken crystal treasure. She was obsessed with that chandelier, honestly. She really saw it as a piece of her ice-cold heart.

  “I can’t even look at this,” Lola muttered. “Clean it up immediately, then contact Alonzo to order a new one. Custom-made, just like the first. It won’t be the same, but at least I’ll have another.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, and she stormed off. Lola literally didn’t enter that room again until her new chandelier had arrived and she watched the men install it, repeatedly telling them to be careful with it.

  It took three months for the new chandelier to come in, but that was my doing. Alonzo would have replaced her precious chandelier right away, rushed the order, but I refused to contact him until a month after her demand for a new one. I rather enjoyed seeing the broken chandelier on the floor. I took my time cleaning it too. I was in no rush to replace it. In fact, I spent the entire next week getting rid of the crystal pieces. I’d walk by the room with a cup of tea and smile at my destruction. Lola’s hard work, shattered. All thanks to me.

  That chandelier was just the start. I realized I had sacrificed so much for Lola Maxwell and what did I get in return? A divorce. A lost baby. A broken soul.

  She’d done that. Lola had broken me.

  Now it was my turn to break her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “I want you to rewrite my contract.” Three days after losing my baby, this was my demand.

  As I’d mentioned before, I had a contract with Lola as household manager that I had printed out and read thoroughly the same night I broke the chandelier.

  Per the contract, I was to perform ten years of service for her in her mansion. I could receive up to three vacations a year and take them whenever I wanted, so long as they didn’t coincide with any important events or dinners the employer of the home (Lola) had planned, and I also had health care benefits, which came in handy for my tragic and brief stay at the hospital.

  I was also under confidentiality, and if I broke it, my employer could terminate me, but we were past that point now. She wasn’t going to fire me, so that promise was out the window.

  What wasn’t included, however, was some kind of bonus or premium after my tenth year, and that didn’t sit well with me for some reason. You’d think after working for someone for ten years you’d get something bigger out of it in the end, right, Ivy? Maybe some sort of early retirement fund as a thank-you for dedicating ten years of your life to two of some of the richest people in Florida, or a brand-new car? Something.

  Lola looked up from cutting her grapefruit to focus on me. She was seated on the deck beneath the pool umbrella, a fresh breakfast laid out for her, and a magazine open next to her dish. “Excuse me?”

  “My contract,” I repeated. “You’re going to rewrite it.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll tell the journalist who was sniffing around during the time of the accident you caused that you are the reason those people are dead. The journalist had a theory about it being someone famous. Perhaps I’ll tell him what I know.”

  Lola’s face turned stoic. She put down her knife, the silver tip glittering as it caught a ray of sunlight, and looked me in the eye. “That accident was almost two years ago. No one would believe you.”

  “Detective Jack Shaw. He’s the one you paid off, right? What if I report him to whoever his boss is? Tell him he wrote you out of the files so he could have five hundred thousand of your dollars? Then he’ll have no choice but to confess and hope it will save him his job. You forget, there is a paper trail.”

  She narrowed her hazel eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I should be promised something at the end of my contract, especially after everything I’ve lost because of you.”

  She scoffed. “Georgia, you’re the one who applied for this job—you’re the one who wanted to work here. I didn’t force you.”

  “Yes, I did, but I didn’t realize what I was signing up for, or that you would be so horrible to me.”

  Lola ran her tongue over her teeth before saying, “So, you’re going to blackmail me into rewriting your contract? And what exactly do you want to change about it?”

  “Everything can remain the same. I’ll finish my ten years with you and then I’ll leave, but I want to be promised ten million dollars by the end of the contract. A million for every year I had to deal with your shit.”

  Lola lifted her chin. Her eyes shimmered. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  “Wow. Okay, Georgia.” Lola huffed. “You want me to rewrite the contract, I will. But you will have to sign a nondisclosure agreement immediately, in which you will agree not to use what happened over me anymore. You won’t get to hang what you know over my head again, and if you try to blackmail me again, you won’t get the ten million dollars you’re asking for.”

  “Fine,” I murmured. “But I won’t sign it until I see you have the contract written up to guarantee the money.”

  “Very well.” She rolled her eyes. “Now, Corey said he has some news to tell me tonight. Have a steak made for him and something special and vegan for me.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t miss the icy look in her eyes. It was clear she hated me now, but I didn’t care. Lola’s reputation was precious to her, and ten million dollars would leave a small dent in her finances, but nothing too major, considering she had the charity and her stores to keep her afloat.

  It was a small price to pay to keep her perfect reputation, and for what she’d put me through.

  * * *

  I was surprised to see Lola had the contracts ready the following day.

  She called me into her office and was seated on one of the chairs, the contracts on the coffee table, pens carefully placed on top of them.

  I carefully read the part about the ten million first, but there was one clause I didn’t quite like. “What the hell is this?” I demanded. “I have to work for you for two terms to get the ten million?” I reread that part of the contract incredulously.

  Lola had a smug l
ook on her face when I looked up. “It’s that or nothing.”

  “I’ll contact the cops, Lola! I’ll tell them everything I heard and what you did!”

  “No, Georgia, you won’t,” Lola snapped, rising from her chair. “And you know why?” she asked. “Because telling the cops or a journalist is too easy, and you’d get nothing out of it. You’d lose money, and you won’t find another job like this one because I damn sure won’t write you a recommendation letter and no one will want to hire a snitch. You want the ten million, you’ll have to work for it, G.”

  Wow. I couldn’t believe this.

  “What?” She almost laughed. She was cruel that way. “You thought I was just going to hand that much money over to you because you felt you could wave something from my past over my head? You aren’t the one at the top, Georgia. You aren’t in charge! Didn’t you realize that without me you would have nothing? All those stories about how you were desperate for this job, how no one ever appreciated you. Well, I gave you a purpose, and you fucked it up, just the same as you fucked up your marriage. You went into that knowing it wouldn’t work out!”

  That bitch! I wanted to slap her, pull her hair, even strangle her. But I held it together because she was right about one thing: The ten million was important to me. I needed it so I could start fresh somewhere else, forget about Lola and live my damn life for once.

  I’d never get another job as good as this one if I left, and I would have needed Lola’s recommendation if I looked for a job with anyone else, especially if I wanted any credibility. I was getting older, you see, and these days rich people were looking for younger people with fresh minds and healthy bodies to keep up with their homes and their lives.

  “Just do yourself a favor and sign the NDA,” Lola grumbled. “Once that’s done, we’ll both sign your new contract, you’ll finish your first term, and then your second will begin in a few years. It’s that simple.”

  I was vibrating with rage. I flipped through the contract several times, assaulted with emotions I couldn’t quite explain. But then I stopped at a clause that I’d misread at first, and I read it three times to be sure I understood it.