He kisses my cheek. “We only need to hide for a little longer. Don’t worry about Gloria. She won’t risk putting brakes on the gravy train.
He stands up.
"I have to catch up on some things. I think you should move your things into my room."
"Yeah," I say, my throat a little dry.
As I carry my stuff from one room to the next, I dwell on what he said. Not that crazy story about his wife's twin—that's in the past. No, now I can't stop thinking about her and blackmail, and about my father's reaction to all this.
The cabin was like another world. Now that I'm back in reality, I have to face the consequences of my actions. I'm not a fool. I know that Aiden and my father are tied together at the hip in business, but they don't see eye to eye. I've heard enough rants about electric cars to know that. Now I can't stop thinking about what will happen after he finds out about this.
You know what?
He can go to hell. It's my life. I'm an adult. I can make my own choices. If I let him overrule me on this most important of things, what then? Be his servant for the rest of my life? Sometimes I think he'll live forever, and I'll end up some crazy cat lady taking orders from his mummified husk in a power chair.
Enough is enough. I have to live my life.
I repeat that, like a mantra.
Enough is enough.
Aiden
I couldn't really spare all that time.
Yet, catching up feels like nothing. I am more focused, more energized, more empowered than I have ever felt. Like a shell of myself, going through the motions, I've coasted through my absurdly fortunate life, awash in accolades and news magazine profiles and internet fan clubs, feeling none of it.
I could sing. In my office, I feel like a god again, striding over the clear glass as I gaze down on the world below. All because of Delilah, my Delilah, my heart, my soul, my special angel…and my little devil. If she thinks I took her for a ride before, wait until I'm ready to celebrate my great triumph.
I just need to find a babysitter.
Maria enters, summoned moments ago.
"I need someone to watch my children following the afterparty for the demonstration."
“Aiden,” she says.
I look up from the riot of files on my desk.
“Why don’t I keep them with me? I could bring them home tonight.”
I shake my head. “That’s unnecessary. You have other work. You don’t need them underfoot.”
Maria moves closer to my desk and sits on the corner. I glance at her, confused. She’s acting oddly.
“Aiden,” she repeats my name.
“Is something wrong?”
“Are you nervous about the demonstration?”
I shrug. “I have complete faith in the design. I worry over the details.”
She edges closer and sits back against the desk. Her hair is down and her jacket is open. She reaches up and brushes her hair back, and it pulls at her blouse, baring a peek at her cleavage.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
She slides her thighs apart, hitching up her skirt in the process. I look away, but I’m certain she’s not wearing underwear.
“Maria,” I say, sharply. “Stop this.”
“You don’t need to drive the demo car yourself. Let one of the engineers do it. You’re so tired, you’ve been up for almost three days.”
“You have work to do. Go.”
Her face twists, anger flaring in her eyes. She hops off the desk and dives to her knees, between my legs.
Without thinking, I seize her by the waist and push her aside. She rolls back onto the floor with a grunt and lays there, fuming, teeth bared.
“What’s wrong with you?” I demand.
“I’m here for you. I’ve always been here for you. I’ve given you my life.”
One hand on the desk, she drags herself to my feet.
“What do I get for it? ‘Maria do this, Maria do that, Maria I’ve wrapped up my little sugar baby in a dress that costs more than you car, bring her to me so I can ditch the gala you organized to go fuck her. Oh, and watch my kids while I’m gone.’”
I stare at her, stunned. “What?”
“It doesn’t matter now, Aiden. I forgive you.”
“You forgive me?” I blurt. “Maria, this…this is… I don’t even know what this is.”
“This is me baring my soul.”
“Stand up.”
She straightens.
“Fix your clothes.”
Maria tugs her skirt back into position and adjusts her top and hair.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. This isn’t happening.”
“Aiden, listen…”
“I’ve heard enough. We have a professional relationship, Maria, and that is all. Return to your duties.”
“You really need to listen to me.”
“You have two options,” I say through gritted teeth. “Stop now, and you can go back to work. Keep going, and I’ll have you downstairs in HR for an exit interview before you’re escorted out of the building. Am I clear?”
For a single heavy moment, she stands, working her fingers at her sides.
Then she turns and leaves.
I sag back against my desk, my head spinning. What the hell? Where did that come from? Maria has worked for me for years and never once said a word like this. I’m too stunned to think.
There’s too much to do to deal with this now. I should let her go, right now. She’s under an NDA and a noncompete, so there’s no worries there. I’m stunned and a little hurt. I feel betrayed.
I'll have to head out to the demonstration site soon. We've set up a short, closed circuit with a few obstacles to show off the car's radar and pedestrian safety systems. Closed tests on our track have gone smoothly for six months. When we unveil this, it will be the biggest moment of my career.
It all feels like a distraction from the real purpose of my being. Lilah.
The phone rings, and I nearly ignore it, deep in my planning. I don’t have time to answer them all now, so I let this one pass. Until the rings continue.
"Yes?"
"Aiden," Roland says, affably.
"Roland." I sigh. "A moment, let me put you on speaker. Is there a problem? I'm hip deep in preparations for my little surprise."
"Hrmph. Hip deep. Quite an expression."
The hackles rise on the back of my neck. He's getting at something. "What can I help you with?"
"I suppose I should be plain. I know my plain-spokenness grates against your poet's soul, but you'll have to forgive me. I know you're fucking my daughter."
At that precise moment, Lilah walks into the room and freezes.
I look up at her. Roland doesn’t know, he can’t see. He lays it all out, quickly and succinctly, the way he might lay out a “deal” to a defeated opponent who's about to cede his company over to him.
"It stops, now. If not I rally the shareholders. Your little toy debuts on Monday. By the closing bell today news that the head of the company has been caught in an affair with a girl half his age will tank the stock prices and the other shareholders will dump their holdings or come running to me. Then you go back to being my employee. You stuck your dick in my daughter, but you're the one who's fucked…unless you break it off. I give you this one chance to send her running along home."
Nearly a decade of rage condenses into a single world, spat with the intensity of a vile curse. "Never," I snarl.
"Stop!" Lilah cries.
Lilah
All the air was just sucked out of my lungs. Aiden stands there facing his desk. I rush across, ignoring the transparent floor and the crazy drop beneath my feet.
"Delilah dear, is that you?" my father asks, his voice almost joyful. "No surprise he keeps you nearby. You little slut."
Aiden lets out a sound, half roar and half wail, and almost smashes the speaker with his fist before I stop him.
"All right, you win," I shout. "I heard what you want, and you've got it.
I'm coming back today."
Aiden turns to me. "No, you can't."
"I have to," I almost plead.
"I've already sent a car for you. Your flight is in two hours," Roland says. "If you're not on it, I'm going to own Byrne Industries by the end of the day. There will be no demonstration, no urban renewal project, no more flights of fancy and nonsense. I'll put everything to rights and put this company on a course to do what it's meant to do: create value for the shareholders."
"If I come back, you'll keep quiet?" I say. "If I come home, you'll leave Aiden and his company alone?"
"You're worth more to me," my father says in a voice that says otherwise. "I want you home, now, and we’re done, Aiden. I'm dumping my stock as soon as she's on the plane. When I release it all your prices will plummet anyway."
"What do you want?" Aiden demands.
"My daughter returns, as I asked. Now you're trying to negotiate to save your silly dreams? I figure you must have had a good turn fucking my daughter, so now it's my turn to fuck you. How do you like it?"
"We can work this out," Aiden pleads. "She stays. I'll sell you my entire stake in the company—"
"I'll accept that," my father chortles, like bubbling fat in a pan. "You can keep her. I'll take your precious company."
"No!" I shriek. "No, Father, I'm leaving now. Leave him alone."
"Lilah!" Aiden blurts, turning to me.
"That's sweet, girl. Very sweet. You'd better have your narrow ass on the plane, or I'm going to ruin your boyfriend. Make your choice."
He hangs up, leaving the line to hiss.
Aiden grabs my shoulders.
"You're not leaving. I have more money than I'll ever need, Lilah. I don't care about the company, I—"
"No," I say, coldly, shaking loose. "I won't let you do this to yourself. I won't, Aiden. I won't suffer you looking at me the rest of my life knowing you had to choose me over your dreams. Your work is too important. This is bigger than us. I'm going."
"You are my dream," he whispers.
The tears come, sharp and hot, clawing down my cheeks. I break and run so he won't see me, and somehow I manage to hold back the sobs until I'm in the elevator.
“I love you, Lilah.”
It feels like ramming a knife through my chest, but I know it's the right thing. I can't let him destroy himself over me.
I love him.
As I realize I never said those three little words where he could hear, I start to scream.
More than a few people stare at me as I charge through the lobby, scrubbing at my wet eyes.
He knew. He has a car waiting for me outside. I throw myself inside, abandoning my love, my life, and everything but the clothes on my back to return to an invisible prison to live as the tool of a bitter old man who never had an ounce of love in his rotten heart.
The phone in the car rings. I pick it up. "I hate you," I tell him.
"I know," he says.
I jam the end call button and curl up in the seat, weeping tears that burn my skin.
Chapter Twelve
Aiden
I grunt.
Maria rattles off a list of items for my approval. Organization for the demonstration tomorrow morning. She might as well be talking to my desk. I grunt now and then, nod, and taste ash in my mouth. The arms of my chair tremble briefly as I choke them, release, choke them again. Maria doesn't seem to notice my demeanor.
"Sir?"
"We've been planning this for six months. Everything is in place already. Deal with it. Out."
"Sir," she says, patiently, "there are last-minute details, and you emphasized how important this is…"
"I said out," I snap, wincing at my own petulance. “I don’t want to be in a room alone with you.”
“I have something very important I need to say…”
I’m on my feet, hammering my hand into my desk so hard I fear one or the other will shatter.
“Get. Out. Get out of my sight. I expect a resignation letter on my desk after this damned demonstration is over. I’ll accept four weeks’ notice. I’ll give you a severance package. Just be gone.”
"Very well," she says.
"I'll be leaving for the day. Inform anyone that needs to know."
I wait for her to leave, then rush to the elevator and storm through the lobby. I need outside air, but there is none in the city. Outside, I fight down the urge to scream. I've been dialing Lilah's number for two days. No answer. I don't know what else to do. Hire a skywriter? Send a singing telegram? Put on a suit of shining armor and go rescue her?
As I descend into the garage, the phone buzzes in my pocket. It's not Lilah. It's her father.
"What do you want?"
"Checking to see if everything is on track for tomorrow, heh," he says, laughing at his own pun. "I am a shareholder, after all. I'm looking forward to it. I'll be joining you, of course."
I shudder.
Lilah? Will Lilah be with him?
Would he be so foolish? After the demonstration, after it works, it won't matter. I'll be golden. I can finish what I started. I can say: this is enough.
"Very good, Roland. I look forward to a successful demonstration."
"You'd better. Too much riding on this. If you botch this I'll have no choice but to step in. I'm sure the other shareholders will see eye to eye with me at last."
"It will work. This isn't a test, it's a demonstration. Do you think I'd broadcast it if I didn't know the outcome?"
"I see you learned something from me after all. I look forward to my visit, boy. Be seeing you."
I jam my thumb hard on the end call button and throw the phone into the passenger's seat. It skips into the footwell and thumps on the floor. I jam the start button so hard I almost put my finger through it. The car switches on, and the smooth electric engine doesn't offer me a growl, so I give it one of my own, a throaty sound of fury in my chest.
When I walk into my apartment, I find it dark and quiet. The boys, my sons, knew something was wrong when I walked in on Friday night and have been all but avoiding me ever since. They're still here; they've cluttered the kitchen. I'll have to throw out this saucepan; Jason fried macaroni and cheese to the bottom.
"Dad?"
I wheel around to find my elder boy walking into the living room on bare feet, his voice small and reedy. "Where did Lilah go?"
"She went home," I say bitterly. "She's not coming back."
"Why?"
"We had a disagreement."
"Did she dump you?"
I lean on the counter and dig my fingers into the granite top. Or try to, anyway. It hurts my fingers more than the stone.
"Yes. She did."
"What did you do?"
My head snaps up, and a roar forms in my throat, but I catch it before it escapes, deflating instead. I sag against the counter and sink to the floor, stretching out my legs before me.
Jason sits down on one side. Tim joins him, flanking me on the other. The three of us sit there and stare at our reflections in the refrigerator.
How did they get so big? How did I get so old? God, there's gray in my beard. I need to shave. I scratch at the stubble, and wince in horror as Jason does the same, imitating me by rubbing at peach fuzz he shouldn't have yet.
Where did my life go?
"Someone told her father I was seeing her. He told us to break it off or he'd destroy the company."
Jason's voice is horrified. "You did it?"
"No, I refused. She left. She said she wouldn't let me kill my dreams over her."
"That sucks," Tim says, sagely. He rests his tiny hand on my arm.
"So what, you just let her go?" Jason demands.
"What was I supposed to do? Tie her up? I tried to make her understand. I—"
"You have to fix this," Jason says, his voice rising in anger. "Why didn't you fix this?"
He surges up and out of the room. I rise to my feet, staring after him. Not two weeks ago he couldn't stand her.
"He
wants you to be happy again," Tim explains. "It was like having you back."
I look down at my youngest and put my hand on his shoulder.
"You're right. You're both right."
Lilah
It's hot. Summer has finally decided to get up and properly kick in, and there's sweat pouring down my skin under my formal blouse. Thank God I skipped wearing stockings. I think if I did, I'd have a heat stroke. As it is, I'm sweating like mad, and it feels like I'm trying to cough something up all the time.
Hot coffee doesn't help, but it's the only way I can tolerate my father. I still have an urge to throw it in his face.
"What a shithole," he mutters, seated in his power chair.
Despite the heat he has a black silk blanket over his legs, and he's in a full suit. His waxen features, thin lips, and oversized aviator shades make him look like a skull. I sit beside him, smelling the hydrogen peroxide he swirls in his mouth instead of mouthwash, and fight down the urge to vomit. His nurse, a voluptuous woman of dubious qualifications, barely older than I am, stands behind him in a cleavage-baring outfit that would earn me a tongue lashing if I tried to wear it in public.
He's already called me slut, whore, and every other invective he could think of. He was definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel when he called me a slattern, of all things. I almost had to look that one up.
I hate him. I hate what he's done to me. I hate what he did to us, to Aiden. He's a sick, tormented, twisted half-corpse that feeds on the misery of everyone around him. I've always known it, but now I really see him.
He's just pathetic.
So am I.
I did his bidding, after all that. Here I sit, and I know I am present at this demonstration for one reason and one reason only: It's not enough for my father to tear my heart out of my chest and emotionally destroy his so-called friend, he has to rub our noses in it. If I didn't voluntarily join him on the train from Manhattan he'd have had me bound wrist and ankle and thrown in the baggage compartment.
I want to scream at him, argue with him, tell him off. You don't own me, old man.
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