The Dispensable Wife

by AB Plum

  The better to see your bare feet, m’dear.

  “The package is light, but quite cumbersome, Mrs. Romanov.” He pops the trunk with his remote. “Would you like me to take it inside?”

  No, toss it in the swimming pool. I dig my fingernails into my palms and nod.

  Removing the gigantic silver-wrapped box requires plenty of engineering ingenuity and lots of arm muscles. Unbalanced by the width—too broad for Enrique to wrap his arms around, he stumbles away from the car.

  My jaw drops and I stare, pushing down memories of other packages from Michael. “What—?”

  This package could hold a piano. Or a baby elephant.

  “Set it on the foyer floor, please, Enrique.”

  “Five steps, right?”

  “That’s right. But be careful.” What the hell is Michael up to? As an afterthought, I ask, “Can I help?”

  “Thanks, but I’d probably trip over your feet.”

  I roll my eyes. So he did notice I’m barefoot. “No, I’d probably trip over my feet.”

  With his face, mashed against the box, cutting off his ability to see his feet, he puts one shoe on the bottom step, pauses for balance, then lifts his second foot. “So far, so good.”

  “How in the world did you get this out of Nordstrom’s?”

  “It. Was. Empty.” Panting punctuates each word.

  Empty? What am I missing? “Does talking distract you?”

  “No. Talking helps. Keeps me from thinking . . . about tipping backward.”

  “What if I stand behind you?” No other options come to me.

  “How many more . . .?”

  “Two.” Must feel like two hundred steps with the sun pounding his back.

  “Two. You’re sure?” He rests on the third step from the bottom.

  “You said the package is light. Why don’t I take one end and you take the other?”

  “I’m more than halfway. No problem with two more steps.”

  Okay, macho man. Some of my sympathy for his aching arms and stretched back muscles and tired legs wavers.

  He reaches the top step without pitching forward or backward. He refuses even to stop to catch his breath but staggers on into the foyer. The twenty-foot ceiling puts the box in perspective. Size is relative.

  Shaking my head at my shallow conclusion, I say, “Set it down right where you are.”

  “If you’re sure . . .”

  “Positive.”

  He lowers the box and steps back, crunching the toes on my left foot.

  “Owww.” Pain stabs my little toe.

  He jumps away. Eyes popping, lips white, he grabs my upper arm. “Oh, my God. Mrs. Romanov, are you all right?”

  Tears leak down my cheeks before I manage to nod. Hyper-aware of his hand—warm, comforting, male—I blink and nod until the tears dry up.

  “Mrs. Romanov?” Alarm raises his voice a notch. The tone carries a note of anxiety. “Is anything broken?”

  Everything is broken. Everything. I shake my head and bite my tongue. Shut. Up.

  “I think you should sit down.” The pressure of his hand increases.

  A chill skitters up my legs. How long since I’ve enjoyed a sexy man’s touch?

  Tensing, aware that question’s quicksand, I break eye contact with his tortured gaze. “I’m okay. I feel stupid, but nothing’s broken except my pride.”

  “I am so sorry.” Sincerity hums far back in his throat. “I should have—”

  “I should have worn shoes. I should have stepped to one side. I should have paid attention. No one but you and I will ever know, right?” Lips pressed together, I step away from him, aware he doesn’t agree to the out I’ve just given him.

  His hand falls to his side, but he remains in the same place, his eyes dark and over-wide.

  Thank God Elise left early to pick up the girls. Enrique should leave too. Now.

  “How about a cool drink before you return to work?”

  He flinches—as if I’ve offered him a cup of hemlock. “I think I should stay . . . until we’re sure you can walk without problem.”

  “I can walk on hot coals in hell.” My smile feels constipated, so when a don’t-want-to-know-about-it expression flits across his handsome face, I say, “You should go. Michael’s probably waiting with dozens of tasks. Work never ends for you, does it?”

  “Only because Mr. Romanov, himself, rarely takes a break.” He turns his body toward the front door without moving his feet. “But tonight . . . he wanted me to give you a message.”

  Column after column of goosebumps marches up my arms and across my chest. I hug my waist and massage my prickling skin. “I’m so glad you remembered.”

  Enrique straightens as if at a military inspection and recites in a flat, calm tone, “Mr. Romanov said you should open the package immediately and to expect him home early tonight.”

  *****

  Walking Enrique to the veranda without a limp is not as hard as walking on eggshells whenever Michael’s around. Returning to the foyer alone? Each step requires total willpower. Why is Michael coming home early? What does it have to do with the box—so artfully wrapped? By a Nordstrom sales associate? If not, who? Why?

  Whatever the package contains, I long to take it—unopened—down to the barn and ask a stable hand to burn it in the incinerator. Toss it in and forget it.

  Uh-huh. I laugh soundlessly. Contrary to what I told Enrique, I’m not sure about walking to the barn. Not with a little toe now the size of an over-stuffed sausage. I shudder. Five toes the size of humpback whales won’t stop Michael tonight.

  Did Enrique guess the real message beneath the announcement of coming home early?

  Be ready, AnnaSophia.

  God, I’d like to be ready with a knife in bed.

  The hatred I never escape creeps out of the pit of my stomach and coils around my lungs. Ridiculously, tears stream down my face. He’s the father of my children. How can I hate him with so much righteousness?

  Daddy. The children. Edward. My roses. The power games. The cruelty.

  The reasons hit me with a force I’ve never encountered. A sharp, bitter taste of something contaminated—something poisonous—floods my throat. I feel as if a negative force could overwhelm me, knock me off balance if I don’t stop thinking about how he has all the power. I scrub my eyes, then bend over the box. Pain shoots into my little toe. The sting is exquisite and distracting. I welcome the throbbing ache.

  C’mon, coward. Get this over. The perfect silver bow comes off with a single jerk. Next, I rip away the paper and toss it aside.

  My stomach rolls. Some small part of my brain recognizes the smell seeping from under the box’s lid. Something obscene. Logic rejects the thought. I cough, gag, swallow vomit, and kick the box toward the front door blocking clean, fresh, rose-scented air.

  I throw open the door and inhale without swallowing. I exhale through my nose and inhale again. The smell—dog shit, I’m one-hundred percent certain—drifts onto the veranda, polluting the pristine fragrance of the five hundred roses I long ago planted, fouling the picture-perfect foothills reaching toward a cloudless, neon-blue sky.

  . . . home early tonight, Anna Sophia. . . . early tonight. I’m coming . . . , Anna Sophia.

  “Think, dammit.” I stick my fingers in my ears. The carping voice fades. “You don’t have a backbone, but you’ve still got a brain.”

  Instinct urges me to pick up the box, carry it upstairs and dump it in Michael’s closet. If I remove the lid, the stench will permeate every custom-made suit and shirt as well as the hand-made shoes, socks, and underwear.

  In which case, he’ll probably kill me.

  Or harass me until I leave.

  Or send the children on a desert-island vacation.

  Or pay someone to leave Daddy’s door open . . .

  Chapter 13

  HE

  After Tracy leaves my office, a dozen details require my immediate attention.

  Not the least of which is my daily
afternoon phone call to AnnaSophia. The bitch puts Alexandra up to answering.

  “Hi, Papá. How is your day going?”

  Despite AnnaSophia’s small act of defiance, I smile at the modulated cadence in my thirteen-year-old daughter’s voice. “Far better than I expected, Sweetheart. How was school?”

  The wrong question given my tight schedule, but I listen, making appropriately encouraging fatherly comments—so different from my father’s inquisitions. Aimed at making me appear stupid in front of my perfect older brother, those questions still haunt me—despite my reputation and power.

  Alexandra relates a few more anecdotes, then asks, “Do you want to speak to Mamá now?”

  “Your sister, please.” Let the bitch sweat.

  Anastasya, more restrained and quiet than I like in my children, confides she had the highest grade in her advanced math class. Her English teacher read her short story to the entire class, saying it was highly imaginative and entertaining.

  “You won’t like it, Papá.” Said in a flat, matter-of-fact voice carrying no disappointment.

  “Why do you say that, Sweetheart?”

  “Because Mamá likes it. You and she never like the same things.”

  Touché. “Perhaps your story will be an exception.”

  “Okay. But if you don’t like it, you won’t hurt my feelings.”

  “You know I would never hurt your feelings, Anastasya.” Unlike my father who never found anything positive to say about my academic awards, I always praise my children’s accomplishments. “As soon as I get home tonight, I’ll read your story, all right? Now let me speak to your brother, please.”

  The phone gets passed from one child to the next—or so I assume until the bitch says, “Magnus is still napping.”

  No frost, no warmth, no heat in her detached tone. The perfect opportunity to puncture her in-control façade. “Well, since I’m coming home early tonight, he and I’ll chat then.”

  “We’re all holding our breath. I’m even making a special dessert.”

  “Really?” The skeptic in me goes on alert at the sudden malice vibrating in her tone. So, she has opened my gift, but asking about it gives her the advantage. “Do you still like to cook?”

  “Not often, but I found this recipe a year or so ago. I kept it for a special occasion. I think tonight is perfect.”

  The smirk in her voice comes through the phone like a jolt of lightning. My jaw cracks. Time enough later tonight to make her pay. “I await your culinary effort, Darling.”

  Her tinny laugh disrupts the antennae I have fine-tuned over the past fifteen years to gauge her moods. I let the silence drag for ten, fifteen seconds and stare at the San Francisco skyline shimmering in the late afternoon sunshine. My neck muscles relax.

  Her silence is so profound I’d swear she’s holding her breath. Why isn’t she foaming-at-the-mouth mad at my gift? Why is she baiting me? Has the worm developed a backbone?

  That image, ridiculous and incredible, amuses me so much I laugh. God, she is so out of her league. Even Tracy’s a more interesting opponent. I laugh louder.

  Continued silence on the other end.

  Irked by her clumsy attempt to push my buttons, I whisper in a fake, jovial, just-between-us tone, “Have you thought about what you’d like for your birthday, Darling?”

  “I have.”

  Her terseness snaps the last of my congeniality. “Divorce is not an option.”

  “The girls are waiting. We’re going for a ride.”

  The dial tone buzzes a full second before I realize I’ve been dismissed.

  Five minutes after AnnaSophia disconnects our call, I whip into Regan’s inner sanctum without slowing. “Call Sam. Tell him I’m running twenty minutes late.”

  “Mr. Ridgeway and Mr. Jefferson called back.” Regan pushes away from her desk. Waving a pink slip of paper over her head, she catches up with me at the elevator. “They gave me their private numbers.”

  “About time.” I grab the paper, step into the elevator, and spit out one more instruction before the door snicks shut. “Tell Sam I’ll be twenty-seven minutes late.”

  Sam Barrett, my CIO and Lab Director, has a bit of an Einstein ego. He won’t like that I’m one second late for this meeting. Too bad, Sam. Meeting him in the lab has priority, but first things first.

  Outside the building, I slip on sunglasses and head for the par course behind the Unleashed campus. This late in the afternoon most joggers and fitness buffs are in conferences or on phone calls or at their desks. I pull out a disposable cell and call Troy Ridgeway—someone I’ve met half a dozen times at biotech gatherings. He’s a guppy in the ocean I dominate. He’d love to swim with me in the deep water. Will never happen. But let him dream.

  “Thank God you called, Michael.”

  I zig around the Achilles stretch station, walking on lush grass to reach the log hop and chin-up bar. Long ago, I completed the entire course every day because I wanted to be fit for AnnaSophia. “I’m listening, Troy.”

  “Don’t hire Tracy Jones. Don’t even consider it. If she can—and she’ll find a way—she’ll sink her claws in your balls and rip ’em to shreds.”

  Troy rants five more minutes. I thank him and call John Jefferson—another wannabe mover and shaker. His remarks echo Ridgeway’s so closely, I’m suspicious the two colluded.

  But then Jefferson reclaims my attention.

  “Tracy Jones is poison. Don’t ask me how she took X-rated pictures when we were bare-assed in a place so remote even Google missed it. The fact is—she did. She gave me six shots as proof. Someone should take the bitch out.”

  He wants to go on, but he’s cutting into the time I need to make another call. I thank him for saving me from a big mistake and disconnect. My stride is strong and steady. I reach the end of the jogging trail and retrace my steps.

  What a great reputation to have enough money to network with men willing to save me from undergoing their humiliation.

  “Good to hear from you.” The speaker and I grew up together as foster brothers. He retains a trace of Russian accent. I speak to him in our first language because it bonds us at a deeper level than money.

  He listens without interruption, then says, “I have the perfect car. Phony plates. No registration, no VIN, no identifying characteristics. The police regularly check out that park entrance at five, then again at eight. Does that give you sufficient time?”

  “More than sufficient.” How he knows this police-factoid, I don’t ask and he doesn’t tell.

  Shards of sunshine bounce off the symmetry and elegance of the corporate buildings I designed and nurtured. The audacity of what I am about to do hits me in the solar plexus. Stuns me. Reconfirms that executing this plan will seal my destiny.

  Dimitri’s silence—respectful and patient—brings back a flash of AnnaSophia’s arrogant and childish silence. I exhale silently.

  Tracy first, then AnnaSophia.

  “There is one more part to my plan.”

  “As always, I want to help.”

  His reassurance is unnecessary, but his words cool the hot coals cauterizing my gut. “I prefer you carry out this job, but if you have someone else you trust, someone with outstanding computer skills, then I rely on your judgment.”

  “I have someone I trust with my life, but I will do whatever you want.” He laughs as if gravel is stuck in his throat. “Hacking is one of my favorite sports. I am very good.”

  “Good enough to mess up a company’s security system?”

  “Better.”

  Aware any of my employees have a perfect view of me from inside Unleashed, I step into the shade of several crimson-leafed trees. Call me paranoid, but I prefer no one but me and Dimitri know about this phone call.

  I give him Tracy’s name, phone number, and address, adding, “Her neighborhood is residential. Very quiet. It’s a house. I’m not sure about security.”

  His gravel laugh erupts, then just as quickly subsides. “Not a problem.”
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  “Her computer may be though. She considers herself a techie.”

  “Unless she’s from Russia or China or India, she’s not a techie.” Nothing condescending or patronizing in his tone, just total confidence in his own skills.

  “What if she leaves for her appointment with me and takes her laptop?”

  “If she got mugged and lost her computer, would she cancel her appointment?”

  My chuckle relays my admiration. “You, my friend, would make a good comedian. Nothing short of a bullet in the head would make her cancel our appointment.”

  “Thank you for the compliment. Most people believe us Russians lack humor-genes.”

  There is no time for more stroking of his ego. In the fifty years since we first met, he has never let me down. His uncanny attunement with my temperament and expectations sometimes strikes me as what I missed with my own brother.

  “Would you like now to give me the information for the company job?”

  He listens, then launches into a dazzling recap of my expectations.

  He will leave immediately for Tracy’s house. Once he determines she’s inside, he’ll remain there until she leaves—perhaps as early as 5:15. If she leaves with her laptop, he’ll snatch it and take off. If she leaves without her laptop, he’ll enter her house, crash her computer and fry the hard drive for good measure. No matter which choice she makes, he will then search her house for any other electronic devices and repeat the crash-and-fry steps.

  “In and out in less than twenty minutes,” he states. “I will penetrate your company’s security firewall at exactly thirty-two minutes past five.”

  “Spasiba.” Thank you—even in Russian—sounds too little. So, I throw him a bone. “We will meet soon.”

  Chapter 14

  SHE

  Nothing my chattering daughters say on our walk to the stables penetrates my fugue. Despite their laughter and high spirits, I am numb. The sun beats down on our heads, but I feel cold as death.

  Dead is what I’ll be if I go through with concocting my dessert.