Chapter 6 - The Accusation in the Cold
The question was an insult.
It was the classic, arrogant presumption of a powerful man who assumed that the universe rotated around his own awareness, that because he had not been informed, he was the victim of the tragedy.
A dark, bitter spark ignited in the depths of Maya’s brown eyes, burning away the last lingering traces of her initial shock. The grip on her stroller handle did not loosen, but her shoulders squared beneath the olive-green parka.
"Tell you?" Maya repeated, her voice dripping with an icy, controlled fury that silenced the howling wind between them. "Tell you, Adrian? Where was I supposed to send the telegram? To the penthouse where your father’s armed guards stood outside the lobby doors? To the private airstrip in Gary where they told me they’d put three bullets through my skull if I ever stepped within a mile of your car?"
Adrian’s breath seized. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't play the innocent prince with me!" Maya’s voice rose, not into a shout, but into a sharp, lethal whip that sliced through his confusion. "You vanished! One night we were talking about buying a used station wagon and moving up to Wisconsin, and the next morning three men in black suits kicked my front door off its hinges! They tore my apartment apart looking for my phone, my diaries, every scrap of paper that proved I ever existed in your life!"
Behind Adrian, Camille had gone completely still. Her hands were frozen at her sides, her blue eyes darting frantically between Maya’s furious face and Adrian’s pale, stricken profile. The realization was beginning to dawn on her that the neat, sanitized narrative Marcus Vale had fed the high-society papers—the story of a clean break and an honorable courtship—was a monstrous, manufactured fiction.
"My father told me you took the money," Adrian whispered, his voice trembling with a horrific, sickening comprehension. "He showed me the wire transfer. Two hundred thousand dollars."
Maya let out a short, hollow laugh that held not a single shred of humor.
"Your father offered me five million dollars to abort them, Adrian," she said, her words dropping like lead weights onto the frozen asphalt.
Adrian felt the blood completely leave his head. "He did what?"
"He brought a private physician to a nondescript warehouse off Archer Avenue," Maya continued, her voice trembling now, not with fear, but with the raw, agonizing memory of that terrifying afternoon four years ago. "He sat across from me at a folding table, pushed a legal waiver and a cashier's check across the metal, and told me that the Vale syndicate did not tolerate bastards born to working-class waitresses. He told me that if I refused, I wouldn't live to see my second trimester."
She looked down at the three children, whose eyes were wide, watching their mother's face with quiet, instinctive concern. Lily reached through the bunting bag, her small mitten brushing against Maya’s sleeve. Maya softened instantly, reaching down with one hand to stroke her daughter's cheek with an infinite, heartbreaking tenderness, before snapping her gaze back to the billionaire kneeling in the slush.
"I didn't take his money, Adrian. I took thirty dollars from my tip jar, left my purse on the table, slipped out through a fire escape into the rain, and ran until my feet bled. I spent four months sleeping on a cot in a church basement in Humboldt Park under an assumed name so your father’s enforcers wouldn't hunt me down."
May you like
She leaned forward slightly, her amber-brown eyes boring into his gray ones with the righteous, unyielding authority of a survivor.
"So don't you dare kneel there in your five-thousand-dollar coat and ask me why I didn't call you."
