Chapter 3 - Eleanor rail

I could barely sleep through the night,I tossed and turned the whole night replaying every bit of Eleanor’s words

Questions running freely through my mind.

Every sane instinct screamed to turn down her request, to bury myself in blankets and block out the world. To heal or to shatter, in private. Meeting his mother was the last thing I should do. It was like walking into the lion’s den while still bleeding.

But a sharper, more dangerous curiosity hooked into me. Austin had lied with smiles and kisses. His mother, I knew,never approved of me.

So why is she asking to meet me? Especially now that she knows I am done with her son.

I spent the whole morning trying to arrive at the best decision.

At exactly 12pm, I got dressed,prepared to see Eleanor. I was not sure what to wear,so picked out a purple dress I had only worn once,didn’t do much on my face, at 1pm, I was on my way.

"Take me to the Absinthe Lounge. On the outskirts.” I said as I hailed a taxi, my voice strangely calm.

The driver nodded as he slowed down to make a turn. The drive was quiet,matching the silence in my head. The city began to fade away into long, lonely stretches as he drove.

Finally the dark, gleaming building of the lounge finally emerged, I took a shaky breath,retouched my makeup in the compact mirror I had always kept in my purse. I paid the driver, stepped out into the cool, hushed air, and faced the door.

The Absinthe Lounge was a fortress of luxury and gilt. It smelled of aged whiskey, expensive perfume, and quiet, intimidating money. My heels sank softly into the deep navy carpet.

A man appeared, his expression neutral, as if broken looking women arriving alone at noon were common there. "May I help you?"

"The Lillian Suite," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "I am expected by Eleanor Rail."

I noticed a slight, almost subtle shift in his eyes,may be recognition, perhaps pity. "Of course. Right this way."he said as he led me through a hallow corridors, away from the main lounge area.

The silence was loud, swallowing the sound of my own heartbeat. We stopped before a door of dark, polished wood.

"The Lillian Suite," he murmured, giving a single, soft knock before opening it for me. "Your guest, Mrs. Rail."

I stepped inside, and the door clicked shut behind me with a sound of finality.

The room was curated as a study, Low lighting smooth dark wood,static art works in frames and crystal decanters. A fireplace stood unlit, probably due to the summer warmth, The space was breathtaking. And there, in a high backed armchair that looked like a throne, sat the almighty Eleanor Rail.

She was not looking at the door. She was gazing out the narrow window at the distant skyline, a glass of something clear and ice cube filled in her hand. She took a slow sip, letting the silence stretch, letting me stand there in the center of the room, exposed.

Finally, she set her glass down on a side table with a precise click and turned her head. Her eyes, the same cutting blue as Austin's but empty of all his practiced warmth, swept over me from my imperfect face,blonde hair, down my clothes, to my legs rooted on the rich rug.

A smile, cold and devoid of humor, touched her lips. "Ava," she said. "You look like you have had a rather disastrous week."

She didn't ask me to sit. This was her arena. I was just a player who had stumbled onto the stage, and she was deciding whether the show would go on, or if I would be ushered out for good.

The room remained still, Eleanor’s gaze was a clinical assessment, not a confrontation. She gestured with two fingers toward the chair opposite her,more like a command, not an invitation.

I sat, my legs curled beneath on the plush rug.

She didn’t speak immediately. Instead, she lifted a slim, sealed brown envelope from the table beside her. It was identical to the one I had thrown at Austin. The whole scene felt like a trap. She placed it on the low table between us with a soft tap.

"The office shenanigans was shameful,but, I suppose, it was inevitable,” she began, her voice as smooth and cool as the marble fireplace. "My son has a… pattern. One he seems disinclined to break. And you, my dear, you have a pattern of forgiving it.”

I opened my mouth, a hot witty reply on my tongue, but she silenced me with a look.

"I am not here to argue his failures. I am here to address a practical problem. He will come for you. He will beg, he will promise, he will make you feel like the center of his universe again. And given your history, you are statistically likely to fold.” She said it like she was reviewing a poor financial report.

"That cycle is bad for him. It grants him no consequence. And it is, I imagine, profoundly degrading for you.”

She nudged the envelope toward me with one manicured fingertip.

"Inside is a blank cheque. Drawn from a private account. You will fill in any figure you deem necessary to secure your independence and your silence.”

The air left my lungs. This wasn’t a bribe to leave him. This was something colder.

"This is not hush money in the crude sense,” she continued, as if reading the disgust on my face. "Consider it a… severance package. An investment in your own resolve. I am purchasing your certainty.

When he comes to you, of course he will, you must be standing on your own two feet, financially and emotionally, so that if you take him back, it is not because you needed him. It must be a choice made from strength, not desperation. Though, frankly, I hope you choose better.”

Her words were ice water. She wasn’t buying me off. She was trying to engineer my free will, to remove need from the equation so my decision would be… pure. And in doing so, she was telling me everything I already feared.

You are not the kind of girl I want for my son.

The message wasn't in her words, but in the sterile, financial solution. She saw me as a variable in Austin’s life, an obstacle to his growth, a symptom of his weakness.

A girl from a world where a blank cheque was a miracle, not an insult. A girl whose love could be so easily compromised by need, that it had to be surgically removed from the equation to test its worth.

The humiliation was exquisite. It wasn’t the fury of the other woman, it wasn’t Austin’s lies. It was this calm, elegant woman. She was treating our two year relationship, all its pain and passion, like a problematic contract she needed to settle.

"You want to pay me to be strong enough to refuse him?” I finally managed, my voice a husk.

"I want to ensure you have the means to have a real choice Ava,” she corrected, unmoved. "As it stands, your emotions and your economics are too entangled.

This clarifies things. Take it. Build a life where Austin Rail is not a necessity. Then, and only then, decide if he is a desire.”

She leaned back, her performance concluded. The silence that followed was deafening. The envelope lay between us, a single, profound judgment.

I am not the kind of girl she wants for her son.

And in that moment, faced with the price of my own dignity, I had to decide what kind of girl I actually was.

The silence stretched, filled only by the faint, expensive aura of the lounge. I could feel the weight of the cheque inside, a phantom sum that could pay my rent for a year, maybe two. It could buy a fresh start, a cushion against the world. It was everything I practically needed and everything I morally couldn’t accept.

Eleanor’s plan was perfectly logical, and that was my deepest insult. She had reduced the chaos of my heart,the love, the betrayal, the addictive hope to a simple equation.

A strange calm settled over me, washing away the last tremors of anger and humiliation. It was the clarity of having nothing left to lose.

I didn’t pick up the envelope. Instead, I looked directly into her cool blue eyes, my own no longer blazing, but steady.

“No,” I said, the word simple and final in the hushed room.

One of Eleanor’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows arched,It was the most surprise she would show.

“This,” I began, my voice low but clear, “all of this… the screaming, the crying, the forgiving… it was never about money.

It was never about what I needed from him. It was about what I wanted from him. Love. Faithfulness. Respect.” I let out a slow breath. “You can’t buy my certainty, Mrs. Rail. You can only buy my silence, and my compliance. And I’m not for sale.”

I watched as my own hand streached out as if acting on impulse. But instead of taking the envelope, I turned it around so the seal faced her, and gave it one firm, deliberate push back across the polished wood.

"I am not desperate. I am a person Austin broke. My choice to stay away won’t be funded by you. It will be built by me. Day by day. However hard it is.”

I stood up, my sole firm on the ground. “If I fail and take him back, it will be my own failing. My own mistake to make. Not yours to engineer.”

For a long moment, she said nothing. She looked at the returned envelope, then back at me, her gaze, a new, less dismissive one. It was as if I had just become slightly more real to her,not a girl, but a stubborn force of nature.

“I see," she said finally, a faint, unreadable trace in her voice. "That is… a more difficult path.”

"It is mine to follow,” I said.

I didn’t wait for a dismissal. I turned and walked toward the heavy door, the weight of her gaze on my back. As my hand touched the cold brass handle, her voice stopped me one last time, not a command, but a statement of cold fact.

"He will come, Ava. And it will sound more real than ever before. Remember the price you paid today to be free of him. It was nothing… and it was everything.”

I didn't look back. I opened the door and stepped out into the hushed corridor, leaving the blank cheque and the woman who offered it behind. I had never felt poorer, or more certain of who I was not.

I was not Eleanor Rail’s project. And I was no longer Austin Rail’s fool. I was just Ava, standing in a hallway, with nothing but my own two feet to carry me forward.

The heavy door of the Absinthe Lounge shut behind me with a whisper, sealing Eleanor’s world away. I took one step, then two, onto the sun warmed pavement, the city’s distant noise an opposite to the tomb like silence inside.

I walked blocks, numb, the cheque scene echoing in my mind alongside Eleanor's words. The city noise fades as i replay the offer, not with fresh tears, but with a cold, clarifying shock.

My purse, clutched in my still trembling hand, vibrated with sound.

A violent, insistent buzz from my phone. I struggled to fetch my phone from my purse,may be that was why I didn’t see the stranger coming, I bumped into him before I could react, I am sorry I quickly chipped in.

"it okay…..Are you fine?” He asked, his green piercing eye holding genuine concern.

"Yes, thank you.” I said absent minded as I pulled out my phone.

The screen lit up, flashing his name like a siren.

AUSTIN.

It was the call I had been expecting,dreading, craving. The grand apology. The orchestrated symphony of regret. Eleanor’s cold prophecy echoed in my head: "He will come. And it will sound more real than ever before."

But now, a new, fiery thought crossed my mind. I could answer his call. I could let his voice wash over me. I could say, "It okay, I have forgiven you.” I could use my forgiveness as weapon to shame Eleanor. The temptation was a sweet, sharp venom. I could become the grenade thrown into the heart of her perfect dynasty.

To answer was to re-engage. To pick up the thread that connected me to him, no matter how disgusting. It was a chance to wound Eleanor by proving her son still chose me, even now.

To let it go to voicemail was to finally, truly, step off the rollercoaster. To let the silence speak louder than any shouted accusation. It was the harder choice. The lonelier one.

The phone buzzed again. The screen flashed, illuminating my reflection.

I was hooked on the cliff’s edge.

One touch would connect me to the past.

One refusal would walk me into an unknown future.

In the breathless space between the last buzz and my next step, I made my choice.