Chapter 3

My assistant got there faster than I expected. Less than twenty minutes later, the VIP fitting room door slammed open from the outside.

She came in with two bodyguards. The second she saw me, face bloody, back marked black, the corner of my mouth still wet, she froze.

I shook my head, just slightly. She got it instantly and swallowed whatever she'd been about to ask.

I took the briefcase of cash from her and used the hand that still worked to drop it at Yvonne's feet.

Yvonne bent down, picked it up, and opened it. The greed flashed across her face. Then she looked up, threatening: "If I find one fake bill in here, you don't make it to next week."

She gestured at the two guards, and only then did they clear the door.

I paused at the threshold and looked back. The cracked mirror, web-fractured. The pool of blood on the carpet. Still wet.

"Photograph it."

My assistant swept the entire fitting room. The mirror, the blood, the guards' faces, the briefcase in Yvonne's hand. She didn't miss a thing. Yvonne stood right there, the smug look still on her mouth.

I didn't look at her. I leaned on my assistant's arm and walked out. Every step, my bones screamed.

In the car, I sent the photos to legal. "Within an hour, Yvonne Carter is gone from the employee roster. Christopher gets me an explanation tonight."

My assistant nodded and didn't say a word.

The call came less than two hours later. Christopher.

In the background, Yvonne was crying.

"Ellie, Yvonne says there was a misunderstanding today. Don't let it get to you."

A misunderstanding.

I'd been beaten with a metal hanger until my fingers couldn't bend. I'd been pinned to a carpet, coughing up blood. He was calling that a misunderstanding.

"Chris."

"Yeah?"

"You added a flag to my file."

He paused. Then he laughed. "Oh, that. I was just —,"

"Just."

He'd put that flag there because he'd already decided to keep me at arm's length. One word, "just," and he hadn't even bothered to come up with a real lie. He knew I'd find out. He didn't care. Because he never thought I'd actually do anything to him.

That was the part that made me angry. Not what he'd done. The fact that I didn't even register to him.

"Got it."

I hung up.

I closed my eyes.

His birth mother had been the housekeeper at our estate. The car accident left him standing alone at the front gates. He was three. He was holding a beat-up rag doll and shaking. I held on to my mother's skirt and cried, begging her to keep him.

After that, I paid his tuition. I cleaned up his messes. I shoved him, step by step, into a board seat.

Today he calls it a misunderstanding. Brushes me off with one word and a laugh.

I'd raised him for twenty years. He didn't even think I was worth a real lie.

That, I wasn't going to let go.

"Police station first," I told my assistant.

She had the driver pull straight there. I called the GM of Whitfield Group's fashion division on the way. It was a line of business I'd built up myself, and the GM was someone I'd poached from a competitor. The second he picked up, I skipped the niceties.

"Within ten minutes, fire the clerk named Yvonne Carter. Wipe her file. If you can't do that, Whitfield pulls every cent of investment from this entire division."

He could obviously hear something off in my voice. He didn't ask. Just said yes.

I hung up and turned to my assistant. "Nearest precinct."

At the station, I walked the duty officer through it. Walking into the store, getting recognized by name, being framed, dragged into the fitting room, beaten, slammed into the mirror, extorted for one point six million dollars. Step by step. After the statement, I went to the hospital for X-rays and a full medical assessment.

The report was in my hand by the time I got back in the car.

A little after one a.m., my phone buzzed. My assistant had forwarded a screenshot of an internal corporate notice.

Christopher had filed an emergency board motion under the heading "Annual Personnel Optimization for Fashion Division." To be voted on first thing in the morning. The motion: appointing Yvonne Carter as General Manager of Whitfield Group's Fashion Division. Justification: "Critical division leadership vacancy needs to be filled."

I stared at that line for a long time.

That afternoon I'd been on the floor of that fitting room with blood in my mouth and fingers that wouldn't bend. He hadn't called once to ask if I was okay. He hadn't said sorry. He'd spent the night locking down a corporate GM seat for Yvonne instead.

It wasn't that he didn't know what had happened. He knew. He just didn't care.

In his head, me getting beaten like that mattered less than his girlfriend's job title.

Fine.

If that's how he wanted to play it, we could play.

I told my assistant to send nothing out. No leaks. Total silence.

Later she'd tell me. Less than five minutes after I hung up, Christopher had texted Yvonne:

Christopher: [Stop crying. My sister spoils me. This won't blow up. Just hold tight.]

The next morning I was outside the conference room on the twenty-eighth floor. Two bodyguards behind me.