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“I am your only. Please don’t do this.” His voice was a mere whisper as tears fell from his lashes.
But I took a step back, and then another. “Not anymore. I used to feel safe in your arms, I used to only be able to fall asleep peacefully when you held me and I ached for you when we were apart, but it was never the same for you. You never needed me like I needed you! You’ve never survived simply because I did, like I do with you every single day.” My voice was so detached and didn’t sound like me at all as I severed a part of my body off right in the middle of the street and walked away from it. “Get yourself home in one piece. Your mother won’t survive burying another son.” I turned and walked away from him towards my car. I got in and locked the door, forcing myself to pull out onto the street and away from him where he stood on the sidewalk, unmoving as he crumbled.
As I pulled away I looked in my rearview mirror and watched him get smaller as I drove out of his life. His shoulders were slumped, and his strong personality was broken there inside of him.
Just like my soul.
I was never going to be the same again.
And either would he.
Chapter 2 – Cora Present Day
I was going to be late.
On my very first day, I was going to be late!
“Move!” I groaned as the people ahead of me all meandered up the stairs of the subway in absolutely no hurry at all. How did people walk so fucking slow? Wasn’t six A.M. in the business district of New York City supposed to be filled with people mad dashing for their jobs?
Where were all these slow people going?
I finally got above ground and literally ran across the street, dodging traffic like a scene in a movie. My work bag swung wildly as I ran a block through crazy amounts of people and finally saw the building I was going to.
Hawthorn Tower was pristine in the New York skyline, shinning above all the other buildings around it and I felt a smile pull at my lips for the first time in the last twenty minutes.
I looked at my watch 6:53 am.
I was going to make it!
I slowed my feet and tried to catch my breath as I got to the front doors. I stepped to the side and slid out of my flats and into my heels that matched my dress and then took a deep breath and smoothed my hands down the front of the fabric and then through my hair to fix what the wind did to it as I ran.
I stepped away from the wall and the doorman smiled at me and opened the door wide as I walked in.
I’d come to the building a couple of times over the last few days to sign paperwork and get my security badge, but I was still in awe of the expansive lobby with its polished wood and marble. I walked towards the turnstiles and slid my brand-new badge through and smiled when the red light turned green, and I walked forward with the others.
I felt so important.
I was twenty-eight years old and finally had a job that felt like a right step towards my career. My life had been derailed ten years ago, and I’d been forced to watch every single one of my dreams and plans go up in flames as college at Duke was taken away from me. When my father had cut me off, I’d lost all funding for college. No institution would give me a loan or a grant when my family was part of the one percent of wealthy Americans. And the fact that my family disowned me, didn’t matter to the banks. Even the colleges I’d gotten scholarships to turned their backs on me.
So I’d settled for working my way up through life, one shitty dead-end job after another. Or really, three or four jobs at a time because without experience or education I worked for minimum wage, and it was impossible to live on that.
But today I was starting as a personal assistant to a top executive at a tech company. This was the break I needed to succeed finally, and I was going to work every second of every single day to get ahead here because I wasn’t naïve anymore to think I’d ever get another opportunity like this one, if I fucked it up.
I waited in the busy lobby for an elevator and joined a group of people in the small car and stood at the back with a stupid excited grin on my face.
I watched as men and women in expensive clothing got off the elevator at different floors along the way to my own office on the sixty-fifth floor. A man standing next to me looked over at me as the car emptied out and left only the two of us as we bypassed the thirtieth floor.
“Are you new here?” He asked. I looked up at him and felt a pang of excitement when I saw how good looking he was. He was probably in his thirties with black hair and dark chocolate eyes. He wore an expensive black suit and held a briefcase worth more than what I’d make in a year here. The label was one I’d recognized from my past life.
“Is it that obvious?” I asked, cringing, and then smiling again.
He laughed and leaned back against the wall next to me. “I wouldn’t say that you are new for any other reason then I haven’t seen you before. And I would remember seeing you before.”
I raised my eyebrow at him and then looked at the ticker above the door, fortieth floor. “This building is seventy floors tall, I’m sure you couldn’t possibly recognize everyone that comes in through the front doors.”
He shrugged his shoulder easily and smirked, “You’re probably right, we can at least eliminate the male population of employees here, because I wouldn’t recognize any of them. But the women, I tend to pay more attention too.”
I laughed at his cringy flirting. “So, you’re straight.” I said nodding my head, “Got it. I wasn’t sure with your choice in shoes and all.” I dropped my eyes to his incredibly fashionable black shoes and tsked my tongue at them as if there was something wrong with them.
