AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Quieter, I add, “And married.”
My mom pauses for a moment, organizing her thoughts and memories. Ten years and numerous surgeries later, the time both immediately before and after the accident remain scrambled for her, making her occasionally mistake her life for the way it was before. Before everything—every single part of my life—went to fucking shit. Hers was already on its way there, she just can’t remember the explosion, the fallout, or the catalyst for either.
As for the after, most of it was spent in the hospital, in and out of surgeries, so those fourteen months are better off forgotten. She does remember the months of physical therapy followed by the rehabilitation center where she learned how to live on her own again, mostly because of the people she was forced to interact with and their “scrutiny” of her.
“I know that,” my mom says finally. “To Kordin.”
Exactly, Kordin. That’s who deserves my concentration, not the fox I abandoned like the building he was standing next to.
Reece Souza has become a distraction from my main goal. More than that, he’s a temptation—the sexiest, sweetest temptation to exist since Eve’s infamous apple. Like her, I succumbed to my overwhelming urge to satisfy my own desire once, just fucking once.
While Eve’s downfall is notorious, her backstory isn’t. It was bliss. That’s it? Because she lived in a fucking garden with Adam? What kind of man was her only companion? Does anyone really know how he treated her? Was he as selfless as history would like us to believe? Or was he overindulging all along, leaving Eve positively deprived and reckless by the time that snake appeared offering her the first real flavor after a lifetime of bland leaves and twigs?
If a single bite is responsible for the fall of man, then maybe man was already rife with faults.
Everybody assumes my life is a paradise because of how it’s painted. But nobody knows the truth. They don’t feel the absolute void beneath the brushstrokes. And although Eve was banished from her alleged utopia, I’m still bound to my veiled hell. Which is why yesterday, I bought a morning-after pill, to ensure Reece’s life cannot be eternally entwined with mine. Then tomorrow, I’ll fire him. For good this time.
Back to assembling her own pierogi, my mom asks, “How is Kordin?”
“He’s…” I let out a pent-up sigh. “Kordin.”
Her entire body tenses as she tilts her head ever so slightly to the side, hiding her right cheek from view.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
My mother’s never met my husband, so she has no idea what he’s like. Not only because I don’t make a habit of talking about him, but also, she’s a complete recluse with a debilitating phobia of anyone seeing her. The only times she even leaves the house are for doctor appointments where she hides most of her face under a babushka. If something needs fixed inside, I have to personally deal with the service workers while she hides in another room until they’re gone.
This house was supposed to liberate us, both of us; instead, it’s trapped us. Her inside its walls, me in Fox Hollow.
Kordin gifted me the Cape Cod-style house as a refuge the night we met. As far as tips go, it was by far the most substantial I’d ever received, and although I knew it probably wasn’t string-free, I didn’t particularly care. I figured any strings Kordin held were looser than the ones Cyrus had me on.
Earlier that same night, I’d reached a breaking point with Cyrus. I’d started looking at places to move into so that when my mom graduated from rehab, she’d have somewhere to feel safe. Somewhere tobesafe. Somewhere away from Cyrus. And because I’d just turned eighteen, legally, there was no one to stop me.
Since breaking laws is as commonplace to Cyrus as flossing is to dentists, he went off the fucking rails trying to control me, trying to keep me—basically holding me hostage—and eventually, I did, too.
With his cane crushed to his trachea in one of the Lost rooms, I very nearly succeeded in killing him until one of his men interrupted. By the time Tommy was finished punishing me, I was barely hanging by a thread, but one is all an evil master needs to control his puppet, so I was forced to perform. IowedCyrus.
Then Kordin Debrosse walked into The Playground, presenting a way out. He was already successful, had just started his own real estate firm, and when I told him I’d been house hunting, he offered me the small Cape on the spot. It was one of his own rental properties in a neighborhood he couldn’t coax solid renters into, and as long as I kept up with its maintenance, I could live there for free.
I accepted with the intention of moving my mom in first, then joining her as soon as possible.Ifpossible. I really just needed her out of Cyrus’s grasp. She couldn’t come live with us. I wouldn’t let her.
Kordin didn’t leave it at that though. He became a regular, visiting me at The Playground every night. Even buying me a phone when I told him I’d lost mine.
I didn’t lose it. Cyrus had taken it from me in order to cut me off from the outside world, including my mother.
On the sixth night of knowing him, after I came clean about who’d be living in the Cape, he proposed, promising to give it to me outright if only I’d marry him, and so, I accepted that, too.
At thirteen years my senior, Kordin was still only thirty-one. A young thirty-one with a head full of good hair, and a fit body just teeming with unspent libido. Kordin was handsome, supportive, and understanding, unlike any man I’d ever met.
“Family’s important to me, too,”he’d said. He’d even recently hired his younger brother, Kaisin, as his chief financial officer, so they could work alongside each other.
It wasn’t until Kordin and I were already married that I learned the truth about him and his brother’s relationship only existing in accordance with the Debrosse Group’s hours of operation.
That was my first mistake—listening to Kordin Debrosse, because while Cyrus willdoanything to get what he wants, Kordin willsayanything to get what he wants. He’s more strategic with his love bombs than a B-52 dropping atomic bombs during an air strike.
But if what Reece said is true and Kaisin knew me back when I was still working at The Playground, when exactly did he see me? Was it before his brother did? Or after? Once I met Kordin, I was only putting in shifts for a matter of days, less than a week, before I quit and walked away entirely to start a new life with him.
Neither brother has ever breathed a word about Kaisin’s previous knowledge of me or my place of employment, but considering I’ve interacted with my brother-in-law more this past week than the last eight years combined, that’s not exactly surprising.
