by CD Reiss
“Go back and read the contract. I’ll meet you at the R+D offices at nine to discuss what you missed.”
“I might be late. I’m up in Riverside.”
Riverside?
The air felt warm on my skin. The sleet was boiling. That was how cold my body became.
I almost said something. Almost asked a question.
But that would alert her that I knew where Zack Abramson lived.
I tapped the red circle to hang up. Her name went grey and I went grey with it, and when it flickered away, the emptiness between us broke into separate universes.
She was beautiful in every way, and I’d been too nice. I’d let her consider leaving me and I hadn’t taken a second to wake up to the fact that there would be other men.
Today. Tomorrow. Ten years from now.
Every cell in my body screamed.
I’d been confused and broken. But after the call, I had something I had to do.
Chapter 16
PRESENT TENSE
I barely parked the Jag on Riverside. It landed a foot and a half from the curb, but I didn’t have the patience for one more parallel parking maneuver. He could be touching her right now. He could have his fingers in her cunt and his mouth anywhere. And she could be breathing in that way. That sticky-throated way she breathed when she was aroused. As if her throat got wet when her cunt got wet.
He could be on top of her. Pushing his soon-to-be-removed dick inside her.
All that was mine.
Her cunt was mine. Her thick-sexed voice was mine. When she closed her eyes to come. Mine. Her pleasure. I owned it. All of it. For-fucking-ever. Till death, you fucking shit.
“Hey.” I smiled at the doorman and lifted a manila envelope. I’d stuffed a galley I’d had lying around the trunk inside it.
“Good evening, sir,” he replied. He was a big guy, stretching his shirt at the belly. His long navy tie covered the popping buttons. He sat behind a little podium with closed circuit monitors of the exits and entrances and clipboards with guest signatures.
“Is Zack Abramson in? He’s in seven-fourteen.”
“I know where he’s at. Was at. He left this afternoon.”
I hadn’t expected that. I’d expected the guard to take it upstairs. Then I’d call Zack and tell him to come downstairs to talk.
“Talking” meant “break his face.”
“Can you give this to him tomorrow?” I thought maybe he’d been running errands all day and hadn’t gotten back to fuck my wife yet.
“Would if I could. He left town.”
“Dayton?”
“I’m not allowed to say. But if you want to leave that here, I’m getting his mail together. Sending next week.” He held out his hand.
“I’ll send it. Thanks.”
I went out to Riverside Drive, crossed the street, and stood behind my car, looking up at the building. The sleet had picked up, going from drops to sheets, but I didn’t care. Didn’t feel their cold or their cutting friction.
One-two-three-four-five-six-seven.
Seventh floor. Zack had said he had a view over Riverside Drive, so she was in one of those apartments. She wasn’t fucking Zack. Not tonight. Maybe never, but definitely not tonight.
I saw her in the second window from the corner, slim and straight. Unmistakable to the man who loved her. She cradled a teacup and looked out at New Jersey through the same veil of sleet I watched her through.
How long was I going to do this? Watch her in the freezing cold? Chase her down? Lie to doormen? Want a woman who’d turned her back on me months ago?
I couldn’t shake the jealous rage over any man who touched her. I couldn’t let go of the longing or the loss.
But as I got into the car, shivering, I realized there was only one cause for my pain. I didn’t have to be a man without anger or jealousy. They were symptoms of another disease. I needed to become a man unburdened by love.
I didn’t have a plan yet. I didn’t have a beginning, middle, and end. Just a concept without form. I didn’t articulate it to myself, but somewhere on the back burners, something started stewing. Something difficult, bold, and utterly callous.
Chapter 17
PRESENT TENSE
First times.
The first time I tried to sleep in our bed knowing she didn’t love me anymore, I didn’t sleep. I barely moved. The noise from Crosby Street rumbled, honked, shouted, clacked, gradually less and less as the moon moved the light from one side of our bedroom to the other. By three in the morning, I could hear the rooftop pigeons across the street coo and flap, rattling their chicken wire coop in the freezing cold.
I stretched across my bed. Was it our bed still? Or was the property transferred when she no longer had a place next to me?
The first time I doubted my decision to marry her, I wasn’t sure if I was sleeping or not. How had I missed the manipulation? The calculation? She’d needed me to save her family business. But I was going to save it before she offered herself to me. Way before I asked her to marry me.
It wasn’t that.
I owned her. She was mine.
But no.
Vulnerable. Powerless. I couldn’t hold what I possessed. The feeling was freefall. The earth coming into sharp focus as I hurtled toward it at the acceleration of gravity.
I don’t need to punish you to paddle you. I don’t need an excuse. You’re mine, and I can paddle you when I please. Because I feel like it. Now bend over the table, arms out, palms down. Do you need something to bite?
The first night of the rest of my life, I imagined breaking her. I imagined her crying for mercy. For release. For me. The smell of her skin. The taste of her tears. The color of the parts of her that got my cruelest and kindest attention. How would she beg for my forgiveness? How would I take her then? Gently? Would I bend her body? Her mind?
My fantasies crossed into psychopathic. Anger and dominance had no place together. Revenge and sadism never played in the same scene. The idea was to cause pain, not damage, and rage clouded a Dominant’s judgment.
Yet the scenes I imagined with such clarity were familiar. Years before, I’d managed them all with utter control and complete consent.
The first time my wires crossed, I scared myself, and the fear was cathartic.
Chapter 18
PRESENT TENSE
The R+D offices were in midtown, in the center of a glass column on the west side. In contrast to the McNeill-Barnes offices, they were sharp and cold, modern and noncommittal. We bought things and either built them back up or stripped them and sold them for parts. I’d started with the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, property my grandparents helped me buy at a fortunate time in the market. I lived in a studio south of Metropolitan and bought another property, then another, leaving little for myself to live on, until the next real estate boom left me with enough to leverage for greater and greater loans.
I made money and explored kink through my twenties. Sometimes I breathed.
The subway wasn’t luxurious, but if I wanted to get anywhere at eight in the morning, it was the fastest way to go. No matter how expensive the car, it was still subject to the laws of physics, and the streets were jam-packed with things not even a Jaguar could drive through.
My phone rang in the lobby of my building. Lloyd Barnes. My father in-law. Soon to be known as a guy I wasn’t related to by marriage.
“Hey—” I stopped myself before saying dad.
“What the hell is going on?” His breath was wheezy. Stress.
“With regard to?”
Lloyd came to me when he wanted it straight. His daughter protected him from anything that might upset him. Even the smallest production glitch was a secret. He only heard about the spina bifida because he called me and I told him without preamble.
“My daughter.”
“Is she all right?” I was stalling. I knew what he was calling about.
“She says you’re splitting up. What did you do?”
The phone would die in the elevator, s
o I hung back in a corner of the cold stone-and-glass lobby, away from the push and bustle of people getting to work.
“When I find out, I’ll let you know.”
“Is she protecting you?”
No. She wasn’t protecting me. I had no idea what she was doing except leaving. Maybe it was that simple anyway. Maybe she was just sick of me and wanted to move on.
“She wants out. I have nothing else, Lloyd.”
He wheezed. I heard a whoosh and waited as he got his oxygen tubes in his nose.
“I’m not happy,” he said.
“Neither am I. But there’s nothing I can do about it. Diana wants what she wants, and if she wants to end this marriage, she’s going to do it.”
“That’s her mother, you know. I loved her, but when she wanted something, she wanted it.”
“Self-determination’s a great quality until it’s directed against you.”
“You’ll stay with us, I hope?”
He meant McNeill-Barnes. Not the family.
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“Think about it then.”
“I will.”
I hung up and went to the elevator. What did I want? What was my self-determined desire?
Diana. How was I going to get her back? By her presence or my absence?
R+D ran itself, more or less. My business partner, Eva, took care of much of the day-to-day while we built up McNeill-Barnes. Walking back into the office for the first time since Diana’s note felt surreal. I was already a different man; I just didn’t know how different.
Eva was a tightly put-together lawyer who had moved into corporate management. She had a short black pixie cut and pant suit. She changed the seven earrings in her left ear to match her suit or her mood. Today she was red.
“Adam,” she said, falling into step with me through the reception area.
“Eva.”
We went through the swinging doors to the inner offices. We each had a corner, and the other windows were bordered by seven conference rooms.
“Your wife is here with Rhonda Sidewinder. The divorce lawyer.”
“They’re early.”
“What’s going on?” She rarely got personal with me, but the concern in her brown eyes was real.
“Everything. Can you grab my contract with McNeill? I’m sure Rhonda has a copy, but I want to glance at it beforehand. And please do it yourself. If you have Brittany pull it, the whole office is going to talk.”
She handed me a folder. “I had a feeling you’d need it. Your McNeill-Barnes contract is in there too.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“They’re in conference four.” I started to go, but she touched my arm. “Who’s representing you?”
“No one yet. Look, this happened yesterday. It was out of nowhere.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Fight for her.”
I turned away before I had to see the sympathy in her face.
Chapter 19
PRESENT TENSE
First times.
The first time I saw my wife’s face after she left me, she looked different. I thought maybe she’d changed somehow, but I knew I was the one who had changed. Not enough to stop loving her, but enough to see her from far away.
The first time I saw ice in her eyes, I knew it was a thin veneer, put there to make it possible for her to finish the job.
The first time she looked like a stranger to me, I knew it was false. She wasn’t a stranger. She was my Diana. My huntress. She was still mine.
And when I looked right at her and she cast her eyes down, I recognized the performance of the gesture as hers. Very much hers. But I’d changed, and I didn’t see what I wanted to see. I saw what was always there.
Chapter 20
PRESENT TENSE
She’d taken off her wedding ring. She tried to hide it by folding her right hand over her left, but as the meeting drew on and on, she had to take a drink of water. I caught sight of her left hand before she put it in her lap.
“We understand that the company bylaws fail to provide a clear procedure for valuation of shares in the event of a buyback,” Sidewinder said, “but my client would like you to sell her your fifty-one percent of the company at cost.”
Diana put the glass down and her right hand joined her left hand in her lap.
“Cost?”
“What you bought them for.”
“When the business was underwater and I wanted to break it apart and sell the pieces?” I turned to Diana. “We’ve been sitting here for an hour for this? You want me out?”
“My client wishes to appeal to your good will.”
“What good will?” I kept my eyes on my wife. “How long did you know?”
Her eyes joined her hands. In her lap. I slapped the table and she jumped.
“How. Long.”
“I don’t see that it matters,” she said.
“Mister Steinbeck, we can reconvene when you’ve acquired counsel, but this—”
“It matters. I need to know how long I was fucking a stranger.”
“—is not acceptable.”
“And me?” Diana cried, the fire back in her eyes. “Who was I fucking?”
“Maybe you should make me a list.”
“Never, you freak.” She leaned forward, left hand flat on the table. “I never. But what were you doing last night?”
The word freak stopped me, and in the pause, Rhonda Sidewinder filled the gap.
“Mr. Steinbeck. I was hoping this could proceed without—”
“What do you mean?” I asked Diana.
“—revealing certain measures we’ve taken. But last night you were seen walking into a known sex club.”
I maintained a steady expression and didn’t move. I made sure I breathed. But I felt as though I’d been hit in the gut. I didn’t want Diana to know. I didn’t want her lawyer to know. I’d kept my past from my wife for as long as I’d known her, and she was finding out how I’d lied to her and myself the entire time.
“How long, Adam?” Diana growled, bottom lip quivering. “How. Long.”
“Jesus, Diana, it’s almost like you care.”
Rhonda Sidewinder was known as a shark who never let an emotional moment get in the way of advocating for her client. “This won’t play well in front of a judge. Nor will standing outside and watching her in a window.”
“You put someone on me,” I said.
“In the interests of—” Rhonda started but Diana interrupted.
“It was Regina’s idea, and I’m glad I did it.”
“Your therapist? She suggested you put a tail on me? Is that ethical?”
“She thought you were cheating.” Diana shook her head. “I did it to rule it out, because I thought she was wrong.”
“How long have you been going to sex clubs, Mister Steinbeck?” Rhonda asked.
I wasn’t answering. Not right away. Diana was upset, and I wanted her to just sit there and feel like I felt for a minute. As if she’d lived a lie for five years. Because fuck her and her ringless finger and her time in Zack’s bed. Fuck her detective, her therapist, and her lawyer. Fuck her attempts to kick me out of the business. Fuck her.
I loved her but fuck her. If she’d had the detective on me for long, she would have known I hadn’t been to the Cellar since we were married. She had one night’s worth of evidence. The night she left me. And it was burning her up from the inside.
Good.
Fuck her.
“As I was saying,” Sidewinder continued, “adultery is cause. We intended to make this convivial.”
“So you had me followed.” I didn’t take my eyes off my wife, and hers were glued to me. I didn’t know what we were saying to each other. We were just battering rams of hurt and betrayal.
“We can skip the separation and just serve you. But as an article of good faith, we’ll go back to irretrievable breakdown status if you agree to sign over the title to the Jaguar.”
; I turned my attention away from my wife and on to Sidewinder. “What?”
“And the parking spot on Lafayette.”
The parking spot in the underground lot was the first thing we had bought together. We laughed about it and fucked in the front seat, in the spot, because it was ours.
“I can’t believe this has come down to a car.”
“Taxis won’t take Daddy’s oxygen tanks,” Diana said.
“Buy your own car.”
“It is my car.”
I stood. I’d had enough of this bullshit.
Chapter 21
PRESENT TENSE
She knows.
The car, the detective, the terms of the separation, all of those overwhelmed me, but as I walked out of conference four, the only thing on my mind was that Diana knew I was at the Cellar.
Eva saw me in the hall on the way to my office.
“Guess who I just saw in the bathroom,” she whispered. “Upset.”
“Christian Grey.”
“What?”
“Random questions get random answers.”
“I don’t officially advocate you going into a women’s restroom.”
“You’re a piece of work, Eva.”
“I know.” She walked past me and didn’t look back.
Justine, our staff architect, came out of the ladies’ room just as I walked down the hall. When she was gone, I went in and locked the door. The clack echoed like a gong.
Diana spun, hands clasping the edge of the counter behind her, the water still flowing. “What are you doing in here?”
“It’s my office.”
I stepped toward her. She didn’t move.
I leaned behind her and shut off the faucet. “Your lawyer isn’t interested in anything but her bill. You know that, right?” I snapped paper towels off the roll and handed the piece to her.
“I can’t meet you alone.” She wiped her fingers. “You’re too… I don’t know the word. I can’t think when you’re looking at me. I just—”
