by Eden Myles
I slipped my reading glasses on and opened the envelope with shaking fingers. I slid the folded sheet of crème stationary out. The first words that popped out were “It isn’t you, Henry, it’s me…”
I read the letter through three times. Then I put the stationary back in the color-coordinated envelope. I put my watch away in the jewelry case, my glasses away in my breast pocket, and hung my coat up properly in the closet I had been sharing with Leo McFarley for eight years.
I caught a glance of myself in the bureau mirror, middle-aged, dark-haired, features pleasant if not remarkable. I thought of the eight years I had spent with Leo, the best years of my life. There were rings under my eyes from work, and now a permanent look of rage in my eyes.
I went over to the shelves of glass and porcelain lions I had been buying Leo ever since we met. He always said they were cute and clever and that was very much like me. I picked up the first one I had ever bought him, a finely painted porcelain import from India, white with orange flowers, and smashed it against the bedroom wall above our bed.
Then I smashed all the rest, stomped the glass and porcelain into the carpet, and went out into the living room to the wet bar to get very, very drunk.
***
Read an excerpt from Rumpelstiltskin (50 Shades of Fairy Tales) by Alex Crossman:
I was sixteen years old before I realized my beloved father was a gangster. I mean, the signs were definitely there—the days and sometimes weeks he spent away from home, the ridiculous luxury of our home on the Gold Coast, the legions of shifty men who visited us at all hours of the day and night. But this was the man who had raised me singlehandedly after my mom had died just after my birth, the man who took me to school in his limo, who taught me to throw a baseball, who took me to the zoo and shopping for my first bra. When I was thirteen, he held a huge birthday party for me in the garden, complete with a performing clown and a monkey, and he let me have as many friends over from school as I wanted. He was the best father a girl without a mother could possibly have.
But yes, he was a gangster, though I didn’t understand that, or just didn’t want to accept it, until I was sixteen and my life changed forever. It was the day of my birthday, my Sweet Sixteen, and my daddy had offered to take me on a vacation down to Mexico, but I had asked if I could just have some friends over. My dad’s wealth—and his propensity for spending it on me—often embarrassed me. That day, my friends gathered around the patio table on the veranda and we had cake and ice cream and talked about all the boys we liked. I was happy to spend the day with my friends, though sad my dad had had to go out of town unexpectedly.
“Connor is totally into you,” my best friend Juanita said, and I laughed at that because Connor was the first boy I had ever crushed on, and just thinking about him made my ears burn.
“Oh, Sierra’s blushing!” my other best friend Fern said. “Sweet Sixteen and never been kissed!”
(That was me—never having been kissed.)
About that time, my dad’s assistant Alejandro stepped out onto the veranda and said, “Sierra, florecita, I must speak to you privately.”
I rolled my eyes at him. Whenever my dad went out of town on business, he left Alejandro to look after me, and he always insisted on calling me florecita, which in Spanish means “little flower”. I stepped inside my father’s study and Alejandro closed the door and asked me to sit down. He made me my first drink, and I knew then that the news wasn’t good.
My father, my daddy, was dead. Alejandro did not sugarcoat it. He’d been shot during a meeting with another businessman and had died en route to the hospital.
I took a trembling sip of my dad’s bourbon, then said the one thing that bothered me more than anything else. “Daddy did bad things, didn’t he, Alejandro?”
“What do you mean, florecita?” Alejandro said, coming up behind the wicker settee where I sat and resting his big hand comfortingly on my small shoulder.
“I mean he was like…Al Capone. He was a mob boss, wasn’t he?”
Alejandro weighed my question a moment before answering, “Yes, Sierra. He was what you would call a mob boss, though we call it Le eMe and your father was El Padre to us. He did some bad things in his life but he was not a bad man, and you must never remember him that way. He was a good man who died unfairly and before his time, but he knew this day would come, and he asked that I look after his beloved nina when he did.”
He came around the settee to kneel down before me and dry my tears with his handkerchief. He let me cry on his shoulder for a good long time before easing me back. Then he showed me the carefully wrapped birthday gift that my daddy had been planning to give me for my Sweet Sixteen.
When I opened the small jewelry box, I discovered a platinum, heart-shaped locket with a picture of my mother on one side and a picture of my dad on the other. A handwritten note accompanied the locket and read, Let this locket guide you to your treasure, my daughter. I love you always, Daddy.
“Now El Padre will never be far from your heart, florecita. And I, Alejandro, will never be far from your side,” my daddy’s right-hand man said, which just made me cry some more.
Alejandro was as good as his word. In a way, he became like my second father. He saw me through the remainder of my high school years and through college and graduation. He even approved my engagement to Connor McDermott when I was twenty-two years old, though Connor was white and not Mexican. I thought he would oppose me on that, but I think Alejandro realized early on that I was not cut out for mob life. I did not want luxury if it meant bathing in blood money, and I did not want to see after my father’s business dealings—I left that to Alejandro.
I did not even seek vengeance for my father’s murder. Alejandro taught me that in Le eMe in order for revenge to be extracted on my father’s murder, I would need to initiate it, as his next of kin, but my heart wasn’t in it. I did not want more men to die, even those who had ended my father’s life.
And besides, I had other ambitions that had nothing to do with mob business. I had graduated with a degree in art and I planned to teach at a local middle school. I was thinking of writing my first illustrated children’s book, and I was getting married in just a few months. For the first time in my life, I was satisfied. Maybe not jumping-through-hoops happy, but satisfied. I loved my life. My crush on Connor had cooled somewhat with time, but he was stable and quiet and unassuming—a good balance to my sometimes fiery Latina temperament.
I had everything I wanted, everything I needed: Alejandro to protect me, my best friends Juanita and Fern to keep me happy, and sweet Connor to comfort and protect me.
Then the day of my wedding arrived, and my life changed all over again.
***
Read an excerpt from Cinderfella (50 Shades of Fairy Tales) by Alex Crossman:
“Ash, how you would like to be promoted to my sexual companion?”
I forgot I was fitted under Mr. Chase’s desk as I tried to discover what plug was giving him trouble and hit my head on the underside. I barked out a curse before sliding out and standing up.
Mr. Chase stood at the wet bar, mixing a Tom Collins, an intrigued look on his handsome, chiseled face. “Are you all right?”
I rubbed at the smarting crown of my head. “I think I gave myself a concussion.”
“Please sit down, won’t you?”
I sat down on his leather settee, giving him a goofy smile to cover my embarrassment. Maybe I hadn’t heard him right? I mean, I’d been crushed under a desk when he’d said it. Then I saw his concentrated expression—what I called his Wolf Look—and realized he wasn’t kidding. Not at all. “Are you serious?” I croaked.
Mr. Chase narrowed his cattish eyes the way he did when he was dealing with a particularly difficult client or employee. As head of WGR Studios, an all-news channel located here in Upper Manhattan, he fielded a lot of difficult clients and employees. But he’d never used that look on me before. “Perfectly serious, Ash. I’ve given this quite a bit of thought
, and I’ve decided I would like you to work as my courtier, if the position interests you.”
I was a little bit flattered, admittedly. Christian Chase wasn’t at all hard on the eyes. A tall, powerfully-built, quiet man, his sharp, determined features, wavy red hair, perpetual 5 o’clock shadow, and broody green eyes always made me think of heroes on pirate romance covers or actors in Robin Hood movies. At forty-five, he was considered the youngest man to ever own and control a TV station in New York.
From what I understood, he’d started out in the mailroom when he was sixteen years old and had steadily worked his way up the ranks, helped very little by formal education. Then, in 2001, he was one of the first reporters on the scene of the 911 attacks. He fearlessly reported all through the burning of the World Trade Center, gaining a reputation as “The Wolf,” the man who could sniff a story anywhere in the city. From there, he’d shot up the ranks of news casting, eventually becoming VP of WGR. Even today, they said he had an impeccable nose for a good story.
When you put all that together, it was hard not to feel a little inadequate. Having grown up a poor farm boy in Iowa, I’d come from similar circumstances, but even aided by an excellent education that my parents had spent half their lives scraping for, I was nowhere I wanted to be in my life. I’d come to the big city with dreams of developing video games. Instead, I was repairing video equipment at WGR.
The station had a ton of competitors, and in today’s field of internet sabotage, a few cyberattacks were all that was needed to bring a huge media empire to its knees. When Mr. Chase discovered I had a knack for cleaning out viruses as well as electronic repair, he promoted me to head of what he called “Tech Security” on his team. The work was important and the pay excellent. Mr. Christian was like a dream to work for.
Well, had been, anyway.
I took the drink he offered. He looked me up and down and I could almost hear his silent disapproval of my outward appearance. For his head of Tech Security, I was a bit of a mess these days.
Since I had a tendency to work on electronic repairs in the oddest of places—under desks, in murky basement corners, and computer rooms crammed with stinking cleaning chemicals—I usually stuck to a uniform of jeans worn shiny from crawling along floors, old washworn T-shirts with fast food stains on them, threadbare pullovers and hoodies, and running shoes patched with duct tape. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford better; I just didn’t see the point. I was the first one here in the morning and usually the last to leave the building at night, sometimes working up to midnight on repairs that couldn’t wait. When I got back to my loft apartment, I was often so exhausted I just crashed, got up in the morning wearing the same clothes I’d slept in, and ran off to work without a shower, shave or washing my hair.
I was something of a slob. Sue me. But who was looking at me? I was the tech guy, the guy no one ever wanted to see unless their computer crashed or their Blackberry went on the fritz. There was a time before my twenty-fifth birthday when I could still make a man or woman’s head turn, but I knew damned well that those days were behind me. My last partner had left me, citing the fact that he could no longer live with my slovenly, workaholic self. My ship had long sailed. Mr. Chase’s offer made no sense to me.
“I think I mis-heard you…” I began.
“No, Ash, you didn’t.” Again he looked me over, but his look was different this time, more intense, and I squirmed under it. He settled on the arm of the settee and gave me his sharp little wolf eyes. This close, I could smell his spicy cologne—which just made me want to squirm more. I’d always been a sucker for a guy who smelled really good. “There’s no easy way of explaining this, so I’ll just be blunt and go ahead. I’m part of a private society of gentlemen who keep sexual companions. Courtesans and courtiers, depending on their gender. I’ve been part of this society for many years. In fact, I’ve kept a courtesan for more than five years now.”
I drank down a gulp of bourbon as I digested that. “So you have a…courtesan…sexual companion, whatever. What do you need me for?”
Mr. Chase’s mouth quirked up in a brief smile. “The Society has recently opened its doors to same-sex couples in a very big way. Up until now, taking a same-sex companion was discouraged, but the people I know have evolved gracefully into the new century and they want to give those of us who are bisexual or gay more play space, so to speak.”
I almost choked. Mr. Chase had never, ever, struck me as anything but straight up all-natural, boring vanilla. “I don’t know what to say,” I admitted. “Isn’t soliciting sex from someone a crime?”
Mr. Chase looked unperturbed. “The Society predates such laws. And I am not soliciting sex from you, Ash, although sex would be involved. I’m offering to make you my companion in the Society. Being my companion—my courtier—is much more involved than just soliciting your services as a stud.”
I couldn’t believe I was actually considering this, but I asked, “What exactly is involved? The sex part I get, but…what else is there, really?” I flinched when I realized how hard and cynical I sounded.
Mr. Chase tilted his head as he answered. “Gatherings, functions, balls, intimate dinners. All the things that companions share.”
“Like…dating?”
“We can include that, yes, if you want.”
I thought about dating Mr. Chase, which I found, admittedly, pretty exciting. But something about what he’d said about me being a courtier stopped me from saying yes just yet. “It’s not…I mean, you’re not talking about an even partnership, are you?” A thought occurred to me. “Are you a dom or something? I mean, are you into kink?”
“I’m a gentleman,” he said only, then rose to fetch a manila folder from his top desk drawer. He offered it to me. It was thick and I realized then that he was really serious about this stuff. “Everything you need to know to make your decision is here. If you decide to take me up on my offer, stay after work and meet me downstairs in the underground parking garage by my limousine. If I see you there after dark, I’ll know you’re serious about being my companion.” He took my hand brought my knuckles to his lips, kissing me like a suitor in some Jane Austen novel. “I do hope you’ll make it,” he said before dismissing me for the day.
***
Read an excerpt from Beauty’s Sleep (50 Shades of Fairy Tales) by Alex Crossman:
Usually, when a gal’s divorce papers first come through, she does something wild and spontaneous. Cuts and dyes her hair fuchsia, buys that chic little cocktail dress she never would have worn in any other life, takes a long-anticipated cruise. Unfortunately, I was neither wild nor spontaneous, and my best friends Sierra and Juanita were the first to complain about that.
“You never get out, Fern,” they’d berate me. “You never live, chica!” “You don’t have the salsa, gringo-girl!” This last was said with a great big grin on my friend Sierra’s pretty face, who was, herself, half “gringo”.
Of our little trio, I was the practical one, the one who had gone to medical school and had studied hard, who was dedicated to my job as an EMT First Responder. I had originally wanted to be a doctor, a pediatrician, but I soon learned that I loved the high energy of emergency work. I loved working over a cardiac arrest victim, or the victim of a shooting or drug overdose, and watching the hope in their faces when they realized that because of me, they were still breathing, still alive. For me, that was excitement, fulfillment and joy all wrapped up in one package.
My marriage was another matter. At first I blamed myself, telling myself over and over that the long hours and swing shifts driving an ambulance were driving Chuck crazy, that he was a good man who lived with a crazy wife who worked a crazy job. It was hard not to feel guilty. In some ways, I felt I was putting work before my marriage, something my conservative mother didn’t approve of and complained about constantly.
When Chuck’s drinking started, I felt even guiltier, like it was my fault. I begged Chuck to go to AA meetings, to get a mentor, to get help. I was willing
to help him anyway I could, but Chuck was a cop on the Chicago PD, he was a tough guy by nature, and I knew how he and his friends were: any cry for help was a sign of weakness, proof that they were not men. They all drank draft beer, went to ballgames, and talked about how their wives were ball-busters. I took it all in stride, trying to be there for Chuck the way I was there for Clive every night, my First Responder partner.
Then Chuck hit me.
I figured it was a one-off, everything coming to a head like a bad boil and breaking open. I thought we would heal after that, and for a while we did and things were good again. Then we had a pregnancy scare—my period was late and I was sure I had forgotten to take my morning pill that day. I’d been exhausted the day before, my brain muddied by hours of driving an ambulance through endless lower Chicago traffic while a gang of youths who had shot each other in a gang war bled all over the floor of the ambulance. Chuck said I’d forgotten accidently on purpose, that I wanted some brat so I wouldn’t have to work. Then he accused me of having an affair with Clive. I tried to be understanding; I knew he’d been drinking all evening. I tried to take the bottle away and he punched me in the stomach.
It turned out I wasn’t pregnant, thank God. But something about that last night finally got through to me. I finally stopped making excuses for Chuck’s drinking and behavior and swiftly moved out of our little suburban house. I went to live with my friend Sierra for a few weeks until I could get my own apartment in the city. About that time, I started my divorce proceedings.
Chuck showed up maybe a half dozen times, bearing increasingly expensive gifts and begging me to forgive him and take him back. He insisted he was a changed man after that last incident, that it had scared him sober. But I knew better. His dad was an alcoholic who had beat the crap out of his mom for almost thirty years. Well, I wasn’t about to become another battered woman, another statistic to be carried away in an ambulance one day. I sent him away, and when that wasn’t good enough for Chuck, I got a restraining order against him.
