My Ex Married My Enemy

CHAPTER 3: THE FLOOR

I don't know how long I sat on that floor.

The hallway on the third floor of the old law building on Lexington Avenue was not a place for crying. The walls were painted light grey and the paint was peeling near the ceiling. The floor tiles were white but had turned yellow in the corners from many years of feet. The air smelled like old paper and strong coffee. A small window at the end of the hallway was open and hot summer air from New York was coming inside, mixed with car horns from the street below.

People walked past me.

A lawyer carrying a big black file looked at me, then quickly looked away.

Two young interns holding Starbucks cups whispered when they saw me. "Is that not Julia Carter? The designer from Brooklyn?" one said.

"Yes, her husband just married someone else today," the other whispered back, but loud enough for me to hear.

I did not move. I could not move.

My back was against the cold wall. My legs were stretched out in front of me. My fine dress, the one I bought for my divorce day because I wanted to look strong and independent, was now dirty at the back. My shoes, my beautiful black heels from Zara that I saved for three months to buy, had fallen off one foot. My hair, which I had straightened in the morning to look powerful, was now stuck to my wet cheeks with tears and sweat.

On my lap was my divorce paper. Signed. Stamped.

I was finally free from Mark Harris. After three years of marriage where he made me feel small. After eight months of him begging me not to divorce, then shouting that no man will ever want me because I was too cold and too focused on my little sewing business, then finally agreeing because his new woman was already posting baby bump pictures - or so she claimed.

I was free. I should have been happy.

But my phone was on the floor beside me. The screen was cracked from when I threw it. And even with the cracked screen, I could still see the picture burned in my mind.

Mark and Vanessa. Her wedding. My company's death.

Vanessa Cole was my best friend for four years in college at FIT. She slept in my dorm room. She ate my ramen noodles. When my mother was sick with cancer, Vanessa stayed with me in the hospital for three nights in that small chair, holding my hand while I cried.

How does a sister become an enemy?

I remembered her face in school. She was always second. I was first in design class, she was second. I won best graduate collection, she was runner up. I got the internship with Marc Jacobs, she did not. She smiled every time and hugged me and said "You deserve it, Julia." But her eyes were never smiling.

And Mark. My Mark. He was not a bad man when I met him. He was soft and funny. He worked at a small marketing firm. He brought me wildflowers from Central Park, not from the expensive flower shops, because he said the park flowers were more real. He told me my designs would one day be in Vogue.

When did he change? Or did he never change, and I just never saw him?

My chest started to hurt again. The pain was too much. It was like a heavy stone was sitting on my chest. I could not breathe well.

"Why?" I whispered to the empty hallway. My voice was broken. "Why me? What did I do to them?"

I put my head in my hands and cried. Loud this time. I did not care who heard me. My shoulders shook hard. My whole body shook. Tears ran down my face, into my mouth, salty and hot. My nose was running. I was ugly and broken and alone on a dirty floor in Manhattan.

I heard footsteps. Slow, steady, heavy footsteps. Not the fast footsteps of lawyers. These steps were confident. Like the person knew the floor belonged to him.

"Excuse me, miss, you cannot sit here," a security guard's voice said. "Miss..."

"Leave," another voice said. A deep voice. Cold and low. A voice I knew.

The security guard's footsteps ran away quickly.

Then silence again. But I was not alone anymore. I could feel someone standing in front of me. A shadow fell over my legs, blocking the light from the small window.

I did not look up. I kept my head in my hands.

"Go away," I mumbled. My voice was thick.

The person did not go away.

I felt someone crouch down in front of me. Slowly. I heard the soft rustle of expensive fabric. I smelled him before I saw him. Clean, sharp, like fresh rain and expensive soap. A smell I had hated for two years because it belonged to my rival.

Adrian Blackwood.

"Julia," he said quietly.

I lifted my head. My eyes were swollen. I must have looked terrible. My mascara had run down my cheeks in black lines. My lips were trembling.

He was crouched on one knee, his dark charcoal suit touching the dirty floor. No man who owns a fifty-storey tower on Fifth Avenue does that. But he did. His face was close to mine. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, and they were looking at me not with pity. I hated pity more than anything today. He was looking at me with anger. But not anger at me. Anger for me.

"What are you doing here?" I whispered.

"I had a meeting with your divorce lawyer," he said. "He is my old classmate from Harvard. He called me when he saw the news about Carter Designs. He said you ran out."

He looked at my lap, at the crumpled divorce paper. He gently took it from my shaking hands. He smoothed it out carefully, like it was important, and folded it neatly.

"You got your freedom today," he said, putting the paper in his own breast pocket. "You should not be on the floor on your freedom day."

"Freedom?" I laughed, but it came out as a sob. "They took my company, Adrian. Mark gave my mother's company to Vanessa as a wedding gift. He forged my father's signature. My father is dying in the hospital and they stole from him. I have nothing. I have no husband, no company, no money to pay for my father's medicine. My freedom is useless."

My hands were shaking so badly I had to press them together to stop them. He saw it. He reached out and took my hands in his. His hands were big and warm and dry. Mine were cold and wet and small.

"Your hands are cold," he said softly.

"My whole life is cold," I said.

He held my hands tighter. His thumbs rubbed small circles on my wrists. The touch was strange. It was not romantic. It was... steadying. Like he was trying to put his strength into me through his hands.

"Listen to me, Julia Carter," he said, his voice low and firm. He leaned closer so I could see only his face. "Mark Harris thinks you are weak. Vanessa thinks you are finished. They posted that press release because they want everyone to laugh at you today so you will hide tomorrow. If you stay on this floor, they are right. You are finished."

"So what should I do?" I cried, my voice rising. "Should I go and beg them? Should I kneel in front of Vanessa and ask her to give me back my own mother's company?"

"No," he said sharply. His grip on my hands became tighter. "You should stand up. You should come with me. You should take it back and make them kneel."

I stared at him.

"How?" I whispered.

"I will tell you how," he said. He finally let go of one hand and took out his phone. He showed me a picture. It was my studio gate in Brooklyn. The gate I painted pink with my mother when I was sixteen. There was a new chain on it. A big, thick, silver chain with a new padlock.

"They locked your workers outside an hour ago," he said. "Your head seamstress, Rosa, she is sitting outside the gate in the sun with her sewing machine on her lap. She refused to leave. She said, 'This is Julia's father's place, I will not leave.' Your workers are crying outside, Julia. They are waiting for you. Not for a girl crying on the floor. For their boss."

Rosa. She had worked with my mother for twenty years. She taught me how to thread my first needle. She was sixty years old, sitting in the hot sun because of me.

Something hot moved inside my chest. It pushed the cold sadness away. It was fire. Anger. Shame.

I wiped my face hard with my free hand. My hand came away black with mascara.

"I need to go to them," I said, trying to stand up. My legs were numb. I stumbled.

Adrian stood up quickly and caught me. One arm around my waist. Strong and fast. My body hit his chest. Hard chest, soft suit. I could hear his heart beating. It was beating fast, not slow and calm like he looked.

"Easy," he whispered into my hair. His breath was warm on my forehead. For a second, we just stood like that in the empty hallway, my face against his chest, his arm around my waist, both of us breathing hard.

Then he stepped back, like he remembered something. His face became cold again.

"Can you walk?" he asked, his voice business-like again.

"Yes," I said. My voice was still shaky, but stronger.

He bent down and picked up my fallen shoe. He did not hand it to me. He knelt down again and held it out for my foot.

"I can do it," I said quickly, embarrassed.

"Just put your foot in, Julia," he said, looking up at me, his eyes serious.

I put my bare foot into the shoe. His fingers brushed my ankle. A small touch, but my whole leg shivered.

He stood up, picked up my cracked phone and my bag from the floor.

"Let's go," he said. "My car is downstairs. And Julia..."

He looked at me one more time, from my dirty dress to my swollen eyes.

"From today, you don't cry where people can see you. You cry in front of me only. And when we are outside, you look them in the eye. You are not a girl who sits on floors. You are the woman who is going to own that floor."

I nodded. I could not speak. My throat was tight.

We walked to the elevator together. I limped a little. He slowed his long steps to match my short, painful steps. He did not hold my hand, but he walked very close, so close his shoulder almost touched mine, like he was guarding me from anyone who might look at me.

Inside the elevator, the metal doors closed. It was just us two. The small box started going down.

I looked at our reflection in the shiny elevator door. Me, dirty, broken, but standing. Him, tall, perfect, standing beside me. We looked like two people from different worlds.

His phone rang loudly in the small space. He frowned and answered, putting it on speaker by mistake because his other hand was holding my bag.

A man's voice came out, panicked: "Sir! Sir, we checked the document! Mark Harris did forge Mr. Carter's signature! But sir, the order did not come from Mark alone! We traced the email! Your father... your father told Mark to do it! Your father is backing them, sir!"

The elevator stopped moving.

Adrian's face changed. All the blood left it. His hand holding the phone turned white.

My heart stopped beating.

His father? The father who abandoned him? Was working with my ex-husband?

Adrian looked at me slowly, his eyes full of a pain I had never seen before, and whispered, "Julia, if my father is with them, this war just became personal... and they will not stop until one of us is completely destroyed."