The Fortune Inside Me

Chapter 2 Gold in the Closet

I kicked off my shoes and set the stepladder under the grille. My hands trembled on the screwdriver, but not from fear. I was so wound up I could feel my pulse in my fingertips.

Left side first. The screws on the right are stripped, he never bothers tightening them all the way.

"You're sure about the position? Your father could walk in any minute. If we open the wrong place, we don't get a second try."

Mom, trust me. In the last life he always converted his skim money into gold and stashed it there. Four screws, then the grille pops out.

I worked the screws loose one at a time and pocketed them. The grille came away with a soft metallic scrape, and a breath of stale, dusty air drifted into my face. I reached into the dark opening up to my shoulder, fingers sweeping through nothing, then cobwebs, and then canvas.

My hand closed on a strap.

The bag was heavy, far heavier than I expected. I had to hug it to my chest with both arms to get it down, and for one bad second the ladder shifted under me.

Careful! Mom, if you fall, that's both of us gone!

"Don't say things like that," I hissed, but I got my feet back under me and made it to the floor.

I sat on the carpet and unzipped the duffel with shaking hands.

Gold. Bars of it in neat rows, catching the closet light. I had never seen that much gold outside of a movie. Underneath were bundles of hundred dollar bills held with rubber bands, each one thick as a brick.

"How much did you say this was?"

Around four million. That's money he siphoned out of Crossline behind his partners' backs. In the last timeline it was his starter fund for running off overseas with Sienna. And you know what happened while he was living it up down there? You were already gone, and nobody even came looking for you.

My chest went hot. Damian and I started with nothing. I ate garbage and wore the same coat for four winters so he could pour every cent into that company. And when the money finally came, he found himself a mistress, hid four million in a closet, and told me to sign away my life or starve.

I started pulling the bars out one by one and packing them into the rolling suitcase I had brought up from the garage. Then a thought stopped me cold.

"He's going to notice the bag is gone the second he opens this vent."

Mom, think. Take some of those old hardcovers he keeps in the study for show and stuff the bag with those. Put the grille back exactly how it was. He opens that vent maybe once a year, if that. By the time he figures it out, we'll be long gone.

I almost kissed my own belly. I grabbed a stack of the pretentious business biographies Damian displayed but never read, stuffed the duffel until the weight felt close enough, and zipped it back into the vent. I reset the grille, tightened the screws the way I had found them, and wiped every surface I had touched, even the ladder rails.

Then I sat on the bedroom floor, heart slamming, and waited for my breathing to slow down. Jumping off a bridge hadn't gotten my blood going like this.

That was when I heard the front door open downstairs.

"Martaa," Damian's voice floated up, flat and annoyed. "Did the crazy woman come back or not?"

Every muscle in my body locked up.

Mom, don't you dare panic. Right now you're the victim. You need to look broken, like you've already given up. Make him believe there's nothing left in you to fight with.

I shoved the suitcase deep under the bed, kicked a pile of laundry over it, then pulled my hair loose with both hands and sat down on the edge of the mattress. I thought about the bridge, about the black water, and the tears came easy. That was the thing about despair. I had plenty of it saved up. I just wasn't drowning in it anymore. I was spending it.

The bedroom door opened. Damian stood there in his four thousand dollar suit, and the look he gave me was the look you give a stain on something you were about to throw out anyway.

"So you're not dead," he said. "I figured you'd have more spine than that."

He loosened his tie and tossed a folder onto the bed beside me. Divorce papers.

"Since you're back, sign it. You walk away with nothing, and in exchange I'll pay for the procedure. You're not seriously planning to keep it, are you? A single mother with no money. Be realistic."

The procedure. He was standing in front of his pregnant wife offering to pay to have his own child removed, as a line item in a negotiation.

I'm his kid and even I want to kick him, Theo muttered. Hold it together, Mom. Play it dead inside. We need him relaxed.

I lifted my head slowly and let him see my empty eyes and my ruined face.

"Damian. Seven years. Is this really who you want to be?"

My voice came out raw and shaking, and the beautiful thing was that none of it was acting. It was just pointed in a different direction than he thought.

He lit a cigarette right there in the bedroom, not caring one bit that I was carrying his child.

"Nora, we're adults. Let's not make this uglier than it has to be. Sienna's pregnant. It's a boy. I owe them a family."

"You don't know what mine is yet. What if it's a girl? Were you going to bill me for the disappointment?"

Please. I'm more of a man than he'll ever be, Theo snapped. And Mom, that genius has no idea Sienna's baby isn't even his. It belongs to her personal trainer.

I nearly laughed out loud in the middle of my own tragedy. I dropped my face into my hands and let my shoulders shake, and from where Damian stood it read as sobbing.

"Fine," I whispered. "I'll sign."