TWO WEEKS TO FOREVER

CHAPTER FOUR: Behind The Mask

NICHOLAS MCCOY

Sunday, 6:47 PM

The penthouse is suddenly quiet.

It is always quiet though, but it's more painfully quiet on Sundays after Emma leaves.

I've been fighting for three years, and I've lost every single time.

“Mr. McCoy, you cannot provide a stable home environment. You work excessive hours. You have no partner to share childcare responsibilities. Your family history reflects a pattern of abandonment and dysfunction. Petition denied.”

The judge's words echo in my head every single day, it's louder today as I stand at the window watching Vanessa come pick up Emma, as they drive out of the parking lot.

My daughter was here for exactly two hours and thirty-three minutes.

I know because I counted every second.

Vanessa just likes reminding me that she controls when I see my daughter. How long I spend with her or whether I see her at all.

I went to my bar, took out an eighteen-year-old Macallan, poured myself a drink and sank into the leather chair facing the windows.

Vanessa Hartwell was a mistake I made when I was twenty-three and stupid and trying to prove to myself that I wasn't broken. That my mother leaving hadn't destroyed my ability to connect with people.

I was wrong.

We only lasted for three months. Three months of pretending we had something real before I realized she was only using me. Using my name, my connections and my money.

And then she got pregnant.

I had wanted to do the right thing, to make it work for the baby's sake. But, I never knew Vanessa had other plans.

"I don't need you, Nicholas," she had told me. "I only need your money. So here's how this is going to work: you pay child support, generous child support, and I'll let you see the baby. Sometimes. When it's convenient for me."

"That's not how this works," I'd said. "I'm the father. I have rights."

She'd laughed long and hard.

"Do you? Do you really? Because my lawyer says the courts don't look kindly on men from broken homes. Men whose own mothers abandoned them. Men who work ninety-hour weeks and have no idea how to be a father. So tell me, Nicholas, what judge is going to give you custody?"

She'd been right.

Because here I was, still fighting for custody after three years.

My phone rang. It's a call from Marcus Chen, my lawyer and friend.

“How did it go with Emma?” he asked, immediately I picked up.

“Spent only two hours with her. Vanessa came early.” I replied after a sigh.

“As usual. She's playing her card well. Nicholas, we need to talk. We need to discuss options. Real options.”

I know what he means by "options."

He's been suggesting it for months now. The one thing that might actually convince a judge I can provide stability.

Marriage.

I drank the scotch and poured another.

Marriage. As if I'm capable of that. As if I could bring another person into this disaster of a life and ask them to play along just so I can get my daughter back.

That’s if anyone would even agree to do it. Who in their right senses would want to put their life on hold, pretending to be my wife.

Just then, I remembered my father and the promise I made to him before he died.

"Don't become like me, son. Don't let one person's betrayal close your heart forever. I need you to promise me that you'll find love and get married. I need you to be happy."

I had promised, yea. He was dying, and I would have promised him anything.

But now I'm failing.

I've failed at relationships. Failed at being a marriage material. Failed at being the kind of man a woman would want to build a life with.

My mother made sure of that when she walked out.

And Vanessa reinforced it when she used our daughter as a weapon.

Marcus lets himself in five minutes later, carrying a bag from my favorite Thai place.

"You haven't eaten," he says. It's not a question.

"I'm not hungry."

"I don't care. Eat anyway."

Marcus is thirty-three, three years older than me, and has been my lawyer since I took over McCoy Group at twenty-seven. But somewhere along the way, he became more than my lawyer. He became the brother I never had.

The person who tells me the truth even when I don't want to hear it.

"Nicholas," he says, sitting across from me with his own plate after passing mine to me. "We need to talk about the marriage option."

"No."

"Yes. Because the custody hearing in six months is your last shot. If you lose this one, Vanessa gets primary custody until Emma is eighteen. You'll be relegated to supervised visits twice a month, and that’s if you're lucky."

My hands became sweaty instantly.

"You know what you need to do," Marcus continues quietly. "The judge made it clear. Stable home. Family environment. A partner. That's what they want to see."

"So I'm supposed to what? Go on Tinder and find a wife? Post an ad? 'Emotionally unavailable CEO seeks a woman to fake-marry for custody purposes'?"

"It doesn't have to be fake."

I looked at him sharply.

Marcus holds up his hands. "I'm just saying. Maybe this could be an opportunity to actually try. To let someone in."

"I let Vanessa in. Look how that turned out."

"Vanessa was a mistake when you were twenty-three. You're thirty now. You're different. You’re smarter. And not every woman is Vanessa."

"Aren't they?"

"No," he says simply. "They're not. And we both know you know that."

I thought about my mother. About how I used to worship her, how I thought she was perfect, how I believed family was everything.

And then one morning, she was just... gone. Left a note on the kitchen counter. “I can't do this anymore. Don't look for me”.

I had found my father sobbing in their bedroom, and I could tell, mommy wasn't coming back.

I was just twelve.

And I learned that day that love is a lie people tell themselves to feel less alone. That everyone leaves eventually. That the only person you can truly count on is yourself.

"I can't do it, Marcus," I said quietly. "I can't bring someone into Emma's life just to have them leave. She's been through enough."

"So you're just going to give up? Let Vanessa win?"

"I don't know!" The words explode out of me. "I don't know what to do. I've tried everything. The courts don't care that Vanessa manipulates Emma. They don't care that she uses our daughter for money. Don't care that I'm the one who actually wants to be a father. All they see is a workaholic bachelor from a broken home who clearly can't maintain relationships."

"Then change what they see."

"How?"

Marcus leans forward. "Find someone you trust. Someone who understands what's at stake. Someone who has as much to lose as you do. Make it a business arrangement if that makes it easier. A contract. Terms and conditions apply. But, the point is that you give the courts what they want to see."

"That's insane."

"Is it? You make business deals every day. This is just another deal."

"With a human being."

"With someone who gets something out of it too. You're not tricking anyone. You're offering a mutually beneficial arrangement."

I want to argue, but part of me, the desperate, drowning part that will do anything to get Emma back, is listening and reasoning.

"Who would even agree to something like that?" I asked.

"Someone desperate enough. Someone who needs what you can provide as much as you need what they can provide."

And suddenly, I thought of her.

The girl from this afternoon. Zara Simon.

Sitting in my office with her secondhand clothes, worn out shoes and her fierceness and desperation.

“My sister needs surgery that costs three hundred thousand dollars. That's not just money to me, Mr. McCoy. That's her life.”

She had looked at me like I was her last chance. Like she would fight anyone and anything to save her sister.

The same way I would fight to save my daughter.

"You're thinking of someone," Marcus says, reading my face too easily.

"No."

"Liar. Who is it?"

"Okay okay, you caught me.” I raised my hands up in surrender. “My new secretary. Maybe. I hired her today on a trial basis."

Marcus raises an eyebrow. "You hired a new secretary? How long do you think this one will last?"

"I don't know. But, she's different."

"Different how?"

I remembered how she was so fearless of me, more like she challenged me. No one had ever looked me in the eye expressing themselves like that.

"She's been through hell," I said slowly. "Her mother sounds abusive. Her father abandoned them. She's been raising her sister since she was ten years old. And now the sister is sick and needs surgery they can't afford."

"And you think she'd agree to marry you for money?"

"I don't know. Maybe. She said she'd do anything to save her sister." I shook my head. "But it's insane. I just met her. I don't know anything about her."

"You have two weeks to find out. That's why you hired her on trial, isn't it? You're already thinking about this."

He's right, and I hate that he's right.

"But, I can't," I said. "I can't ask someone to marry me as a business transaction. That's… absurd."

"It's not, Nich." Marcus said. "It's a strategy, the custody hearing is in six months. If you're going to do this, you need to do it now. You need to establish a stable relationship, show the courts you've changed, that you can provide a family environment."

Marcus stands up. "And I'm not saying you need to decide tonight. But think about it. And observe her, see if she's someone you can trust with this. Because if you're going to do this, you need someone strong enough to handle it."

After he left, I sat alone in the quiet penthouse, looking at Emma's drawing. She had drawn a house and titled it: Me and Daddy's house. She had excluded Vanessa like she understood everything.

I thought about Zara Simon. About how she understands what it means to fight for someone you love. The way she'd looked at me when she said, “I've been raising her since I was ten years old. She's both.”

The same fierce protectiveness I feel for Emma, she feels for her sister.

We're both fighting battles we're losing.

Both desperate enough to do whatever it takes.

Maybe Marcus is right.

Maybe this could work.

Not as some romantic fairy tale, but as what it actually is: a business arrangement between two desperate people who need each other.

I'll observe her and see if she's as strong as she seemed in that interview. If she can handle the pressure of working for me.

And if she can, I'll ask her to help me save my daughter.

The same way I could help her save her sister.

It's insane.

It's desperate.

But, it's the only option I have left.

Monday morning will tell me everything I need to know.