Pretending To Belong To THE BEAST

Mira’s POV Quebec City, Christmas morning. Somewhere out in that snowstorm, a man they call The Beast was heading straight for me, and I had no idea. I was blissfully and stupidly unaware. But first let me tell you how I lost everything. Because yeah! This is the part where my life blows up. 24 Hours Earlier... For almost a whole year I fixed everyone else's problems and thought I had things under control. I was the HANDLE IT PR girl. The duct tape. The glue that worked at Julian's company fixing big messes. When famous people did something bad, I made it look okay to the public but I had ABSOLUTELY no clue the biggest disaster of my year was sitting right in my own living room. I was proud of myself. And that even made it worse. A Christmas song played softly on the radio. Jingle, jingle. Fa-la-la. The whole cheerful mess of it. But another sound slipped in under the music as I walked home. "We Wish You a Merry Christmas. And a Happy New Year in Advance…" Then laughter. I hugged a velvet-wrapped gift box to my chest. Inside the box was the old Rolex I had been tracking down for months. I felt excited as though I was finally doing something right. It was the best gift for him, for Julian. My Fiancée. My boss. The man I had built a life and a company around. I pushed the heavy oak door of the house open with my shoulder with my gloves squeaking against the brass handle, I saw past the big flashy Christmas tree the little bunch of mistletoe I'd put up the day before. Then my brain shut off but my eyes kept taking all that I was seeing all in. But my heart? My heart was already breaking. I felt stupid like I should’ve known this was going to happen. I knew I’d remember this moment forever and I tried my best to make it make sense even while it didn’t. No. No, no, no. It was Julian. And Cora, my twenty-two-year-old helper. I blinked once in a hard way like that could erase them. She stood there like she owned the place with her fingers in his hair while his left fingers were in between her hips moving back and forth like it was nothing. It was so easy and comfortable between them that my stomach immediately turned. Ugh. Cora laughed again. The kind of laugh that said, I Already Won And You Just Figured It You Just Figured It Out. It sounded soft and pretty…and of course, completely fake. I couldn't breathe. The room felt like it was closing in, then one foot slid back like my body wanted to run without asking me. The box I was holding slipped from my numb fingers. THUD. THUD. It bounced twice on the floor before going still. They moved their heads toward me. And for one quick second, panic crossed Julain’s face. Then just like that, the mask went back on. I mean the one he used for cameras, but the worst part was, I was the one who had trained him to do it. Cora was still smiling and her lips painted with the rich red lipstick I had bought her while she wore the silk dress I'd gifted her for her birthday. It was just two months ago that Julian got down on one knee in front of everyone at work and asked me to be his wife. The whole office ate it up, shouting SAY YES, SAY YES! It was now two months of having his diamond ring on my finger. Two months of picking the date, the place, the cooks. The girl I used to be, the one who grew up scared and broke in Queens, would have completely fallen apart. I would have thrown a crystal vase at the TV and cried until I had nothing left. But the woman I had become, the fixer, simply stood there and was frozen in the doorway. My mind went straight to problem-solving mode but then for once, there was nothing to fix. "Mira… uh…" Julian moved back from Cora as he quickly fixed his unbuttoned shirt. "Honey… uh… honey, this…this just isn't what it looks like." His words were so old it almost made me laugh. "Isn't it, though?" I said with my voice very flat. I had used that flat voice on senators and CEOs. It worked every time. "I mean, it looks like my guy is screwing my assistant under the mistletoe. On Christmas Eve. It's pretty clear from where I'm standing, you know, Julian." I kept moving into the room. The sound of my heels clicked against the floorboards. CLICK. CLICK. I bent down as I fought the ache in my chest, picked up the Rolex box and placed it on purpose on the glass coffee table. SCRAPE. "You're, uh, freaking out," he said with this weird calm finding its way into his voice. The kind of calm that bugged me. "We were just… you know… having fun." "F…fun? Seriously?" The very word felt wrong coming out of my mouth. Cora clicked her tongue while stepping out from the door. Tsk. That little sound hit harder than a shout. Um…what? This actually did wave at me. "Oh, come on, Mira, I mean… it's the holiday season. You can't run everything. Besides, he gets lonely, like… You're always working." Her words were mean and they stung, no doubt about that. This was the same girl who couldn't draft her own press notes without my help and now she was talking on my love life? I remembered her talk, the fire, the hope. I had believed in her the way I once believed in myself. And that right there was the most Queens thing about me because I always bet on the underdog, even when the underdog was about to bite me. That kind of betrayal doesn't just hurt. It burns you out. I had trusted them both and they had used that against me. I turned my focus only to him. Because Cora wasn’t the real problem. He was. Julian was. "Okay. Get out of my apartment. Just go." He let out a sharp laugh and stopped pretending to be the good guy. "OUR apartment, Mira. I mean… my name is on the lease. We're staying here. Cora and I. We just… we need to… I mean, we have to talk. Like adults." "There's nothing to talk about." I turned toward the bedroom. I grabbed a small box from the closet and started packing random things. Shirts. Pajamas. Underwear. Just enough for a getaway. Julian walked behind me and leaned against the doorframe. "Don't be so dramatic. You're letting your emotions take over. You're a fixer, Mira. A great one. But you're no fun. All you care about is work. Control. Everything you've worked for? You built yourself a prison and called it success." I dug my nails into my palms. The real trap was being poor with no way out and I had fought my whole life to escape it. He had never gone to bed hungry. He didn't know what it felt like to check your bank balance and pray. He would never get it. "I'm leaving," I said bluntly while zipping the box "I'll call an Uber." My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely unlock my phone. I opened the app and touched the car icon. Any place was okay. Anywhere that wasn't here. And certainly, anywhere that didn't smell like his cologne and her perfume mixed together. Then, a small red message popped up. PAYMENT METHOD DECLINED. Wait…No. That was the corporate card. I tried again. I jabbed the screen twice like it was the phone’s fault. PAYMENT METHOD DECLINED. No, no, no. My stomach dropped like a rock. I pulled out my personal debit card, the one linked to our joint account. Our wedding fund. I typed in the numbers. PAYMENT METHOD DECLINED. I looked up at Julian. He was smiling. A slow and deliberate smile, like he had been waiting for this moment all along. "Having trouble there?" he asked while faking concern. "Julian…what did you do?" My voice cracked on his name. Just slightly. I hated that. "Just… protecting our finances," he said smoothly. "I reported the work credit cards as suspicious so they'd get shut off. Since I'm, uh, the main contact on the account, it's my job." I had been blind. Mira Solace was the fixer who couldn't even fix her own life. Real cute, girl. He'd cornered me. "What about the joint account?" I asked. "The wedding fund? Or it WAS." He shrugged. "Now it's for the future of the company. My company." He took it all. The job, the home, the money, the future. In less than an hour, I had gone from being one of the most powerful women in my field to a girl in a fancy dress with nowhere to go. It was like a full circle back to Queens. Something in me snapped. I lifted my box and walked toward him. He stood up tall, waiting for me to beg. "Mira… I… just…" Julian moved back. I didn't even give him a glance. I reached around him and grabbed the keys, then let them fall from my fingers one by one. "You'll have… you'll have nothing," he hissed as I opened the door. "I'll make sure… every single person in this business thinks you're a thief. By the time I'm done, no one will hire you. Your name will mean nothing." My mouth opened, but…I didn't say a word. I walked down the hall, pushing my way out onto the freezing New York sidewalk. STOMP. STOMP. STOMP. I didn't care who heard. There I was on the sidewalk in an expensive dress with one box in my hand, and zero dollars to my name. But what truly scared me wasn't just the betrayal. It was knowing that Julian would make good on his threat. I had to get gone and I had to do it tonight. Because once the world woke up, Julian would probably start the hunt.