Pretending To Belong To THE BEAST

Mira's POV 358 days! Those were the number of days I had spent cleaning up other people's messes, thinking my work was done. But little did I know that the biggest disaster of the year was waiting for me in my own living room on Christmas Eve. The sound of A MERRY CHRISTMAS was playing softly on the stereo. But there was something else that mingled with the music. “We Wish You a Merry Christmas. And a Happy New Year in Advance…” Then Laughter… I held a gift box against my chest. Inside the box was the vintage Rolex I had been looking for for months. It was the ultimate gift for him, for Julian. My fiancé, my boss. I pushed the door open, catching a glimpse, beyond the sparkling Christmas tree, of the mistletoe that I had hung above the arch. Instantly, I was living in two separate worlds. This was a moment I would remember until the day I die; the embarrassment, my brain trying to process what it was seeing with my eyes. It was Julian. And Cora, my assistant. She was pressed against the doorframe, hands in his hair, his left hand in between her hips. Another laugh came out. This time it was sweet and false. I couldn't breathe. The box I was holding had slipped out of my hands, and I heard it clatter on the floor. They looked at me immediately. There was a flicker of panic in Julian's eyes for a split second until he masked it with that smooth, perfect face that I recognized so well. Cora was smiling, wearing that red lipstick and the dress that I’d bought for her birthday. It had only been two months since Julian dropped down on one knee and proposed that I marry him in front of the entire group of the Julian & Associates staff. Two months of having his ring on my finger. Two months of picking the date of the wedding. If it was the old me, I would have lost it, pitched something at the television, and bawled. But the woman I had become, the fixer, simply stood there, frozen. This was a problem that I could not fix. “Mira…” Julian moved back from Cora, adjusting his singlet. “Honey…honey this just isn’t what it looks like.” His words were so bad it almost made me laugh. “Isn’t it?” I said, blankly. “Looks like my fiancé is screwing my assistant under the mistletoe.” “Yes! And on Christmas Eve too? Pretty obvious from where I’m standing.” I continued moving. The sound of my heels was clicking like the sound of a clock ticking. I bent down, fighting the ache in my chest, picked up the gift, and placed it on a table. “You're overreacting,” he said and a fake kind of calm found its way into his voice. The kind of calm that sent my skin crawling. “We were just having fun.” “Fun?” The very word was like dirt. Cora clicked her tongue. She waved at me. “Oh, come on, Mira. It's the holiday season. You can't control everything. Besides, Julian can get lonely, you know.” This condescending tone of her words irritated me. This was the same girl who had not been able to write her own e-mails, and she was waxing poetic about empathy. I remembered her interview, the passion, the promise, and yeah, I saw myself when I was younger in cora. Bile had risen in my throat at the thought of it. I had handed Julian the knife, turned my back and thanked him for the privilege of being stabbed. I turned my attention to him. “Get out of my apartment. Just go.” He laughed harshly. "OUR apartment, Mira. We're staying here. Cora and I. We just…have to talk. Like adults." “There’s nothing to talk about.” I turned toward the bedroom. Maybe their bedroom now. My gut was twisting at the rumpled bedsheets and the areas where their bodies had been. I started packing random things into the small box. Shirt. Bumshort. Pyjamas. Undies. I had enough for a getaway for the holidays. Julian merely trailed behind me, closing the door. “Don’t be so dramatic. Your feelings are getting the better of you.” “My feelings?” I repeated, shocked, with my arms full of silk clothes. “You needed me to withdraw the total savings for your bank account. For us. For business.” “And it is for our future,” he said quietly. “I won’t lie. I’m just reconsidering what that future looks like.” “Move,” I said, trying to get around him. He didn’t. “Cora's right, you know,” he said. “You're a fixer. A great one, yeah. But you're no fun. All you care about is work. Control.” He nodded toward the clean room. “This life you've built? It's a cage.” I dug my nails into the palms of my hands. The cage wasn’t this life. The cage was poverty, and I’d clawed my way out of it. He would never understand. He had never known hunger. "I'm leaving," I said bluntly. "I'll call an Uber." My hands were shaking so violently that I could barely text. I opened the application, touched the car icon with my thumb. Any place was okay. Just far from here. Then there was a small red message. Payment Method Declined. What? No. That was for the company. I tried again. Payment Method Declined. This time, a cold lump formed in my stomach. I tried using my own debit card, the one that was linked to the joint account. Our wedding fund. Payment method declined. The air left me. I felt cold dread spread over me. I looked at Julian. He looked smaller, or maybe I was finally seeing him. The sharp suit, the hair I’d imagined, the career I’d built for him while taking s**t from his client. He was smiling. "Having trouble?" he asked, pretending to be worried. “What did you do, Julian?” “Just protecting our finances,” he said as if he was forced to talk. “I flagged the corporate credit cards because of suspicious activity. Since I’m the main contact on the account, it’s on me.” I had been blind. Blind in love. He’d cornered me. “What about the joint account?” I asked, my brain seething with the question. “The wedding fund you mean. 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. I had changed, within an hour, from one of the best problem solvers to a homeless joke. Something in me suddenly snapped. The tough woman I’d built was falling apart, and the scared little girl from Queens was emerging. I lifted the small box and walked toward him. He expected an argument. A plea. He puffed out his chest. But I didn't even give him a glance. I reached around him, grabbing the cold doorknob. “You'll have nothing,” he hissed. “I'll tell everyone that you stole from the company. I'll ruin you.” I didn't utter a word. I opened the door. I passed Cora, who stood there with her arms crossed, pressing her phone. She looked bored. I walked toward the front door. The keys were on the table. They were apartment keys, office keys, keys of my old life. I touched the cold metal and then dropped them. They clanged on the table. I didn’t look back. I pushed the door open and left. Laughter had burst out behind me, and then the sound of the deadbolt locking. I walked down the hall, past the elevators, pushing my way out onto the sidewalk. It punched me in the gut. It was cold. Then I was now standing in the corner of the cold streets wearing a five-hundred-dollar dress with my box and not a single dollar in my purse. But the one thing that hit me was not only the realization of his betrayal or the fact that I needed money to disappear immediately. What truly terrified me was that I had no idea of how far Julian would go. *** Minutes Later… The next thing that I knew, I was in a pawn shop. I pushed the door open, and the stupid bell on top of the doorway rang out. Dust swirled around, along with forgotten things. My jewelry spilled onto the scratched surface of the counter of the pawnshop; the Cartier anniversary bracelet celebrating our first anniversary, the diamond earrings given for a business deal that was worth a fortune. The guy behind the bars on the other side of the counter didn’t even glance up. Greasy hair, vacant eyes, crooked teeth. He also had a book in his hand titled THE DUKE’S FORBIDDEN PASSION that he was turning with a licked finger. He then casually pushed the bracelet with his fingernail. “Hundred for the bracelet,” he said, chewing on a toothpick hanging somewhere in his mouth. “Fifty for the earrings.” His words slapped me. "Are you kidding me?" I stuttered. "That's Cartier. That's five thousand. And those diamonds? A carat apiece." He looked up. He saw my dress, my trembling hands, the crazy look on my face. His face changed, not with pity, but calculation. “Another fiancé? Let me guess. Blonde? Secretary? It’s always the secretary.” he said, his voice casual. “Anyways Lady, I don’t care about…what you think,” he said outright. “It's all junk to me. I gotta pay rent. And you’ve got a sad story. Everyone’s got one.” He nodded toward the roomful of possessions. “These stories end the same.” I attempted to resist his words with my brain. “Look, this isn't a sad story, it's business,” I said, and even I knew it sounded lame. “The real value of the gold alone is ten times what you're paying. Come on man.” He coughed a laugh. "Reasonable is my price. Okay. You know what? Two fifty for everything. That's my best price. Take it or you can f*****g leave sweetheart.”