Sterling’s Fortune

Chapter 17

The smell of rising dough usually meant comfort. It meant Sunday mornings and warmth.

But to Elodie, sitting in the back room of Rosa’s Panetteria in Hell’s Kitchen, the smell was suffocating.

She sat at a small Formica table, wrapped in a wool blanket. Her emerald dress was ruined, the hem stained with salt and slush, drying stiff against her legs.

Rosa, a woman with kind eyes and flour on her apron, placed a mug of hot chocolate in front of her.

"Drink," Rosa commanded gently. "You are still shivering, my dear."

Elodie wrapped her hands around the mug, but the warmth didn't reach her bones. She kept seeing Alistair standing in the dark museum gallery, holding the dead bracelet. She kept hearing the desperation in his voice. Contracts are the only things that don't leave me.

Arthur came in from the front of the shop. He was brushing snow off his shoulders. He held a battery-powered emergency radio in his hand.

"The grid is gone," Arthur said, his voice low. "ConEd says it could be days. The subways are flooded. Manhattan is an island again."

He sat down opposite Elodie. He looked tired.

"The bridges?" Elodie asked, her voice raspy.

"Closed. The Queensboro is a sheet of ice. We’re stuck here, Miss Rose."

Elodie nodded slowly. She stirred the hot chocolate. "It’s better this way. I can't go back to the penthouse. And I can't go to my mom’s. I'm... in limbo."

"Miss Rose," Arthur hesitated. He turned the volume up on the radio. "You need to hear this."

Static crackled, filling the small, warm kitchen with a harsh, electronic hiss. Then, a reporter’s voice cut through, tense and breathless.

“…repeating the urgent warning from the NYPD. All residents in the vicinity of Columbus Circle must evacuate immediately. Structural engineers report that the facade of Sterling Tower is compromised. I repeat, the glass facade is failing.”

Elodie’s head snapped up. "Failing?"

"Witnesses report loud cracking sounds," the reporter continued. "The sudden temperature drop has caused the steel frame to contract faster than the glass. The building is literally freezing from the inside out. Large sheets of glass are falling onto the street. It is a death zone."

Elodie looked at Arthur. "He’s in there."

"Yes," Arthur said heavily. "Security confirmed he locked the penthouse from the inside. He refused the evacuation order."

"He’s going to bring the whole thing down on top of himself," Elodie whispered. Her anger, which had been a shield for the last two hours, suddenly cracked. Beneath it was terror. "Why is he so stupid?"

"He’s not stupid," Arthur said softly. "He’s resigned. He thinks he deserves the ice."

Elodie stood up. The chair screeched against the linoleum.

She paced the small kitchen. Three steps left, three steps right.

She hated him. She hated the contract. She hated that he had treated her love like a liability to be insured.

But she also remembered the man who had sat on the floor of her dusty apartment in Queens, eating pizza and looking at her art with reverence. She remembered the man who had defended her to the board.

He wasn't a monster. He was a man who had been alone for so long that he had forgotten how to hold something without crushing it.

"He tried to own me," Elodie said to the air. "He tried to turn me into property."

"He did," Arthur agreed.

"He’s an i***t," she said, tears pricking her eyes. "A terrified, arrogant idiot."

She stopped pacing. She looked at Arthur.

"But he’s my idiot."

Arthur smiled. It was a small, sad smile. "So, what are we doing?"

"I need your keys," Elodie said.

"Miss Rose, the Escalade can handle snow, but the streets are—"

"I don't care," Elodie cut him off. She grabbed Rosa’s heavy wool coat from the rack—a practical, scratchy grey thing—and threw it over her ruined gown. "If the building is freezing because the magic is broken, then maybe the magic is broken because I left."

"You think you can fix the structure?" Arthur asked, standing up.

"I think the storm is reacting to him," Elodie said, buttoning the coat. "It’s an echo chamber. His coldness is feeding the storm, and the storm is feeding the building. If I can get to him... if I can wake him up... maybe I can stop the shatter."

She held out her hand. "Keys. Or you drive. But we are going to Columbus Circle."

Arthur looked at her. He saw the fire in her eyes. It was the only warm thing in New York City right now.

He grabbed his jacket.

"Rosa," Arthur called out. "Pack a bag of those biscotti. We’re going on a rescue mission."

The drive was a nightmare.

The streets of Manhattan were unrecognizable. Cars were buried under drifts that reached the rooftops of sedans. The wind howled like a living thing, shaking the heavy frame of the Escalade.

Arthur drove with grim determination, hopping curbs, navigating around abandoned buses, and driving the wrong way down one-way streets.

As they got closer to Midtown, the temperature dropped even further. The windows of the car began to frost over on the inside.

"It’s getting colder the closer we get," Arthur noted, blasting the defroster. "It’s like driving into a freezer."

And then, they saw it.

Sterling Tower.

It rose out of the storm like a jagged spear of ice. The sleek, modern glass was covered in a thick rime of white frost.

CRACK.

A sound like a cannon shot echoed through the street.

High up, near the fiftieth floor, a massive pane of glass shattered. It fell in slow motion, tumbling end over end, before smashing into the street below, exploding into diamond dust.

"My god," Elodie whispered. "It’s falling apart."

Arthur pulled the car up to the side entrance, shielded by a concrete overhang.

"This is as close as I can get," Arthur yelled over the wind. "The elevators are dead, Miss Rose. The power is out."

"I know," Elodie said. She opened the door. The wind hit her like a physical blow, stealing her breath.

"Eighty floors!" Arthur shouted. "You can't climb eighty floors in heels!"

Elodie looked down at her strappy designer heels. She kicked them off. She stood in the snow in her bare feet for a second, then reached into the back seat and grabbed a pair of Arthur’s spare work boots he kept in the trunk. They were three sizes too big.

She shoved her feet into them and laced them tight.

"Watch me," she yelled back.

She ran for the service door. It was locked, frozen shut.

Elodie grabbed the handle. She closed her eyes. She thought of Alistair. Not the CEO. The man.

Let me in, she thought furiously.

She didn't have the bracelet. She didn't have the "magic." But she had something else. She had rage. And she had love.

She yanked the handle.

CRACK.

The ice sealing the door shattered. The door groaned and swung open.

Elodie turned back to Arthur, who was staring at her through the windshield. She waved once, then disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell.

The climb was purgatory.

The stairwell was pitch black. Elodie used the flashlight on her phone, but the battery was dying. The beam was weak, cutting through the dusty, freezing air.

Floor 10. Her legs burned.

Floor 20. Her lungs screamed.

Floor 30. The cold was seeping through Rosa’s coat.

Every ten floors, the building groaned. The steel girders were contracting, screaming under the thermal stress. It sounded like the building was in pain.

Keep going, she told herself. He’s waiting. He’s freezing.

Floor 50.

She collapsed on the landing, gasping for air. Her vision swam. It was too far. She was just a girl from Queens. She wasn't a superhero.

She looked at her wrist. It was bare. There was a pale band of skin where the bracelet had been.

She touched the spot.

"I don't need luck," she whispered, forcing herself to stand up. "I have stubbornness."

She grabbed the railing and hauled herself up.

Floor 60.

Floor 70.

The air up here was thin and lethally cold. Frost coated the handrails.

Floor 80.

The Penthouse door.

It was a heavy steel fire door. Elodie threw her weight against it. It didn't budge. It was frozen solid.

"Alistair!" she screamed, pounding on the metal. "Alistair, open the door!"

Silence.

She pounded until her fists bruised. "Open it! I didn't climb eighty flights of stairs for you to die on me now! Open the damn door!"

Nothing.

She sank to her knees. She was sobbing now, hot tears freezing on her face.

"Please," she whispered against the cold steel. "Please let me in."

And then, faintly, she heard it.

Click.

It wasn't a mechanical click. It was the sound of a lock tumbling.

The heavy door creaked. It opened an inch.

A blast of air, colder than anything in the stairwell, rushed out.

Elodie scrambled to her feet. She pushed the door open.

The penthouse was unrecognizable. Snow had drifted in through the cracked windows. The furniture was white.

And there, in front of the dying fire, sat Alistair.

He was still wearing his tuxedo. His skin was the color of marble. His eyes were open, staring at the embers, but they were glassy.

He didn't look up when she entered. He didn't seem to know she was there.

"Alistair," Elodie breathed.

She ran across the frozen room. She fell to her knees in front of his chair.

"Alistair, look at me."

He blinked slowly. He turned his head. It seemed to take an enormous effort.

"Elodie?" his voice was a husk. A ghost of a sound. "You're... a hallucination."

"I am not a hallucination," she snapped, grabbing his frozen hands. "I am real. And I am furious. And I am freezing."

Alistair looked at her hands holding his. He frowned, confused.

"You're warm," he whispered.

"Yes. I'm warm." She started rubbing his hands, trying to generate friction. "We have to get you up. We have to go."

"Can't," Alistair murmured. His eyes started to drift shut. "Contract... expired. Terms... void."

"Shut up about the contract!" Elodie yelled. She slapped his cheek. Lightly, but enough to make a sound.

His eyes snapped open.

"Don't you dare close your eyes," she commanded. "You wanted to own me? Fine. You want to make a deal? Let’s make a deal."

She reached into his pocket. She felt the cold metal. She pulled out the bracelet.

"Here is the deal," she said, her voice shaking. "I put this back on. I save your life. I save your company. I save this stupid tower."

Alistair watched her, mesmerized.

"And in exchange," Elodie said, holding the bracelet up in the dying firelight, "You never, ever try to own me again. You treat me like a partner. You trust me. Or so help me god, I will leave you in this snowbank and I won't look back."

She looked him in the eye.

"Do we have a deal, Mr. Sterling?"

Alistair looked at her. He looked at the fire in her eyes. The ice in his chest cracked.

"Deal," he whispered.

Elodie snapped the bracelet onto her wrist.

CLICK.