“I don’t know, Felicity.” His voice was muffled by the inches of wood between us. “Marin is just outside. What if she comes in?”

“She won’t. I just watched her light up a joint.” Not a joint, but no matter. “She’s probably as high as a kite right now…or on her way to it.”

Cody heaved a heavy sigh. Remorse? Hesitation? I silently begged him to stop. “I don’t know if we should be doing this.”

“I’m tired of the pain, Cody.” Her voice was silky and full of longing. “I just want the pain to stop. Please, help me make it stop.”

I could no longer breathe the pungent smell of lemon cleaner and despair. I couldn’t stand here, lurking under the stairs, waiting to hear my husband take my sister-in-law to bed. My stomach clenched at the imagery. My heart dropped to the floor. I ran out the front door, into the yard beneath the wedge of moon, jumped into my car, and cranked the engine. It rumbled an attempt, then stalled. I sobbed and screamed into the steering wheel, angry and devastated that Felicity’s grief was about to swallow the rest of us whole.

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Marin

Mortimer Randolph lived up to the expectations his hoity-toity name conjured. White. Uber-rich. Part cutthroat attorney, part asshole. I was Anne Hathaway to his Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, only he wore Brooks Brothers. I was unlucky enough to work for him as his personal assistant, a job description that included no end of humiliating chores. Such as fetching his socks along with his coffee. Or massaging his bony shoulders along with his inflated ego. Or ironing his KKK robe. Kidding, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the sonofabitch had one tucked away somewhere. I stuck around long enough to discover that he had one good quality. The only quality that made him redeemable to me and gave me the motivation to put up with him rather than kill him:

He thought everything—and everyone—was for sale, and no price was too big.

Karen Delacroix, his long-suffering legal secretary, also experienced firsthand the old pinchpenny’s many disgusting habits and sexism and prejudices, and despised him almost as much as I did. We often compared horror stories, a great tension-reliever, sitting in his expansive kitchen over coffee (of course, making sure Maleficent Morty, as we hatefully called him, wasn’t skulking about) and trying to one-up each other with regard to who had suffered the worst from his latest humiliation. Sadly, I usually won. But I was grateful I had an empathetic confidante in Karen. I don’t know how I would have survived without her.