When she’d gathered the force to kick, she’d been as surprised as he. The crunch of bone giving way under her foot. He’d started screaming, cursing them with threats and warnings. But he’d stopped. He’d dressed and left through the front door. It never happened again.

Less than a week later, she’d passed him in the street and again for so many days after that. He’d looked away, que cobarde. She’d had to see him in the papers. Watch him on television. Pretend it hadn’t happened. Didn’t matter. Pretend they’d all moved on.

Was this what Sonia was living through? Was this what her own silence was now abetting?

Her husband had to know what this meant to her. He was giving sanctuary to Rigo, a man who had his freedom because he was powerful. Patrick was putting so much on the line for these monsters. Why? It made no sense. As she felt her frustration grow into rage, she told herself she had to know the answer.

12

The Total Woman, Updated

On the street Natalie felt a little woozy, which she assumed was either due to her impending scalp cancer or her anxiety about being out of the office in the middle of Molegate, a veritable breaking news tsunami.

Or maybe this is how your soul feels when you start selling off parts of it.

She checked her watch: 10:15 a.m. That was late for work but early for doing battle with herself, which meant she needed coffee, and not the thin and watery blend they sold at the kiosk outside ATN’s offices.

Turning, she walked two blocks to BrewHouse, known as the unofficial coffee spot of the DC media-political set. With exposed brick, Marshall McLuhan quotes on the blackboard, and bearded baristas ready to tell you the birth-origin of each bean in your coffee, it was the most hipster place in the District.

Still, this being DC, it failed to attract a crowd that bore any genetic resemblance to hip. She entered to find it crowded with men uniformed in loose-fitting khaki pants and women sporting unkempt hair with not a fake lash in sight.

That could be you if you didn’t work in TV, she thought. If only you could go back to your twenty-one-year-old self and tell her to pick print instead.

Checking the time (10:21 a.m.) and the line (at least a dozen people ahead of her), she started feeling flush. Could these chemicals really be poisoning her? Maybe this was Bibb’s intention all along. Or Matt’s. He’s the one who’d insisted she listen to—what had he called her? The Machiavellian monster. Yes, this was Matt’s fault.

Her phone rang.

She put in her earpiece and answered, “I was just thinking about you.”

“I’m flattered. How is the hair?” Matt said, oblivious to the menace in her voice.