I felt Sable’s hand on my elbow – light, steadying, the touch of someone reading the room and not liking what they saw.
“Marlowe,” she murmured. “Let’s think about this.”
But I was past thinking. Something had broken free inside me – the same thing that had fueled the slap on the balcony, the same furnace that burned when I felt dismissed or diminished or denied agency over my own life. Except this time, the fire was colder. More focused. Less palm-to-cheek and more I-will-walk-into-your-office-and-make-you-say-my-name.
“You know what?” I said, straightening to my full height – which, in these heels, was considerable. “Forget the desk. Forget the phone call. I’m going up.”
The receptionist’s composure cracked. She reached for the phone. “Security-“
I was already moving.
Sable fell into step beside me – not hesitantly, not reluctantly, but with the immediate, unquestioning loyalty of a woman who’d decided that wherever Marlowe goes, she goes, and if Marlowe was storming the castle, then Sable was the siege engine.
“Do you know what floor he’s on?” I asked, walking fast, heels striking the marble like punctuation marks.
“Top floor. Where else?”
Behind us, the receptionist’s voice cut through the lobby: “Security! Security to the main lobby!”
The word ricocheted off the marble walls and the glass ceiling and the polished stone floors, and heads turned, conversations paused, and for a moment the entire ecosystem of Caelum’s corporate empire swiveled its attention toward two women in dresses marching toward the elevator bank with the determination of an invading army that had forgotten to bring weapons.
They arrived fast – two security guards, broad and uniformed, emerging from wherever security guards lurk when they’re not being needed. They were large in the way that security guards are required to be large: thick-necked, wide-shouldered, trained to fill doorways and look impassable.
“Ladies,” the first one said, stepping into our path with his hands raised. “You’ll need to come with us.”
“I’ll need to do nothing of the kind,” I said. “I’m trying to visit my husband.”
“Ma’am, we’ve been instructed-“
His hand reached for my arm. Reflex – not thought, not decision, pure instinct – I slapped it away. Not his face. His hand. But the slap was sharp and loud and it echoed through the lobby with the crack of a starting pistol.
Everything went still.
The guard stared at his hand. I stared at the guard. Sable, beside me, had gone very quiet in a way that I would later learn meant she was calculating angles.
The second guard moved toward Sable. He reached for her shoulder. And what happened next was so fast, so fluid, so utterly unexpected that my brain processed it in delayed fragments, like a film reel skipping frames:
Sable pivoted. Her elbow connected with the guard’s solar plexus – a short, precise strike that carried more force than her frame suggested was possible. He doubled forward, breath leaving him in a grunt. Before he could recover, her knee came up – not high, just enough – and he folded like a piece of furniture that had lost its structural integrity.
He went down.
The lobby, which had been holding its breath, exhaled.
I stared at Sable. “You know how to fight?”
“I know how to do many things, Marlowe.” She grabbed my hand and pulled. “We need to move. Now.”
We ran. The elevator bank was thirty feet away, then twenty, then ten. Behind us, heavy footsteps – more guards, summoned by the commotion, their shoes pounding the marble like approaching thunder. I could hear the receptionist shouting into her phone, could feel the entire building shifting into threat-response mode, and some small, detached part of my brain noted that I had gone from “surprising my husband with a visit” to “staging an armed incursion on a corporate headquarters” in approximately four minutes.
We reached the elevators. I jabbed the call button. Jabbed it again. The arrow above the doors glowed – the elevator was descending, 12… 11… 10… Each number an eternity. Behind us, the footsteps were getting louder.
The doors opened.
I looked inside.
Four guards. Standing shoulder to shoulder, arms crossed, faces carved from the same block of professional indifference. They filled the elevator the way furniture fills a room – completely, deliberately, leaving no space for anyone who hadn’t been invited.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.