Page 94 of Empowered
“Get out!”
The door slammed shut behind Sarah. Her phone rang in her pocket. Without looking, she knew it was Lucas.
She shut her phone off and got back in the cab. With the serenity of a calm before a large, destructive storm, she asked the driver to take her up into the Hills.
As the car pulled away, she caught a glimpse of Jill in the townhouse window, screaming into her phone. Cops or Lucas? Either way, Sarah needed to hurry. She didn’t need either the police or her ex-boyfriend to come after her and stop what she had set out to do.
She was cutting ties with that suffocating job. She had looked into Jill’s empty eyes and saw the soulless husk of a woman who only knew lashing out and taking everything around her for granted. Now Sarah needed to face down the other monster who had turned her into the black angel of unchecked wrath.
***
“What are you doing here? Nobody told me you were coming. The other one was already here today. Why are you… dressed like that?”
Nonetheless, Natsuko Matsuda moved out of the way when Sarah shouldered her way into the large house up in the Hills. “I need to see him for a few minutes, okay?” She spared the future Mrs. Monroe a heated look from over the shoulder. “I’m leaving town. Not sure how long I’m going to be gone. Starting a new life, you know? I have a few loose ends I need to tie up.”
Natsuko slowly closed the door behind her. Even so, bright springtime sunlight shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the front gardens of this little hideaway Russell Monroe had done nothing to deserve. “He’s in the salon upstairs. I’ll give you fifteen minutes. His bodyguard will be right outside the door. I’ll let him know how long you’ve got. Then you need to leave.”
Sarah nodded. As if she understood.
Russell Monroe’s wheelchair was pointed toward the window, his slumped over body as vacant and frustratingly silent as it had been since he had his major stroke almost a year ago. Sarah spared the bodyguard on duty a glance and went inside. The bodyguard stared at her blond wig – and her ass, because damn if her ass didn’t look great in that outfit.He’s probably thinking that his boss was a lucky man to tap this.Sarah wouldn’t disagree.
She left the door ajar before approaching the man who tried to ruin her life. Every step she took shook the beads around her wrist, a constant, audible reminder that not everything was okay even on this beautiful day.
Could a man look any more pathetic, though? The only way Sarah knew he acknowledged her presence was from the way his eyes moved. He was basically a quadriplegic at this point in his life. The karma stick had smashed him so hard that Sarah should have been content that he got his after everything that he had done.
But he was still alive, wasn’t he?
The whispers around the office and the Monroes’ homes was that this was worse than death for him. The eugenic who ruined women’s lives and condemned his own children to death had to suffer, powerless, watching the only son he allowed to live breed with a commoner.Russell made so many disparaging remarks about Alice Monroe’s brother and his health issues.Sarah had to hear most of them, unfortunately.
What had he found so unsavory about her genes? Was it the middle class background? The British genes? Did he look at Nigel’s nose and decide that thing was never coming close to the Monroe gene pool? Was it the rumors – that he fueled – saying incest was common between the twins? Did he simply not want to deal with a bastard child at this point in his life?
What nobody could understand, however, was how willingly he pushed the only Matsuda heir on his son before agreeing to marry her for himself. It turned out that Natsuko couldn’t have children after all – something she and Sarah shared, although for different reasons – but Russell hadn’t known that before his stroke. But… she was Japanese! Asian! A purist like him couldn’t possibly be okay with a non-white woman entering the family. So what gave?
Sarah knew. It had never been about race. With Russell Monroe, it was about class, money, and family history. The Matsudas had controlled half of Osaka’s technological sphere for the past hundred years. The family was older than the Monroes. They had so much money that not even he could say no to that fusion of family assets.
He was still a racist, though. And a misogynist. He probably thought that he could control Natsuko Matsuda because she was an Asian woman. What he never anticipated was a woman who knew what she was about – and had a father who held no qualms about his daughter achieving her own level of fame Stateside. For fuck’s sake, Natsuko had a Japanese boyfriend she still regularly saw, and would continue to see after the wedding. Marrying the old man was a formality to get both families a mountain of money.
Russell Monroe had lost his dignity. His family. His grip on the world and the throbbing heartbeat of his business. This man had killed his own grandmother so he could get control of Monroe Industries. at a ridiculously young age. To watch his son do as he willed with it? With a woman brought in from the other side of the tracks? While his dutiful, submissive Japanese wife told him to fuck off and rode another man’s cock into the sunset?
That should’ve been enough. Fate had decided Russell had finally gone too far and clobbered him until all he could do was watch the rest of his life go by so slowly that he would one day die of sheer boredom.
It wasn’t enough for Sarah, though.
She stood beside him, hands behind her back as she gazed upon the evergreen trees and birds flitting from one branch to the next. A marble-colored cat with hair so long it looked like a pillow kept a careful eye on a squirrel. Eventually, it scratched its chin and sauntered off, tail swaying back and forth behind it.
Russell’s amber eyes were bright and alert when Sarah looked into them again. He may not be able to tell her how he felt about her presence, but she could sense it.
She discomforted him. Alice Monroe probably made him feel such anger that he couldn’t stand to exist, but Sarah? Every time she came over, his discomfort was palpable enough to choke the room.
“Remember me?” she asked. “I look a bit different, don’t I? What do you think?” She fingered a strand of fake blond hair. “Think I look better as a blond? The clothes aren’t that different from what you’re used to. Remember the first time we did it? I was wearing a dress similar to this. Night of a gala. Don’t remember which one, though.” They all ran together in the end, especially when Sarah’s job was to mind her bosses and not have fun. She was paid to dress up and act professional.
That night in the windy Chicagoan winter, she had been the only one to accompany Damon Monroe and his father to that gala. Nigel was too sick to leave their apartment. The perfect opportunity for Russell Monroe to approach her late at night and ask her to come back to his suite for some “late night habits.”
Sarah knew it wasn’t love. She knew it was nothing but convenient sex. He didn’t even think she was that beautiful. He certainly never called her beautiful. It was all about his pleasure, his dominance.
Why or why had she gone along with it?
Desperation.
