Chapter 8 - The Price of Treachery
The rain in Georgia did not freeze, but it fell with a heavy, mournful weight that turned the moss on the live oaks into sodden blankets.
Alexander arrived in Savannah at four in the morning.
He did not bring an entourage.
He had left his guards, his lawyers, and his empire behind in Chicago.
He drove a battered black pickup truck he had purchased in Tennessee so his arrival would not draw the eyes of the locals.
He parked three streets away from the bakery and waited in the darkness.
He watched the light flicker on behind the high window above the shop at four-thirty.
He saw Emily’s silhouette move past the glass.
She looked smaller.
Her shoulders were rounded as if she were carrying an invisible beam across her back.
He saw her tie her apron.
He saw her carry a heavy sack of grain from the pantry to the prep table.
Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run across the cobblestones, to break down the wooden door, to lift the weight from her arms, and to beg her to let him carry it for the rest of his life.
He stayed in the truck.
He knew that the moment she saw his face, the tiny sanctuary she had built out of flour and silence would be ruined.
At eight o'clock, a delivery van pulled up outside the shop.
A burly man in overalls began unloading wooden crates of apples and berries.
Alexander stepped out of the truck, pulling his dark coat tight against the damp wind.
He walked down the alleyway and stood near the corner of the brick wall, keeping out of sight.
Through the glass storefront, he could see Emily wiping down the counter.
She was speaking to an elderly woman who had come in for bread.
Emily smiled.
It was a small, fragile thing—a ghost of the radiant smile that had once lit up their breakfast table in Chicago—but it was a smile nonetheless.
Alexander leaned his head against the cold brick.
He had not seen her smile since the morning Grace had complained about her braids.
Suddenly, the door of the bakery chimed with a loud, aggressive clatter.
A woman walked in, shaking an expensive umbrella onto the clean wooden floor.
Alexander’s breath caught in his throat.
Madison.
She had followed him.
She had used her Hayes family credit cards before he could freeze them, tracking his flight path and hiring a private car from the Atlanta airport.
She was wearing a long camel-hair coat, her hair styled with the frantic perfection of someone trying to hold onto a status that was slipping through her fingers.
Alexander stepped toward the door, his heart pounding with panic.
Inside the shop, Emily froze with a cleaning rag in her hand.
The elderly customer looked between the two women, sensed the violent tension that had just invaded the air, and hurried out the door, squeezing past Madison with a worried frown.
“Emily,” Madison said, her voice breathy, frantic, and entirely self-absorbed.
“I knew you would be somewhere like this.”
Emily did not move.
Her eyes turned into two chips of black flint.
“Get out of my shop, Madison.”
“You have to come back,” Madison insisted, stepping toward the counter with her designer boots clicking loudly against the pine boards.
“Alexander has completely lost his mind.”
“He threw the Carters out of the city.”
“He canceled my trust fund yesterday!”
“He’s selling off the shipping line!”
“The entire family is falling apart because he’s wandering around the country looking for you like a lunatic!”
Emily placed the rag carefully on the wooden surface.
“Your brother’s madness is his own affair.”
“It’s your affair too!” Madison shouted, her voice echoing in the small, warm room.
“You’re his wife!”
“You can’t just run away to some backwater town and pretend you’re a peasant while our family is destroyed!”
“Do you know what people are saying about us in Chicago?”
“They’re laughing at us, Emily!”
Emily looked at her sister-in-law.
There was no shock in her face.
Only a profound, sickening pity.
“Grace died five months ago, Madison.”
Madison flinched, then pressed her lips together into a thin, bitter line.
“We all miss Grace,” Madison said coldly.
“But the living have to go on living.”
“You can't punish Alexander forever for an accident.”
“It wasn't an accident,” a voice said from the doorway.
The front door swung open slowly.
Alexander stood on the threshold.
Rain dripped from the brim of his dark hat, tracing lines down his gaunt, hollow face.
Madison spun around, her eyes widening in terror.
“Alexander!”
Alexander did not look at his sister.
His eyes were locked onto Emily.
He looked at her faded dress, her flour-dusted hands, her hollowed cheeks, and the small pink sneaker that was peeking out of the front pocket of her apron.
“Alexander, thank God,” Madison began, stepping toward him with her hand outstretched.
“Tell her she has to come home.”
“Tell her the board is meeting on Friday and—”
Alexander’s hand moved faster than thought.
He caught Madison by the collar of her expensive coat and shoved her back against the brick wall beside the display case with a violence that rattled the glass jars on the shelves.
“Alexander!” she shrieked.
“You have five seconds to leave this town,” Alexander said, his voice a low, terrifying rumble that vibrated through the floorboards.
“If I ever see you within fifty miles of Emily again, I will have you declared legally dead and put in an institution where you will never see the sun again.”
“I am your sister!” Madison cried, tears of genuine shock spilling over her mascara.
“My sister died the day she took that picture,” Alexander said.
He let her go with such disgust that she stumbled against the counter, knocking over a display of fresh rolls.
“Run, Madison,” Alexander whispered.
Madison looked at her brother’s face.
She saw no humanity left in him.
May you like
She saw only the monster the business world had always whispered about, completely unchained now that his conscience had been buried in a child’s grave.
She turned and fled out the door into the rain, leaving the bell ringing hysterically behind her.
