The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

2.3 - Sorry

Dear Readers: So what's next for Atria? Will she walk out on the Golde boys for good?

P.S. As a heads up, this scene takes a darker turn...

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Scene 3: Sorry

A.D. 2015

Fuck.

She had to turn back now. The shadow that never looked back had to crawl back into her sugar daddy’s room, from which she’d only just snuck out, and hope to hell he didn’t see her. If he did, she’d have to look poor Ronan in his goddamned weepy eyes this time.

Of fucking course, she just had to forget the only thing worth going back for. Two things, really—but they stood for one in the same, the only soft spot in her hard and shadowed heart.

She tightened her trench coat over her skimpy dress; the night winds were unseasonably cold and wet. Retraced her steps on sidewalks slick with rain, spattered with the reflected light of stars and streetlamps, in the city that never slept. Never stopped moving, to the beat of all the bleeding hearts she’d broken here.

This city had been good to her. She wondered if she’d drained its moneybags enough by now. High time she ventured elsewhere? For safety’s sake, and maybe for excitement too. Striking Golde seemed a fine finale, for the escapades of the siren on the streets of New York.

She approached the posh high-rise, in which she and the Golde brothers had lived such high lives. Swept through the revolving door, propelled by porters who would never stop competing for the privilege of ushering her inside.

What would they do once she was gone? Compete to find her, chase her to the outer reaches of the galaxy? She wouldn’t be surprised. Always more rounds of competition, for the dark rose.

The youngest doorman on duty was the winner of this round. A cuter version of Ronan, she mused—the same carroty hair that fell into his eyes a bit, faint freckles on his ruddy nose. Only slightly cuter, just a little more rugged. Not as much so as Axel, who broke the Golde family mold, looking more like a Greek god than an Irish schoolboy.

Glowing and gloating, the winner whisked the whirling doors and bowed his bellhop-hatted head at Atria, as she entered the building for the final time. “Good evening, Mrs. Golde.”

Atria always cringed at that greeting. For a second, she was tempted to brandish her ring-free finger in this bellboy’s freckled face. She realized that she was probably even more desirable to the doormen when they thought that she was taken—this was why she’d never bothered to correct them. But their misconception was especially hard to stomach tonight.

She stomached it anyway. Maybe they thought she was wed to Axel, not his little brother. Fat chance… she was usually arm in arm with adoring Ro, rarely alone with Axe in public. But she entertained the thought, for it made ‘Mrs. Golde’ much easier to tolerate.

At least the sex would be good, married to a Greek god.

The redheaded porter escorted her to the elevator. Atria made sure to leave any remotely positive thoughts of marriage downstairs, as she flew up to the penthouse.

She took out her key, relieved that she hadn’t left it behind when ditching this place earlier tonight. It’d been an accident, of course—she always left the keys behind when she bailed out, from any place. To seal her exit, to set her desertion in stone, for herself as well as the ones she abandoned.

But her exit from this penthouse had been pretty hasty and panicked; she had dreaded Ronan walking in before she ran out. That must have been why she’d forgotten to leave the key, instead leaving behind the most cherished of all her things.