The next morning, Chloe walked out of her apartment building wearing dark sunglasses. She nervously scanned the street, feeling like eyes were watching her from every parked car.
She walked quickly to an independent coffee shop on the corner. She pushed the door open, the bell chiming loudly above her head.
Rachel was already sitting in a corner booth. She took one look at Chloe's pale face and her lips were chapped from being kissed, she stood up abruptly.
Chloe slid into the booth. She wrapped both hands around a steaming mug of black coffee, desperate for the heat to stop her shivering.
Rachel leaned across the table and let out a string of vicious curses. "He is a literal psychopath. We need to do something."
Chloe offered a bitter, exhausted smile. She repeated what the NYPD officers had told her last night. Her voice sounded hollow.
Rachel slammed her hand down on the wooden table. "Then we go to a judge. We get a restraining order."
Chloe shook her head. Her lawyer brain took over. "I have no documented physical abuse. No threatening voicemails. A judge will laugh me out of court."
She took a shaky breath. "And if I try, the Sinclair family's legal team will bury me in paperwork until I'm bankrupt. They will destroy my career."
Rachel ran her hands through her hair in frustration. She looked completely helpless.
Outside the window, a black SUV rolled slowly past the coffee shop. Chloe flinched violently. She shrank back into the deepest corner of the booth. Her elbow hit her mug, spilling hot coffee all over the table.
Rachel grabbed a handful of napkins and handed them to her. Her eyes were full of pity. "How did you survive him for all those years before?"
Chloe stared at the brown puddle on the table. Her mind was dragged back to the gothic architecture of her New England prep school.
"It wasn't just last night," Chloe whispered. "It started in high school. He controlled everything."
She told Rachel how any boy who dared to speak to her in the hallway would mysteriously transfer schools the very next week.
Rachel gasped. "He was doing that at sixteen?"
Chloe closed her eyes. The memory made her stomach churn. "He went to my mother's art gallery. The Sinclair trust owned the building. He threatened to terminate her lease if I didn't sit with him at lunch."
She had been a puppet on his strings just to keep her family from going under.
Rachel reached across the table and grabbed Chloe's freezing hand. "You are not alone this time. I won't let him do this to you."
Chloe took a deep breath. She forced herself out of the past. She had a job. She had rent to pay. She could not fall apart.
She wiped a stray tear from under her sunglasses and adjusted the collar of her tailored blazer.
They walked out of the coffee shop. Rachel insisted on walking her to her Wall Street firm.
"No," Chloe said firmly. "I can't drag you into his mess. I have to go to work."
Rachel argued, but Chloe walked away, heading down the stairs into the subway station. Her shoulders looked painfully tense.
Chloe swiped her MetroCard and merged into the dense crowd of morning commuters. She chose the subway, hoping to lose herself in the anonymous crush of the crowd, a place where even he couldn't single her out. The train roared into the station. A rush of foul wind blew her hair back. She was shoved into the packed subway car by the mass of bodies.
She grabbed a metal pole overhead. The car was suffocatingly tight. Suddenly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She felt a cold, piercing stare burning into her spine.
She whipped her head around. She saw nothing but exhausted, angry New Yorkers staring at their phones. There was no one looking at her.
The train screeched to a halt at Wall Street. Chloe shoved her way out of the doors and practically sprinted up the stairs to the street level. She gasped for the polluted city air.
She stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the towering glass facade of her law firm. A heavy sense of dread settled in her gut.
