I chased him for three years before Phil Gilbert finally proposed to me.
I'd thought I'd won him over. I never realized he just needed a thoughtful wife.
And now he'd met someone who actually made his heart race.
If he wanted to step out of line, he'd pay the price for it.
Early the next morning, Phil found no suit laid out for him.
He frowned and shook me awake on the living room couch, his voice thin with impatience.
"Agnes, why didn't you put my suit together?"
"I'm meeting a client any minute now."
The accusation came down on me like a hammer.
I opened my mouth to argue, but my throat felt like it was being scraped raw, and the pain choked the words back.
My head pounded. I touched my forehead and found it burning.
Phil seized my wrist and yanked me into the bedroom.
He threw open the closet and glared at me, seething.
"You've got five minutes. Pull something together for me, fast."
I was too sick to stand straight, sour bile rising in my throat, so I grabbed a few pieces at random just to get him off my back.
He changed in a rush and turned to leave.
My mind went blank, and I crashed hard to the floor.
Phil glanced back at me and started to reach down to help me up.
But a shrill phone ring cut the motion short.
He answered, the corner of his mouth lifting without his noticing, every trace of his earlier temper melting away.
"Almost there. If you're bored, go hit the mall and buy a bag first. I'll send you the money."
My consciousness blurred at the edges. With the last of my strength I clutched the hem of his pants and rasped out a plea.
"Hospital... take me to the hospital..."
But he pried my fingers loose and vanished from my sight in a hurry.
When I woke again, my assistant was keeping watch beside me while I lay on an IV drip.
A nurse came in on her rounds and sighed with regret.
"Your fever hit a hundred and four. If you'd caught it sooner and gotten to the hospital, the baby might have made it."
My assistant's eyes were rimmed red. She gripped my hand, her voice cracking.
"Ms. Winfield, when I couldn't reach your phone and rushed to your place, you'd already been lying in a pool of blood for who knows how long."
"I got you here as fast as I could, but we still couldn't save the baby."
My heart felt like it was clenched in some invisible fist, the pain stealing the breath right out of me.
Weakly I laid a hand over my stomach as tears spilled down my cheeks.
If only Phil had stayed one minute longer. If only he'd made the call for an ambulance.
This tiny life I'd never even gotten the chance to know would not have dissolved into a cold puddle of blood.
Outside the window, fireworks burst into brilliant bloom, lighting up the whole night sky.
My phone suddenly buzzed. A notification popped up: a transfer out of eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
Something pulled at me. I turned my head to look.
The fireworks ended on Phil's initials, then a heart, then another girl's initials.
A dull, sinking ache spread through my stomach. My assistant cried out in panic for the nurse.
"Ms. Winfield, you're bleeding again."
I bit through my lower lip and tasted the thick, metallic tang of blood.
"Chloe, have those two projects already gone to Phil?"
She shook her head, and I let out a soft laugh.
"Then put the word out. Pull the projects back from him, and demote him to a regular employee."
"His numbers are the worst of anyone. He doesn't deserve to lead a team."
Since the day Phil joined the company, his performance had never once hit target.
If I hadn't doctored the figures behind the scenes, if I hadn't had Chloe feed him projects,
he'd have been cut long ago. How would he ever have come up with eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars to keep his little mistress happy?
I'd rented an apartment with him, saved money with him, dreaming of the day we'd buy a place of our own.
Eight hundred and eighty thousand. Once this month's paycheck came in, we'd have had nine hundred and twenty thousand, enough to buy the place we'd had our eye on outright.
I called the landlord to end the lease and listed the furniture on the secondhand market.
