Surrender (4 page)

She quickly pulled back from him, not happy with
the unwelcome and foreign sensation. Without anything more being said, she walked stiltedly toward his door and then made her way to the elevator.

She could feel him beside her, no longer touching, but keeping pace with her as she tried to make a dignified exit. Why couldn’t he have just stayed in his office? She felt the air weighing down on her lungs and began fighting the desire to gasp as she tried to suck in more oxygen. She knew the perceived danger was all in her head as there was zero chance of her suffocating
. Though it was ridiculous, she had to keep reassuring herself of just that.

Mr. Palazzo reached out and pressed the down button and then stood with her as her eyes focused on the steel doors before her as she counted the seconds in her head. She’d heard the expression about tension being so thick you could slice it with a knife, but until this very moment, she’d never experienced the phenomenon before. There was a first time for everything, and she seemed to be hitting several firsts in Rafe Palazzo’s presence.

Open, open, open,
she chanted inwardly. The elevator’s arrival was made known by the chiming of the bell that seemed much louder than usual, and she fought the internal alarm making her almost jump. She entered the car before the doors were fully open, then immediately stepped to the lit panel inside and pressed the lobby button, followed by the close door button.

As the doors began shutting, she finally
glanced up, her eyes colliding with Mr. Palazzo’s intense stare. She couldn’t manage to turn her head away, though she was trying to break the connection. As the doors finally closed, she sagged against the back wall of the large box and waited for it to make its descent.

When the elevator made the journey without stopping along the way and the doors opened to the stunning lobby, she stepped out and quickly made her way across the marble floor and straight through the front doors.

Ari didn’t stop until she made it to the next block. Finally, with disappointed steps, she slowed down to a more leisure saunter until she found a bench that she gratefully sank onto. In that moment she allowed herself to take her first deep breath of air since leaving Rafe Palazzo’s office.

Ari sat for a while, trying her best not to hyperventilate as she took in slow, measured breaths, feeling like she just couldn’t get enough air. She should have said,
Thank you for the offer, but no
. She should’ve laughed at the ridiculous request. She should of…

With a quiet, depreciating laugh, she cut off the thoughts. It was a waste of time to think of what she should have done.

Could she do it? Could she sell herself? He was asking her to be nothing more than a high paid prostitute, right? That’s what it boiled down to, like a scene right out of
indecent exposure
.

Forcing herself to stand, she began
walking the three blocks to the parking garage to her car. Without notice of the time that had passed walking the city streets, then going up the outside steps to the third floor of the parking structure, she spotted her car and climbed in the front seat, sitting for a moment.

As
she started the engine and began slowly driving down the ramps to the exit, she remained lost in thought. She needed to get home and review the papers he’d given her – reassure herself that she couldn’t take the job.

Making such a colossal decision required serious consideration. A few months ago, she never would’ve even considered the possibility that something like this existed. She’d been truly naïve to the world around her, protected from life’s harsh realities. However, all her innocence had shattered the day the police had shown up for her at that college party.

In her mother’s last conscious moments, her only concern had been for Ari’s safety. Her mom had managed to tell the officers they needed to get to her daughter – that Ari was in danger. Only then did her mother succumb to her injuries.

The policemen showed up in her mother’s place at the frat house and then transported Ari to the hospital where she’d waited for hours in the lobby, terror helping to sober her up real fast.

When the doctor eventually came out of surgery, his news hadn’t been good. Her mother was stable, but in a coma. They’d done all they could do for her. Only time would tell if she ever came out of it.

She’d had severe swelling in her brain and they’d had to
operate , drilling bur holes into her skull. Along with the head injuries, she’d also suffered two broken ribs, a cracked hip, and lacerations to her face. When Ari entered her mom’s room, she’d nearly passed out at the image before her.

If the staff hadn’t guaranteed that the person lying in the bed was her mother, she wouldn’t have known who the woman was. She was unrecognizable with her swollen face and the bandages covering her. Ari had sobbed as she’d laid her head on her mother’s bed and apologized repeatedly. If it wasn’t for Ari, her mom would be home, sleeping safe and sound. Ari would never forgive herself for what she’d done.

Trying to push such heart wrenching memories aside, Ari focused on the road as she pulled up to her small studio apartment. She slowly made her ascent up the staircase, her feet dragging as her mind raced. The papers Rafe had handed her were burning a hole in her purse.

She got to her door and fiddled with the key for several moments, having to get it into the lock just right so she could turn it. It would probably be faster for her to insert a credit card in the doorjamb to get it open than to mess with the key.

She’d watched enough movies that she could probably break into a place if she needed to. The thought made her smile as the lock finally clicked and she pushed open the door. Maybe she could find a breaking and entering job. It would be a more dignified profession than prostitution.

Though the day had started only a few hours ago, exhaustion was nipping on her heels. She sat down on the couch and glared at her small purse as if there were a snake inside of it just waiting for the opportunity to strike. Did she
really
want to see what he had planned for her?

With great reluctance, she finally unzipped the bag and slowly pulled the papers out, her gaze a bit cloudy as she glanced down at the words. She
fought the urgency to toss them, but reality – and slight curiosity won out.

With only
a week left at the apartment before rent was due, and no other jobs on the horizon, she needed to at least weigh her options. The weight of knowing her mother’s living conditions would worsen without Ari's financial support made the decision about the position even more crucial.

She’d already sold her mother’s home – the place Ari had grown up. It had broken her heart to pack her mom’s most valuable possessions and take them to storage. She’d pre-paid the unit for a year, not taking chances on losing those items that meant so much to her mom.

Everything Ari had of any decent value had been auctioned off. She’d done everything she could do at this point. Now, she had to find work – and it seemed no one wanted to hire a college drop-out, even if she had been on the honor role. It meant nothing if she couldn’t finish her degree.

In the end
, she really had no choice but to look at the material before her. With a determined grasp of the papers, she unfolded them and started scanning the words. By the time she got to the end she literally wanted to throw up. She couldn’t do it – no way.

Ari was speechless. She didn’t know what to think. Her bright eyes gazed at the words while her mouth hung open in shock. There was no way. She wouldn’t do this. There had to be another option.

The words jotted down circled in her head, showing her a side of life she never imagined existed.
He owned her body? He could take what he wanted – day or night?

Ari didn’t think so. She’d end up going to prison because she wouldn’t abide by the stupid rules he’d set forth, and then he’d prosecute her. Could he do that? If she chose not to satisfy him as much as he wanted, could he have her locked in jail?

She slowly read back through the contract, and felt a smidgeon better. No. That wasn’t what he was saying. He could only actually prosecute her if she broke his confidentiality clause.

What did he mean, though by unknowingly? If she didn’t know she’d done it, then how could she be responsible for her actions? As she gazed at the paper she realized what that meant.
If
she left papers laying around that someone got ahold of and it led to people finding out.

Well, she wasn’t going to become his employee, or mistress, or whatever he chose to call the position, so she wasn’t taking chances of someone getting ahold of the dang contract. She walked to her stove and turned on the burner, then placed the edge of the paper against it,
consumed with overwhelming satisfaction when the contract began to go up in smoke.

She held onto it for several seconds, making sure it would burn every last word,
then she tossed the remains in her empty sink where it finished burning and turned into nothing but ash.

Washing the ash down the
garbage disposal gave her an increased relaxation in her shoulder muscles. She could close that door in life behind her, and step forward. It was a good thing she didn’t have smoke detectors in her place, or her little act of defiance would’ve set every one of them off.

Opening a window to let out the smoke before she choked, Ari then grabbed the newspapers she’d gathered all week and
began fanning the smoke out the window with a wide up and down motion. As the smoke lifted to the sky, the realization of the opportunity to be making one hundred thousand dollars a year began to sink in and her hopes of taking care of her mother were now plummeting.

She stopped fanning and laid the newspaper out on the table, running her thumb along the fold creases to make it lay flat in another attempt to
search through the ads again. She had to have missed something. There
was
a job out there for her. She just wasn’t trying hard enough to find it.

After a three hour search and twenty-five calls later, Ari flopped back on the couch and the tears started. At first, they were just a
tender trickle, but it didn’t take long for them to flow down her cheeks and drip off of her chin.

It just seemed so hopeless.

What was she going to do?

After allowing
herself a half hour of falling apart, Ari brushed away the last of her tears just as the phone rang. Her head spun around as she gazed at the contraption like it was a lifeline to save her in the middle of an ocean where the sharks were slowly circling closer.

“Hello.”
Her voice was full of hope. It had to be one of the hundreds of jobs she’d applied for calling her back, saying they needed her to start immediately.

“Is Ms. Harlow available?”

“This is her.”
It was a prospective employer,
she thought positively.

“This is the Clover Care Facility. Your mother has been transported over to the San Francisco General Hospital. Can you meet the ambulance down there immediately?”

“Is everything okay with my mom?”

“Ms. Harlow, it would be better if you could leave now and arrive quickly. They will answer all your questions when you get there.”

Ari sat silently for a moment as she forced herself to take a quick breath. Something was wrong with her mom. Selfishly, she didn’t want to know. After the day she’d had, she couldn’t take any further bad news.

“Yes, of course,” she automatically replied before hanging up.

With sagging shoulders, she gathered her purse and exited the apartment. Her mom had always told her to never put off to tomorrow what she could accomplish today. It was something Benjamin Franklin had first said, and he happened to be one of her heroes. That saying went with the good and the bad. If it was terrible news, she may as well get it over with.

She climbed in her car and made the thirty minute journey to the hospital
, mustering as much courage as possible for the moments that would follow her arrival. Was she going to walk in, only to find her mother had given up and passed away? Were they going to kick her mom out if she didn’t have the money to pay her medical bills? Ari just didn’t know. She didn’t know if she could handle whatever they had to say.

“Ms. Harlow, thank you for coming down so quickly. I’m sorry if we’ve upset you but there’s news of your mother and we needed you to come right away. It’s great news, actually. She woke up.”

It took a few moments for the nurse’s words to register. Her mother was awake. She was out of the coma. Ari felt blackness trying to overtake her vision as she gazed in shock at the woman in front of her. There was no way she could pass out. She fought it with all she had.

Exhausted both physically and mentally, the unexpected news was almost too much for her to handle. She wouldn’t believe them until she actually saw her mom; she needed to hear her voice more than anything in that moment. No one else could comfort her like her mother – she needed the woman who’d always been there through the good and the bad.

Ari finally fully understood why she was breaking apart so much. She’d been trying to do all of this without her mom. Never before had she realized how much she’d always leaned on her – never before she’d lost her and then found her again.