Chapter 76 The Asphalt Reality
The luxury SUV felt like a pressurized cabin, a silent bubble of leather and high-end suspension hurtling through the dark. Outside the tinted windows, the lush, manicured greenery of the Hamptons bled into the industrial gray of the expressway. No one spoke. Nate sat beside me, his hand still locked with mine, his thumb tracing a rhythmic, soothing pattern over my knuckles. Gavin and Eliza were huddled together in the middle row, Eliza’s head resting on his shoulder as she finally succumbed to exhaustion. Theodore sat in the front, staring at the road with the focused intensity of a man already calculating the next ten moves.
We were escaping. But as the Manhattan skyline rose out of the haze like a jagged crown of glass and steel, the adrenaline of our defiance began to cool, replaced by the chilling reality of what we were returning to. The transition was a physical blow. The salt-scrubbed air of the estate was replaced by the biting, bitter chill of a New York January. The streetlights here weren't decorative lanterns; they were flickering, harsh oranges that illuminated the gray slush piled against the curbs and the steam rising from the manhole covers like ghostly breath.
When the SUV pulled up to the Jones's residence first, the contrast was almost unbearable. The grand, white pillars of the Salvatore estate felt like a dream—or a nightmare—from a different life. Here, the front door was weathered by the salt and snow, and the sidewalk was a treacherous sheet of black ice.
"I'm coming up with you," Nate said to me as the car stopped, his eyes searching mine.
"No," I said, more sharply than I intended. The cold was already seeping through the floorboards of the car. "Gavin needs to get Eliza inside, and you... you need to figure out what you’re doing with your mother. I can’t handle both worlds tonight, Nate. Please."
He looked like he wanted to argue, but he saw the exhaustion etched into my face. He leaned in, kissing my forehead with a lingering, protective warmth that contrasted sharply with the frost forming on the window. "I’ll call you the second I’m settled. Don't look at the news, Mila. Just sleep."
I stepped out of the car, the freezing wind whipping the ivory silk of my dress around my legs, and helped Eliza toward her parents' door. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were the most reliable people I knew; they were the safety net that had kept my sisters, Grace and Zoe, while I was away. But as the Jones’s front door opened, Mrs. Jones looked at me with a startled, guilty expression, her cardigan pulled tight against the draft.
"Mila! Oh, thank goodness," she whispered. "I've been trying to call you, but your line was busy."
"Where are the girls?" I asked, a sudden coldness blooming in my chest that had nothing to do with the winter air. "Are they inside?"
"Your mother came by six hours ago," Mrs. Jones said, her voice tight with worry. "She told us you’d called her and said you were coming home early—that you wanted the girls back at your apartment to surprise them. She sounded so... frantic, Mila. We didn't want to let them go, but she's their mother. She insisted."
Panic flared behind my ribs. I didn't wait for another word. I turned and ran the two blocks to my own building, my boots skidding on the frozen pavement, my lungs burning as I sucked in the sub-zero air. I climbed the three flights of stairs in silence, the weight of the night settling into my bones. When I reached our door, I noticed a light flickering under the frame. My heart skipped.
The apartment was freezing. The radiator was clanking a rhythmic, dying metallic protest, but it was barely putting out enough heat to fog the glass. In the kitchen, nine-year-old Grace was standing on a plastic stool, her face flushed as she stirred a pot of water on the stove. A box of cheap mac-and-cheese sat open on the counter. She was wearing her heaviest winter coat over her pajamas.
"Mila!" Grace cried, nearly dropping the wooden spoon. "You're back!"
"Grace? Where’s Mom? Where’s Zoe?" I dropped my bag on the floor, the ivory silk of my dress looking absurdly out of place against the cracked linoleum and the drafty shadows.
"Zoe's asleep under three blankets," Grace whispered, hopping down from the stool. "Mom brought us here from Mrs. Jones's house this afternoon. She stayed just long enough to pack a bag. She said she and Dad had to 'clear the air.' She said things were getting too loud and they’d be back when things 'settle.' She told me I had to be the big girl for a little while and keep the stove on so it stayed warm."
I felt a cold pit open in my stomach. I walked over to the small kitchen table. Resting next to a half-empty box of generic cornflakes was a crumpled piece of notebook paper and two ten-dollar bills.
Gone for a few days, the note read in my mother’s frantic, loopy scrawl. Need to think. Take care of your sisters. Don’t answer the door for anyone. $20 should cover milk and bread. Love, Mom.
Twenty dollars. They had lied to the Joneses to get the girls back, only to leave a nine-year-old and a six-year-old alone in a Brooklyn winter with twenty dollars and a box of cereal. My mother had clearly seen the news—or heard the whispers of the looming scandal—and instead of standing by me, she had fled the noise, leaving her children behind in a cold apartment.
I looked at the note, then at the ivory dress I was wearing—a dress that cost more than my father made in three months. I looked at the twenty dollars, then back at Grace, who was looking at me with wide, hopeful eyes, oblivious to the fact that our parents had essentially abdicated during the coldest week of the year.
"Are you hungry, Mila?" she asked, her breath hitching in a tiny puff of condensation. "I almost have the noodles soft."
I sank into a kitchen chair, the silk of the Salvatore world snagging on the rough, splintered wood of our reality. The Hamptons, the yacht, the kiss, the million-dollar check—it all felt like smoke. This was the reality. This was the "commoner" life the Bulletin was laughing at. I wasn't an ethereal guest at a white party; I was a girl in a freezing apartment, holding a twenty-dollar bill, realizing I was now the only adult left in the room.
"I'm not hungry, Gracie," I whispered, reaching out to pull her into a hug, feeling the chill of her small coat against my silk-clad arms. "But I'll help you with the cheese."