If Elsie had gone straight home after her victorious encounter in Caleb’s conference room, things would probably have turned out very differently. As it was, she’d left the defunct meeting of the board members feeling very on edge and full of adrenaline. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get rid of it if she was stuck in her apartment. Instead of going home, she’d chosen to wander the streets of New York. It was something she had dearly loved to do when she’d first moved to New York but that she’d stopped as she’d gotten more used to the city and busier with her work. As she walked around, she considered all of her options. The last time she could remember feeling so much at a crossroads was when she’d been young and deciding whether to come to New York at all, or to instead follow her mother’s wishes and become the daughter she’d hoped she would be. In the end, even that decision hadn’t felt as monumental as the one she was trying to make now. On the table were two issues, neither one of which she could figure out how to tackle. First there was the matter of her job at Cubed. Travis had given her the week to decide whether or not she wanted to continue and she had absolutely no idea what her answer should be. Then there was the matter of Caleb himself. She felt that she should still be angry with him for tossing her aside the way he had, only she couldn’t seem to make herself feel that way. Instead, she sort of understood. It was his brother she’d been talking about, and who would want to believe a thing like that about their own blood? She wouldn’t, not even about her mom, with whom she had honestly never gotten along. She’d walked around for what felt like hours, for what probably had been hours, and by the time she’d arrived back at her apartment, she had felt no closer to knowing what it was she wanted to do. It was those same matters she was considering that kept her from noticing the fact that her door was completely unlocked and was—in fact—standing ever so slightly ajar. It was unfathomable that a girl who had always been so careful about locks could fail to notice such a thing, but unfathomable or not, it was nevertheless true.   

It wasn’t until she was all of the way inside with one of the locks already done that she got the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. All of the lights were off which gave things an ominous feeling, but that wasn’t really out of the ordinary. She hadn’t expected to be gone so long, and therefore hadn’t turned any of them on. The explanation was simple enough and should have been all she needed, but her feeling that something was off, that something was maybe very off didn’t go away. If anything, it got stronger, and because Elsie had always been one to follow her instincts, it was what she decided to do now. She turned to unlock the door and heard a funny little clicking sound she couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it sent a shiver of fear up her spine, and she was consumed by the childish belief that if she didn’t turn around, whatever was in her apartment with her wouldn’t be able to hurt her. It wasn’t true, of course, a fact that was proved almost immediately.

“Turn around.”

The first thing that came to mind was also childish, and she bit her tongue to keep from speaking. What she wanted to tell him, this strange him that shouldn’t even be inside of her apartment to begin with, that he couldn’t make her, that he couldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do, but then she realized what the clicking noise was and realized that this intruder could tell her to do anything he wanted her to and she would have to comply.

“Marlin? Marlin, what are you doing here?”

Her voice came out in a croak, something unrecognizable and terrifying. Seeing Marlin, a man she didn’t know anything about, aside from the fact that he had tried to swindle his own brother out of his company, was bad. Seeing the gleaming gun in his hand, a shiny silver made more noticeable by the lack of light in the room, was much, much worse. Her mind was racing, trying to figure out how to get out of this situation and to figure out how it had happened in the first place. His face was a mask of anger so great that he hardly looked human anymore. He looked like a monster from her childhood dreams, a monster that had followed her into adulthood and waited for the perfect moment to destroy her.

“Marlin?”

“I think you better shut your mouth, you little bitch. I think you had just better shut your meddling mouth, don’t you?”

“But this is my home, Marlin. You can’t be in my home without my permission.”

“Oh?” he asked with a crazy little titter of laughter that made the hairs all over Elsie’s body stand up at attention. “Oh, really? Is that so?”

“Sure, it is. It’s illegal. You know that, Marlin. I know you know that.”

“There are plenty of illegal things, bitch. Plenty of illegal things and as long as you don’t get caught doing them, they don’t really matter. See what I mean, jelly bean? If you don’t get caught doing a thing you aren’t supposed to do, it’s like it never happened.”

“But it is happening. It is and you’re only going to get yourself into worse trouble. Things are going to be even worse for you than they already are.”

It was the wrong thing to say, and she knew it the moment the words left her lips. Her reference to the way she had exposed him to Caleb and almost certainly to the rest of the world within a few days had enraged him even further than he already was, which was saying a hell of a lot. His eyes grew so wide that they seemed to consume the rest of his face, and his breathing sped up to such a degree that she could see the rising and falling of his chest. It was the exact opposite of the way things had looked when she’d been watched Caleb sleep, a thousand years ago when it had looked to her like he wasn’t breathing at all. Out of his pocket Marlin pulled a little glass bottle, half full of some brown liquid. When he uncapped it to take a swig, Elsie could smell it across the room and her stomach dropped even further. Marlin Grant was clearly crazy, which meant he was the last person in the world that needed to be getting drunk. He must have been drinking for a long time though, probably from the moment he’d stepped out of the Grant Corporation’s front door judging by the smell of him, which meant that his ability to reason was seriously impaired. She wanted to try and reason with him, but what if he was beyond that point? What if he was so far gone that he couldn’t see the ways in which his current actions were going to make his life worse.

“You know? I would have pulled this thing off. I would have pulled it off if you hadn’t stuck your nose in where it didn’t belong. Do you know how much planning it took? Do you know how many strings I had to pull? A lot! A whole hell of a lot, I can tell you. I’m not some computer genius. I’m not smart that way. I had to get other people to do my work for me. They did a good job, I think, good enough for most. Until you had to come along and ruin it all.”

“But why?” she asked quietly, knowing she should probably do best to keep her mouth shut and finding that she couldn’t make herself do it. “That’s what I don’t get. Why would you want to do something like this to your own brother?”

“Because! Because I was broke. Money makes the world go round, baby, and mine’s long gone.”

“But he’s your brother.”

“So? What’s your point?”

“So he trusted you. He loved you, Marlin. All you had to do was ask, and he would have given you whatever money you needed.”

“Right,” Marlin scoffed, his eyes rolling wildly in his head as he began to pace back and forth. “Right, good idea. Ask my baby brother to give me some of his money and make myself look like even more of a fuck up. No, thank you. No way. I’m done playing that part in the Grant family. I was going to be respectable. I was finally going to be the respectable one in the family until you came and fucked it all up. So you know what?”

“No, I can’t say that I do.”

“I bet you don’t, do you? Looks like you don’t know everything, after all. Here’s what I’m going to do. Or what you’re going to do, rather.”

“What am I going to do, Marlin?”

“You’re going to transfer all of the money in your account to me. Every red cent. I know he paid you off. I know how much he paid you, too. You’re going to transfer all of that money to me, and if you’re lucky, I’m going to let you live. If you’re lucky. Now get your ass over here. Get your laptop and sit your pretty ass down right in front of me. I want to see your account drain. Then we’ll see what we’re going to do with you.”

She did as he said, but there wasn’t really any point. He could tell her he hadn’t decided what he was going to do with her all he wanted, but she knew that he had. She had not only been the one to blow the whistle on him with the Grant Corporation stunt, but now she had seen his face while he robbed her at gunpoint. She had already hurt him and would only hurt him more, and he would kill her for it. He would kill her for it, and she would never be allowed to tell Caleb her decision. She had her answer now, now that things had all been reduced to matters of life and death (which had the grotesque effect of making everything else either crystal clear or unimportant), and she would never be allowed to tell him what it was.

“Elsie? Hey, Elsie! Please, if you’re in there, open the door. I know I said I’d give you time to think, but I can’t stand it. Please, Elsie. It’s going to drive me crazy.”

Elsie heard Caleb’s voice on the other side of the door; she heard it like a gift from God, and for one split second, it was as if time had stopped. Immediately after, time seemed to speed up so rapidly that she couldn’t even hope to keep up. Marlin made a little clicking noise with his tongue that she clearly interpreted as a warning not to make a sound. Although the gun was not actually touching her, she could feel it hovering above her. It was the silent threat that if she spoke, if she made a sound, he would shoot. On the other hand, this was a man totally desperate for money. It was possible that even with the threat of being caught, he would not kill her until she’d made the transfer from her bank account to his. Again, she was faced with a decision, and neither solution seemed like a good one. To make matters worse, if she didn’t choose quickly, it was likely that Caleb would go away and she would lose her only hope of salvation. This was the thought she clung to, the one that made her brave enough to do what she did next. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs almost to capacity, then let out an ear shattering scream.

“He’s got a gun, Caleb! He’s got a gun, and he’s going to shoot me!”

Two things happened almost simultaneously, so quickly that she would never be able to quite nail down the order of events. Above her, Marlin bellowed in rage, a sound that was worse than what she’d imagined it would be, and then he brought the pistol down on the side of her head. Anticipating a shot, she threw herself to one side, which was probably the thing that saved her life. His blow only grazed the side of her scalp, a wound that bled a lot but wasn’t really all that serious. If she’d taken the full force, however, her skull would likely have caved in, and then there would be no more Elsie Morrow. At the same time, she could hear yelling from the other side of the door, yelling and then an enormous pounding sound. That first sound was followed by another and then another, then by a massive splintering sound that made Elsie’s ears ring. She had only gotten the one lock done, she remembered dizzily, only gotten the one lock done and thank God for that because if she’d gotten all four Caleb would never have been able to break down the door.

“Get away from her!” he roared, charging into the room like a bull seeing red, ramming himself into his older brother with full force. Marlin was a little bit bigger than Caleb, but in this instance, he never stood a chance. Caleb struck him full on, knocking him flat on his back and then beginning to deliver one punch after the other. He only stopped when Elsie crawled over to him, using both of her arms to still his one.

“Stop it, Caleb,” she panted. “He’s out. He’s out cold.”

“I don’t care! He was going to kill you and I don’t care!”

“Stop it, or you’ll kill him.”

“Well maybe I don’t care about that either,” he said in a voice tight with rage, although he did allow her to bring his arm back down to his side. She used that opportunity to slip her fingers into his with one hand, turning his face towards hers with the other.

“Oh Jesus,” he moaned, his eyes wide and starting to look alarmingly panicked. “Jesus, Elsie, you’re bleeding. We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

“We will. We’ll call the cops, and then we’ll get me to a hospital. But there’s something I have to do first.”

“To do? What the hell could you have to do at a time like this?”

“I have to give you my answer. It’s important, and I think you’re going to like it. My answer is yes.”

That panicked look remained in his eyes for a moment longer, and then it was replaced with understanding. Although he was still concerned—and rightfully so—his face broke wide open into the most beautiful grin she’d ever seen. She kissed him then, and she was still kissing him when the cops arrived fifteen minutes later.