Chapter 3 - The Denial and the Rift
The rain in October was worse than the snow; it was a cold, driving slate that turned the alleys behind the shipping district into canals of black grease. Bella stood under the rusted awning of the commercial laundry on Blue Island Avenue, her arms wrapped around a brown paper bundle containing her twins' clean diapers.
Six months had passed since she had walked out of the Thornbury Hotel with her mother's receipt. Her uniform was gone, replaced by an oversized wool sweater she had found behind a church donation box and a pair of maternity trousers held together at the waist by three large safety pins.
Her twins—Leo and Elena—were two months old, small, ravenous things that lived in a wicker basket beside her stove in the basement apartment on Damen Avenue. They didn't cry like other babies; they made a low, urgent clicking sound when they were hungry, a sound that reminded Bella terrifyingly of the digital watch she had worn the night she met their father.
"Bella!"
A man's voice broke through the sound of the rain. Marcus, Lucas Dracott’s driver, stood at the corner of the brick wall, his long charcoal coat dark with water. He wasn't holding an umbrella. He had his hands tucked into his pockets, his eyes fixed on the paper bundle in her arms.
"Mr. Dracott wants to see you," Marcus said.
"I don't work for the hotel anymore," Bella said, turning her shoulder to block the wind from her face.
"He knows where you live, Bella. He knows about the apartment on Damen. He knows about the basket by the stove." Marcus stepped closer, his boots making no sound in the mud. "Don't make him come down here himself. The neighborhood isn't built for his car."
The office at Dracott Maritime was located on the third floor of an old brick warehouse overlooking the Chicago River. The windows were small, square, and reinforced with wire mesh, offering a view of the rusted iron barges that sat low in the green water below.
Lucas Dracott sat behind a massive desk made from a single slab of black walnut. The room smelled of wet leather, tobacco, and the specific, oily scent of marine engines. He wasn't drinking tonight; he had a thick stack of shipping manifests open before him, his fingers tracking the columns of numbers with a heavy silver pencil.
"Sit down," he said without looking up.
Bella remained standing by the door, her wet boots pooling water on the unvarnished oak floor. "I have twenty minutes before the neighbor girl leaves the building, Mr. Dracott. State your business."
Lucas laid the pencil down. He looked at her sweater, the safety pins at her waist, and finally, the faint, blue veins that showed through the skin of her throat.
"Marcus tells me you've been visiting the clinic on 26th Street," he said, his voice level, stripped of any emotion whatsoever. "He tells me there are two children in your room."
"There are," Bella said.
"They're not mine," he said.
The words didn't surprise her. She had expected them for months, had rehearsed her response during the long nights when Leo wouldn't sleep and Elena was coughing from the dampness of the basement walls.
"I didn't ask you for a birth certificate, Mr. Dracott," she said quietly. "I didn't send a lawyer to your gate. I haven't even spoken your name since the day I left the hotel."
Lucas stood up, his large frame blocking the light from the small window behind him. He walked around the desk until he was standing close enough for her to see the tiny, white flecks of ash that had settled into the fabric of his shirt—remnants of some document he had burned in the grate before she arrived.
"A woman like you," he said, his eyes narrowing into two grey slits, "a woman with an accounting degree and a father who died in Stateville, knows exactly what a Dracott child is worth on the probate court market. You think because I gave you fifty thousand dollars for your mother's grave that I'm an easy mark for a long-term annuity."
"I asked for forty-nine thousand two hundred," Bella corrected him, her voice cold as the river outside. "And I gave you exactly what you paid for. I sat in your room while you looked for your ghosts. If you think these children are a scam, go back to your desk and sign your manifests. They don't need your name to grow."
"If I see your name on a support petition," Lucas whispered, his hand rising to grip the back of her chair until the wood groaned, "if I see so much as a whisper of this in the papers, I’ll have your lease canceled before the ink is dry. You’ll be carrying those baskets through the snow by morning, Bella."
May you like
"I've already slept in the snow, Mr. Dracott," she said, turning her back on him as she reached for the brass handle of the door. "It's much quieter than your penthouse. At least the frost doesn't call me a thief."
She walked out before he could answer, her old leather boots making a loud, hollow sound on the wooden stairs—a sound that stayed in the small office long after the rain had stopped and the barges had slipped down the river toward the lake.
