Chapter 11 - The Ruin of Clara
A torrential autumn gale had descended upon the city. Rain pounded against the windshield of Daniel’s Maybach as he drove like a madman, running red lights, cutting across lanes, his hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
*Clara.*
The word was a prayer, a curse, a blade cutting through his chest.
Six years.
Two thousand, one hundred and ninety days.
While he was sleeping on Egyptian cotton, Clara was lying on a concrete floor smelling her own burning flesh. While he was closing billion-dollar acquisitions, Clara was holding her broken wrist, whispering to herself that she didn't touch the woman who destroyed her life.
*“Daniel, please look at me. I didn't touch her.”*
The memory of her voice in the courtroom tore through his mind, ripping him apart from the inside out. He had looked at the jury. He had looked at the judge. He had looked at Natalie’s weeping mother.
He had never looked at Clara.
He screeched the car to a halt in the alley beside Maeve’s Diner. It was past midnight. The diner was dark. The neon sign was off.
Daniel pounded on the back metal door. "Clara! Clara, open the door! It’s Daniel!"
No answer. Only the roar of the rain and the wind howling between the brick buildings.
Daniel stepped back and threw his entire body weight against the door. The rusted lock gave way with a sickening crunch of tearing iron. He tumbled into the dark, damp storage room.
The air smelled of raw potatoes, bleach, and something sweet and metallic.
Blood.
Daniel pulled his phone from his pocket, turning on the flashlight. The beam swept across sacks of flour, stacked crates of canned peaches, and landed on a narrow, rusted cot tucked into the far corner beneath a leaking ceiling pipe.
Clara was lying there.
She was curled on her side, dressed only in her torn, filthy t-shirt. Her body was shaking violently, racked with fever chills. Her skin was gray, her lips cracked and blue. Beneath her, a pool of dark, sluggish blood had seeped into the thin foam mattress from her back.
The stress, the scalding coffee, the physical shock of seeing Natalie and having her shirt torn had ruptured the fragile, poorly healed scar tissue along her spine. An old, deep-seated infection had flared up, turning the tissue into a septic nightmare.
"Clara!" Daniel dropped to his knees in the filth beside the cot.
He reached out, his hands trembling as he touched her burning forehead. Her skin was like an oven. She was barely breathing, her chest rattling with shallow, agonizing gasps.
"Clara, look at me! Clara, please, God, wake up!" Daniel sobbed, tears spilling uncontrollably down his cheeks, pooling in the stubble of his jaw. "I know the truth. I know everything. Arthur confessed. Natalie confessed. You're innocent, Clara. You were always innocent."
Clara’s eyelids fluttered open, glassy, unfocused. She stared up through the darkness, through the flashlight beam, at the weeping billionaire kneeling in the dirt beside her cot.
"Daniel...?" she whispered, her voice barely a thread of wind.
"I'm here, baby. I'm here," he wept, gathering her fragile, feather-light body into his arms, pressing his face into her sweat-dampened hair. "I'm taking you home. I’m going to fix this. I swear on my soul, I will spend the rest of my life making this right—"
"Daniel," she whispered again, her cold, trembling fingers reaching up, lightly brushing his cheek.
Daniel leaned into her touch, his heart breaking open with a desperate, wild surge of hope. "Yes, Clara? What is it? Tell me."
Clara’s lips parted into a faint, hollow, agonizing smile.
May you like
"I hate you," she breathed.
Then her hand went limp, sliding off his cheek, and her head fell back against the stained pillow as the shallow rattle in her chest completely stopped.
