CHAPTER 7

Wilhelmina drove back to Manhattan in silence, needing to regain sometime to sort peace of mind from the chaos of the past weeks. Not having to report in since her departure from Mode gave her some much needed time off after the years of sacrificed vacation time and excessive logged hours spent chained to her desk. Yet Wilhelmina had a hard time coming to terms with this excessive time to her self. This was the first real time off in over twenty years and she almost forgot what to do with it. How could she relax? She hadn't been working in weeks, her lover was locked up in the state pen doing hard time, her daughter was god knows where in the world, and even her loyal sidekick Marc was now too busy working for her former partner/ally Daniel to spend the same time with her as he once did. And then there were those pestering recent memories of that trip to the Bahamas. That trip had left Wilhelmina with new battle scars to conceal and heal, all on her own. She was hoping a miracle wave of strength and resourcefulness would come to set a plan in motion to regain some sort of control. She was hoping it would happen soon because she couldn't keep up this façade anymore. She had too much time to think, to dwell with not enough distractions to help pass these thoughts.

It had become a recent routine visiting Connor behind bars. She would arrive, she'd wait in solitude, the guard would usher him in, the door would close shut, and their conjugal affair would commence leaving off where they started in the Bahamas. Every forty-eight hours, Wilhelmina would make the two-hour drive upstate, and on that day at 10am sharp like clockwork, they would go at it. They barely spoke, they just comforted one another with the familiarity and passion they shared. In the four weeks that she started making the trips up, the glamour and excitement was already starting to wear thin. She felt like one of those mafia wives in the movies, desperate and hopeless at the turn their relationship had taken. This is not what she was accustomed to by any means, dating a convict. The wait and anticipation were exciting at first but when she was forced to leave the cold, damp, concrete room, a small part of her heart died every time, enough for her to start to feel resentment. She was beginning to shut down to the situation. It was beginning to anger her. It was beginning to make her resent Connor and what he did to her and Mode in the first place. Every second day on her drive home she started to wonder why she made the trip up in the first place as she was left feeling more empty and void inside every time, and on some days, more furious than she had led herself to believe. She refused to tell Connor how she felt, because she figured he was dealing with enough stress, and besides their trysts left for very little time to talk.

She turned down her radio in her Range Rover as she accelerated past the slow car ahead of her. Her thoughts started to overwhelm her. She managed to shake the paparazzi that tried tailing her from the state penitentiary after another visit. She knew there would be fresh shots of her in the local and national tabloids with some clever quips of her leaving the big house. Those pictures mortified her. Here she was the daughter of a high profile senator, an accomplished executive and a socialite and she was crawling around some seedy scene with her criminal boyfriend. The pictures were a painful reminder of how her life took a very wrong turn in the name of love. They reminded her that she was kidding herself in this situation, trying to be something she was told herself she was not, a desperate woman in love. And the worst part of the situation, she would always crawl back to him knowing Connor put them both in that situation in the first place. He couldn't have just been happy in the high profile position CFO position at Meade and in a relationship with her? But that's the thing with greed, it sucks you in and nothing is ever enough. You can never find happiness when your already paying attention wanting the next conquest, something bigger, better, and more lucrative. If someone would have told her a year ago this is where she would end up, Wilhelmina would have chewed them up and spit them out. Alas, it had become her reality, partly by her own doing. The only way she could undo it was to walk away from Connor once and for all. She teared at the thought, but she couldn't bring herself to do it, not just yet. Her mind wouldn't let her go there.

Daniel sat at the helm of his desk. Marc sauntered in with a stack of the competitions recently published magazines and a cup of java. He placed them on Daniel's desk without a word exchanged. Daniel gave him a curt nod and he reached for the stack. He flipped through and picked up the NY Post. There she was on Page 6, clad in a leather pencil skirt, fur coat, oversized sunglasses and six inch stilettos with the headline "Slater Committed for Life…at least 10 to 20". Daniel shook his head at the photograph and scoffed. This was not the hell-raising woman he knew. She looked the part but her body language was unfamiliar to him, she looked common, almost broken. It had been weeks since their heated exchange and Daniel was still as furious about the situation as he was the night he confronted her. Something in him had snapped in the early morning hours that night on the beach. It was the ultimate betrayal. He had been kind to her, extending the olive branch not because he had to, but because he wanted to. He was stupid enough to sympathize with her on another level. He was stupid enough to be kind to her. He was stupid enough stay with her when he should have left her there broken in her own pool deceit that night at her apartment. Daniel was betrayed in the worst way. Their relationship was just that, their relationship. It was never official defined as more than colleagues but somehow they battled through the trenches everyday, and he was convinced himself that there was mutual respect and friendship. There was a few defining moments in his life where he felt a physical and emotional change happen, and that night in the Bahamas was one of them. He was less willing to trust people. He decided that night from now on he was out for himself. Daniel went cold.

In these few short weeks after the ordeal, Daniel's confidence became arrogance. Daniel's good-natured attitude and enthusiastic outlook became authoritative and unyielding. His responses became short and abrupt and his patience almost non-existent. All he wanted were results and he didn't care how his team at Mode got there, he just wanted the results delivered. He wanted what he wanted, no excuses. All of Daniel's relationships had strained, changed, and morphed into something unfamiliar to everyone who was once close to him including his mother, Betty and even Amanda. His hot affair with Amanda was passionate in the moment and disposable as soon as it was over. Even Amanda had second thoughts about the whole arrangement, but she was too afraid to voice her opinion to Daniel, in fear he would fire her. It's like Daniel had become his father, a man of few words and comforts. Even physically Daniel had changed. His frustrations were taken out at the gym, clocking extra time to clear his head of thoughts of Molly, Wilhelmina, Connor, and the affair that caused this chaos to ensue in the first place. His suits became a little more structured, and monochromatically dark. His body language became a little more harsh and deliberate, and his employees knew the boss of days past was not there anymore. The culture at Mode had changed and nobody knew why, except for Marc.

Watching Daniel through the big circular window, Marc pulled out his blackberry and messaged Wilhelmina.

Marc: Hi Willie, how are you?

Wilhelmina: Marc, fine thank you. You?

Marc: Been better.

Marc: Come home Willie…

Wilhelmina: I'm in town, not travelling

Marc: No, Come home to Mode. Things are not good.

Wilhelmina: Not possible

Marc: Yes it is. You know what you have to do.

Wilhelmina: Can't

Marc: Can't or Won't?

Wilhelmina: Both

Marc: Dinner soon?

Wilhelmina: I'll message you soon Driving

Marc: Ok. Bye Willie. Miss you J

Wilhelmina: Bye

Wilhelmina couldn't help but think was Marc right? Was that the only way to get her life on track? Fix what went wrong in the first place? By righting that wrong, could she shake these feelings plaguing her? The look in Daniel's eye that night on the beach stabbed her in her proverbial gut, and she kept bleeding after that night. She had schemed many, many times before without remorse, but this betrayal Daniel referenced was a guilt she thought she would never feel, especially of all people for Daniel. The guilt and remorse kept coming up, like vicious, vicious bile and keeping her nauseous even weeks after. She was tried of feeling. She just wanted everything to go back to normal, but she knew she would lose Connor, maybe once and for all, if she did attempt to do right by Daniel and in turn get her life back.

Two days later Wilhelmina found herself back in that cold damp, concrete, four walls, leaning against the steel table facing the heavy metal door with her arms crossed. As she heard the door clink open, her eyes full of intensity shot up. Connor entered, escorted by a guard. The clinking of the restraining cuffs against the concrete floor and by his movements rattled an anger within her she had yet felt in their routine trysts. They were a painful reminder of the guilt and weight on her shoulders she kept dragging, like the chains Connor dragged behind him. He stood in front of her wordlessly, his chest puffed out in pride, his blue eye blazing through hers. The guard had removed the restraints and said, "You have one hour." Connor never took his eyes of Wilhelmina, taking in her image yet again as he always did for his lonely nights until he saw her again. She was all he saw, all he dreamed of. Wilhelmina was the reason he got through his days.

As the heavy door locked shut, Connor instinctively picked her up and sat her on the cold steel table. Wilhelmina put a hand on his mouth and put an arms length between them. "We have to talk."

"Ok, what's on your mind doll face?"

"I feel like my life is slipping away from me."

Connor sighed, he knew this day would come eventually.

"Well, I'm surprised you lasted this long"

"Come again?"

"Your just not that type of woman, it's ok"

"What type?"

"To stand by her man in these types of circumstances"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me loud and clear" Connor said annoyed at the possibility of losing her.
"YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'VE SACRIFICED FOR YOU!" Wilhelmina's voice echoed through the concrete walls, ringing in Connor's ears as her fury lost its battle and released a vengeance that shocked him.

"What? Your job?" He challenged.

"You self serving, arrogant piece of shit! My whole life! I lost Nico because of you…" She seethed.

"You lost Nico by your own doing. What else you got? Your job? No one told you to quit Mode. You did that on your own."
"I did it for you! You told me put it out there when I was ready for you to come get me. And you abandoned me." She couldn't even look at him at that moment. She turned her head and shook it with fury.

"I had to, to throw off the feds. You know this" His voice became softer.

"Look how well that turned out." Wilhelmina scoffed and jumped off the table. Her heels clicked against the concrete as she started walking toward the door.

"What do you want Wilhelmina? You came here for a reason and its not to bang, so what is it?" She stopped in her tracks. She turned on her heel and faced him "I just want to regain some sort of normalcy. I want my way back into Mode and I need you to make that happen." They now stood face-to-face, arms crossed, in a showdown of honesty.

"You want the money."

"Yes"

"And what's in it for me?" Wilhelmina slowly walked toward him, her hips swinging slowly, seductively, "If you truly love me, you would do this unselfish act for me. You would make the love of your life the happiest woman in the world. I get my job back, my power, and what makes me tick…what gives me purpose. My life goes back to normal."

"And me? What do I get?" Connor looked down at her not moving.

"Your conscience is eased knowing I am ok. Have you ever considered what it has been like for me? You have been gone eight months, free as a bird and I have been running up an impossible hill that has no end. Money troubles, deaths, relationships falling apart, being separated from you. My loneliness almost made have a nervous breakdown. I am not that woman, never have been."

Connor said nothing. Wilhelmina sighed.

"I have also spoken with my father to pull some strings to decrease your sentence if the money is returned to Meade. He can strike a deal with the D.A. She owes the Senator a favor. You will be out faster where we can finally be together everyday. Not like this. It just depends how much you really, truly love me…" Her eyes were soft and pleading. Connor thought very little about what she had just said to him and spit back "And rich boy gets it all back, including you."

"What?" She became defensive.

"You heard me. Do you have feelings for Daniel?" Connor challenged. The thought of his nemesis getting his money back that he so cleverly outsmarted him with and his woman cause a lash of jealousy that was uncontrollable.

"NO! God NO! Have you temporarily lost your god-dammed mind? Have you not heard a word I just said? I put myself in the line of fire every time I step foot outside my car and a photographer captures a painful reminder of how much I love you outside these prison gates."

"I don't know Wilhelmina…" Connor ran his hand across his face and was clearly torn by the love of his life and his ego.

"Connor what is it about you and this money? IT'S OVER! You are in here for twenty-five years with no chance of parole once convicted! You will be an old man when you sprung from here. You won't even be able to spend the cash with the time you will have left. You have no one to leave the money to, no children, no friends, no wife! By giving it to me, you will help me pass the time until you are free to come back to me. I will still stand by you, be here for you, but lets be honest with each other, how long can this go on without us being honest with one another and our futures. I want to marry you one day, and spend my last years with you and have peace in my life, once and for all. I don't want to run. I want to fight. If you love me, you'll give me my life back Connor…" Wilhelmina stared him in his blue eyes, desperately holding him close by the collar of his prison jump suit. Her eyes were threatening to spill over in tears and Connor's heart broke.

"…Ok"

"Ok you'll do it?" he nodded and leaned his head against hers.

"Thank you!" Wilhelmina whispered and kissed him with all the true love she had for him at that moment, hoping it would all leave her once and for all. She knew when she saw Connor the next time to pick up the documents for the transfers of funds, she knew she would have to break his heart. That morning she made love to him, knowing it may be the last time she would ever feel his lips and hands on her again, because she was sure he was going to hate her the next time he saw her.

Two days later the arrangements had been made. Connor's attorney met with the Wilhelmina and Connor to go over all the documents from Connor's financial statements. Hundreds of millions of dollars sat in Wilhelmina's accounts across the Cayman's, Switzerland and New York. Meade's monies were now officially in her possession. All the paperwork was handed off to her and she placed it in her Hermes for safekeeping. Connor watched the smirk spread across her tempting lips, like a Cheshire cat. Her eyes lit up knowing she was going to march into Mode that afternoon and take back what was hers. Wilhelmina assured the D.A. would be contact with his team of attorneys to propose a deal for his cooperation. Connor excused his attorney and reached for Wilhelmina's hands across the table.

Her face had changed and she leaned back in her chair. She crossed her arms and cocked an infuriating eyebrow in his direction. Connor looked at her in confusion at her body language. She crossed her legs and began her final assault.

"Thank you." She said in her best monotone.

"You're welcome doll face. So what's your plan?"

"Not your concern now." She sly shook her head at him.

He stared at her, her poker face unreadable. The smirk was undecipherable. He just watched her until it sunk in. She had just played him. He chuckled self deprecatingly, unable to accept it as the truth.

"Oh I get it…you clever, clever minx. You just fucked me, didn't you?"

"No Connor I fucked you two days ago. Today, I ruined you"

"What?"

"You heard me. You told me in the Bahamas you wanted me to ruin you. Guess what, I just did."

"So I suppose everything you said to me was a lie."
"You fucked me eight months ago and this was a long time coming. I cried myself to sleep almost every night because of you. You couldn't help yourself. You just kept screwing with me even when you had already taken off. You fucked me with the private jet, you fucked me with Nico, you fucked me pretending you were dead, and you fucked me with Daniel."

"Daniel?"

"Yes, Meade. My partnership with him is non-existent because of you. I am going to have to claw my way back what is rightfully mine when I could have easily walked in if you didn't put your hands on me."

"Are you fucking him?"

She knew she would cut him deep with her next statement but she had to do it. "I fucked him big time in the Bahamas after you were arrested." She figuratively let Connor believe a deeper meaning to her last statement, when she knew by 'fucked' she really meant 'betrayed'.

Connor cut her off in his rage hearing her speak to him like this. "There's no deal with the D.A. is there?" He seethed.

"No there is, not that you'll benefit much from it."

Connor sat there in disbelief at the woman he was looking at.

"The deal that will come through will be moving you across the country, out of sight out of mind. Oh and a reduction of five years tops."

"Get out of my sight."

"Remember this moment every night. Live with this feeling everyday. Now you know what I went through, except something tells me I got over it a lot quicker than you ever will. Thank you for making it sooo easy. Goodbye Connor."

As she walked past him toward the door, he abruptly grabbed her in his fit of rage, his eyes full of hate. He yelled obscenities in her face and Wilhelmina stood there paralyzed in fear and shock. The commotion caused the guards to rush in and separate him from her. She straightened her wardrobe, checked her bag for the documents and never looked back again. Her power had shifted back in her favor, except this time the price tag was the severest price she had ever had to pay, her broken heart.