Nine Graves Before I Left

For three years, I was Conrad Burke’s diamond-collared pet, spoiled into believing the world bent to my whims simply because he held the reins of Manhattan and let me sit beside the driver’s seat. Then the society pages exploded. Conrad’s pristine golden girl—the high school sweetheart whose memory hung over his penthouses like an antique chandelier nobody was allowed to touch—was flying back into the country. My stomach dropped through the floorboards. That evening, frantic to prove I still had some purchase on his heart, I dragged him toward the Montauk coastline under the guise of watching the stars. I waited for hours. The stars never broke through the Atlantic fog, and the man never came. Instead, right beneath my ribs, a tiny, shrill, utterly hysterical voice shattered the sound of the crashing waves: "Reborn for the ninth damn time! How are we still stuck in this lovesick doormat’s uterus?!" "Stupid woman! His untouchable golden girl is your old boarding school roommate, Laurel! Deadbeat Dad is already at the Carlyle Hotel uncorking champagne and rolling around the suite with her." "Just like the last nine times, you’re going to march into that hotel room, catch them in the act, throw a tantrum, and he’ll shove you down the marble staircase until your skull cracks open on the parquet floor!" I shot to my feet. The Atlantic wind whipped against my skin, cold enough to turn my blood into slush. Right on cue, a sudden squall broke overhead, driving needle-sharp rain across the sand. A heartbeat later, the rain stopped hitting my face. A canopy of black canvas spread above me. Conrad stood behind me, smelling of dry gin and cold cedarwood. His lip curled into that effortless, patrician sneer. "Did the headlines about me and Laurel scramble your brain so badly you forgot what an umbrella is?" The phantom voice still rang in my ears. I took three rapid steps backward, stepping straight out from beneath the canopy and into the deluge. The icy rain plastered my silk dress to my skin. "You’re flattering yourself. It was humid. I like cooling off in the storm." "Snap." With one violent flex of his hand, Conrad snapped the titanium ribs of the umbrella clean in two. … I retreated instinctively, keeping my eyes low so I wouldn’t trip whatever fuse was burning behind his dark eyes. His jaw set into stone. The rain thickened into an absolute downpour. Without another word, he gripped my wrist and dragged me toward the black Maybach parked by the dunes. I stumbled in my four-inch Louboutins, gravel tearing into the soles, my vision blurring with hot, stinging tears. He didn't slow down. Not by half an inch. Once upon a time, before the ghost from his past boarded her transatlantic flight, he would have picked me up. He would have carried me across the wet pavement so my shoes wouldn't get ruined. The voice in my belly chimed in again. "Here it comes. Run number ten. According to lives one through nine, you’re about to kick his shin with that stiletto, call him a bastard, and he’s going to leave you stranded on the shoulder of Route 27 in the middle of a gale." My breath hitched in my throat. The fight drained out of me like water through a grate. Whatever madness had made me die nine times before, I was done. Survival was the only metric that mattered now. Keeping my head down, drawing breath, and walking away. A sharp cobblestone caught the tip of my heel, sending me sprawling forward. Conrad caught me roughly by the elbow, shoved me into the passenger seat, and slammed the door. He climbed behind the wheel, his profile sharp and glacial under the dash lights. "Even a stray dog knows enough to run inside when the sky opens up, Iris," he said, his voice clipped and venomous. "You really don't hold a candle to Laurel, do you?" The barb struck dead center, twisting in an old, soft ache. I lowered my gaze. My tongue twitched to bite back, to remind him of every night he had buried his face in my neck and whispered that I was the only thing that felt real, but the voice inside me kept me quiet. Conrad’s mask had slipped. The boy who worshiped his high-society saint was back. The vents blew warm air. He pulled a monogrammed linen towel from the console and threw it across my face. He didn't speak. I sat there beneath the linen, dazed. I told myself that, after all, he was the billionaire patron and I was the kept bird; drying his shoulders was part of the contract. With wet hair clinging to my cheeks, I took the towel and reached across the leather console, gently dabbing at the dark rain soaked into his wool coat. Conrad flinched. His face darkened instantly. He caught my wrist, wrenched the towel away, and threw it back into my lap with utter disgust. He started the ignition without glancing at me. "Deadbeat Dad has to keep himself pure for his sacred angel," the baby’s voice spat sarcastically. I looked down at my hands, my nose burning. Right. Laurel was back in Manhattan. Touching him now probably made him feel soiled. I lifted the towel to wring out my own dripping hair, but the moment my elbow shifted, the voice shrieked inside my head: "We’re doomed! Idiot Mom is about to grab the steering wheel during her hysterical meltdown and smash the carved wooden talisman hanging from the rearview mirror—the one his precious Laurel gave him in boarding school!" "And then? Booted right out of the moving car at forty miles an hour!" My gaze snapped up. There it was. Dangling from the rearview mirror by a faded leather cord: a small, hand-carved cherrywood charm engraved with an intertwined "L". "Brace for impact! Here’s the sharp bend on the highway!" "Three! Two! One!" "...Wait. She didn’t touch the wheel? What’s going on? Why is this timeline breaking script? Baby Two, are you awake? Did her brain reset?" A second voice, cooler, lower, and laced with infinite exhaustion, drifted through my consciousness: "Don't get your hopes up. Even if she holds it together for ten minutes, she always manages to orchestrate our demise before the third act." A synchronized, heavy sigh vibrated through my pelvic bone: "Sigh." I froze, one hand resting over my lower abdomen. "Twins?" I turned my head slightly, catching Conrad’s rigid jawline in the reflection of the rain-streaked window. Whatever we had been playing at for three years, it was over. We were an evolutionary dead end. An hour later, the Maybach pulled through the wrought-iron gates of a secluded Greenwich estate—the Georgian brick mansion he had purchased for me when our affair first turned domestic. "What’s the point of a golden cage?" the first baby grumbled. "Deadbeat Dad still won’t let your shadow fall within ten miles of the Burke ancestral estate in the Hudson Valley." My fingers curled into my palms until the manicured nails bit skin. It was true. All the lavish vacations, the black cards, the custom gowns—it was an enclosure. He fed me sugar through the bars, but he never let me stand in the light of his real family. Conrad glanced over, his brow furrowing at my silence. "Are you waiting for a brass band? Get out." "Okay," I said quietly. No snark. No fiery banter. I reached for the door handle. "Iris." His voice caught me, low and fraught with an undercurrent I couldn't quite decipher. "If anyone bearing the Burke name reaches out to you over the next couple of weeks, do not take the call. Do not open the door. Do you understand me?" "Because Laurel is back, and Deadbeat Dad is bringing his future bride home to meet the patriarchs, you poor, foolish woman." The blood drained from my cheeks. Of course. I was the mistress to be swept under the rug before the real guests arrived. "Understood." I shut the heavy door behind me. I didn't linger on the gravel. Behind me, through the wet darkness, I heard his phone connect over the car’s Bluetooth. His voice drifted through the rain, dropping into an octave of breathtaking tenderness: "I know. Be good. I’m on my way right now." Standing in the cold night, I sucked in a lungful of damp air, forcing the bile down my throat. It was fine. If whatever gods governed this cruel universe had allowed my unborn children to speak across nine ruined lifetimes, it was a lifeline. I was not going to die for him a tenth time. ... As expected, Conrad never came home that night. "Deadbeat Dad is currently camped out in a private suite at Mount Sinai," the baby narrated around three in the morning. "Laurel ran a mild temperature after her flight. He doesn’t have the bandwidth to remember you exist." I was curled on the velvet sofa, shivering violently. The rain from Montauk had seeped deep into my lungs. By dawn, my skin was radiating heat, my throat felt coated in crushed glass, and my thoughts were slurring together. In the old days, I would have blown up his phone. I would have called forty times, sobbed into the receiver, and demanded that he bring his driver and his cashmere blankets to hold me until the fever broke. Now, I knew better. Dignity was knowing when the curtain had fallen. Last week, the director of operations had pulled me into an empty conference room, offering me a two-year transfer to spearhead our brand expansion in Los Angeles. At the time, blinded by the fantasy of my life with Conrad, I had flatly refused. Now, burning with a hundred-and-two-degree fever, I used the last remaining strength in my fingers to open my inbox and hit reply: "I accept the relocation." The next morning, my phone vibrated incessantly against the nightstand. Fourteen missed calls from Conrad. I cleared my throat, dialed back, and pressed the phone to my ear. His voice exploded through the speaker, tight with an ugly, controlled rage. "If you aren't going to pick up your phone, throw it in the East River! Get your ass into the office. Now." He hung up before I could blink. I dragged myself out of bed, slapped on enough foundation to hide the pallor of sickness, and caught a cab into the Financial District. When I pushed through the frosted glass doors of his executive suite, my division head was already standing there, looking like he wanted to jump out the fiftieth-floor window. Beside him sat Laurel. She wore a cream-colored Bottega Veneta pantsuit, her blonde hair falling in effortless, salon-blown waves. When she saw me, her lips curved into a soft, nostalgic smile. "It’s been such a long time, Iris." My voice was sandpaper. "Good to see you, Laurel." Before she could answer, a heavy leather-bound portfolio was slammed onto the mahogany desk in front of me, making me flinch. "Is my office a social club?" Conrad sat behind his desk, cufflinks gleaming under the recessed lighting. His gaze was pure frost. The edge of the portfolio had grazed my arm, leaving a red welt. My fingers twitched. Why bark at me? Why not a single sharp word for the woman sitting across from him? "Because Deadbeat Dad can't bear to look at his precious angel with an ounce of displeasure," the voice grumbled. "You’re the only one he has permission to bruise." I dug my fingernails into my palms, keeping my spine straight. Conrad leaned back, his eyes narrowing as he looked down at me from his throne. "The Los Angeles expansion. Hand over your files. You’re off the project." My chin snapped up. "What?" My fever spiked hot behind my eyes. "I’ve lived and breathed that account for six months. I built the client deck from scratch. You’re giving it away?" The late nights. The red-eye flights. The endless strategy meetings where I pushed myself past exhaustion just to prove to the board that I wasn't an empty-headed trophy on Conrad Burke’s arm. He knew every single hour I had put into that account. He had seen the blisters on my feet. Conrad stood up, buttoning his jacket, the sneer on his lips cutting down to the bone. "Laurel is taking the lead on the West Coast portfolio. Iris, be realistic. You don't have her polish. You don't have her strategic background. You don't have an Ivy League credential to flash at sovereign wealth funds." He let out a dry, dismissive chuckle. "Tell me: on what basis do you think you have the right to keep it?" The room tilted. A sharp, breathless pain bloomed behind my sternum, spreading outward through my ribs. "Uh-oh. The fuse is lit," the baby warned. "In life number seven, Idiot Mom lost her mind right here. She flipped the glass coffee table, clawed at Laurel’s throat, and Conrad shoved her backward into that Ming-style porcelain floor vase. Shards went so deep into her flank the surgeons couldn't pick them all out." I drew a slow, deliberate breath. The cold air burned my inflamed lungs. I looked at Conrad. Then I looked at Laurel, whose eyes were shining with just the right amount of performative pity. The heat in my chest didn't flare into fire; it froze into dead, silent ice. "You’re the Chief Executive," I said, my voice dead and level. "Your word is gospel. You’re right. What right do I have to question you?" I should have remembered who signed the checks from the very beginning. Conrad’s eyes flickered, dark and unsettled by my lack of resistance. He turned to the division head, his jaw tight. "Announce it to the floor. Laurel is coming in as Vice President of Business Development. Iris will be moved to Level Two analyst status." The director swallowed hard, nodded, and bolted from the room like he was escaping a firing squad. My limbs went cold. Three years. Three years of clawing my way up from an assistant’s desk, eating desk lunches, swallowing insults behind my back, all reduced to zero in thirty seconds flat. Laurel stood, stepping around the desk to lightly loop her slender fingers through Conrad’s arm. "Thank you, Conrad. I won't let you down. And... thank you for last night. For taking care of me." Her cheeks flushed a delicate, maidenly pink. Conrad glanced sideways at me. When he saw me standing there like a marble pillar, completely devoid of tears or fury, he reached up and patted Laurel’s hand. "You’re more capable than she is," he murmured, his eyes lingering on my face. "Do a good job." I don't remember walking out of the executive suite. My mind was a smear of gray noise. I went down to the forty-second floor, grabbed a cardboard banker’s box, and packed up my corner office. Under the whispers and pitying smirks of twenty colleagues, I carried my things down the hallway and dropped them onto a dusty, laminate cubicle in the rear corner by the server room. My phone buzzed on the laminate. "Mom." I swiped the screen. Her shrill, disappointed voice flooded the line before I could say hello. "Laurel dropped by the apartment yesterday afternoon, Iris. Brought your father imported heart supplements and brought me a vintage silk scarf. Sat on our sofa for three hours listening to your father complain about his sciatica." I held the phone slightly away from my ear. "And what about you?" she barked. "Could you take five minutes out of your glamorous life to learn a shred of consideration from a real lady? When are you going to let your father and me hold our heads high?" She lectured me for five relentless minutes about how warm Laurel was, how sweet-tempered, how filial. My gaze drifted across the scuffed plastic of the desk. Every single month, I sent them organic groceries, paid their co-pays, and ordered premium supplements straight to their brownstone. Every single package sat on their porch or in their pantry until the seal broke and the contents expired. When Laurel gave, it was the benevolence of a saint. When I gave, it was garbage from a disgraced daughter. "I have to work, Mom," I said softly, and hung up. I stared at the blinking cursor of my monitor for a long, quiet minute. Then, I opened a blank document and typed out a two-sentence letter of immediate resignation. I hit print. I grabbed the warm sheet from the tray and turned toward the department manager’s office, only to find him standing right behind my cubicle wall. "Iris," he said, looking uneasy. "Burke wants you back upstairs." I blinked. I slipped the resignation letter into my blazer pocket and walked toward the elevators. At the bank, I stared at the private brass doors of the executive lift. For thirty-six months, my keycard had unlocked that door. This morning, the scanner flashed an angry, buzz-saw red. Access denied. When I finally reached Conrad’s office using the service bank, Laurel was standing over his desk, walking him through a financial model. Conrad was leaning close, listening intently, his pen making light, patient corrections in the margins. He was speaking in that low, measured cadence he used when he was genuinely invested in someone. He had never used that tone with me; with me, corrections were delivered like slaps to the back of the head. "Iris, you’re here!" Laurel looked up, flashing a smile that didn't reach her eyes. A wave of goosebumps rose on my arms. We had shared a dorm room at sixteen. Ten years had passed. We weren't sisters; we were barely acquaintances with shared baggage. Conrad lifted his head, his dark eyebrows knitting together. "Why are you so pale? Are you sick?" "I’m fine." Just a hundred-degree fever and the ruins of my entire career. "What did you need, Mr. Burke?" I had never called him "Mr. Burke". Even in corporate strategy meetings with external partners, I had always addressed him casually as Conrad. His hand tightened around his Montblanc pen. His mouth pulled into a hard, thin line. "I called you in to give you a warning," he said coldly. "Do not play games on this account. Do not try to undermine Laurel behind the scenes. And you are strictly forbidden from attending the private luncheon with the Bishop Group this afternoon." I kept my hands buried inside my blazer pockets, my fingernails shredding the paper of my resignation letter. "Understood." I turned on my heel to leave. I couldn't breathe the oxygen in that room for another second. "Baby Two... did our bird-brained mother actually wake up?" the first baby whispered, sounding genuinely shaken. "This isn't how it happened the last nine times. She was supposed to scream." The second baby sounded cautious, almost clinical: "Hold your applause. In timeline number six, she held her tongue for forty-eight hours before relapsing into a lunatic rage and driving off a bridge. We aren't safe until we’re out of this zip code." I walked back to my cubicle, fully intending to drop the resignation on HR’s desk and disappear into the grid. Then my phone chimed. An invite from the senior partner at Bishop Enterprises: "Iris, we’re at the Yale Club. We were expecting you to present the secondary valuation." My thumb hovered over the screen. I had courted Carlton Bishop for three agonizing months. I had endured his sleazy jokes and his heavy hand on the back of my chair just to keep the merger alive. If I walked away now, all that degradation belonged to Laurel’s victory lap. I hit accept. It was a public dining club. Conrad wouldn't be anywhere near a mid-tier partner luncheon. At noon, I pushed open the double oak doors of the private dining suite at the Yale Club, and the air left my lungs. Sitting around the mahogany table were not just the partners from Bishop Enterprises. At the head of the table sat Conrad’s parents—the old-money Burke patriarch and matriarch who had made it their personal mission to ensure I was never invited to a single charity gala in the state of New York. I froze in the doorway. Mrs. Burke’s gaze swept over me like I was a spill on an Aubusson rug. Not a word. Just cold, aristocratic disgust. Carlton Bishop stood up, flashing a greasy smile as he pulled out the heavy leather chair directly beside him. "Ah, Miss Bell. Conrad’s firm certainly knows how to hire them. Brains and incredible bone structure." The comment was filthy, slick with the implication of what I really was. The old Iris—the girl who had been raised on Conrad’s arrogance—would have tossed her martini in his lap. "Oh God, it’s happening," the first baby shrieked. "She’s about to lose her mind! That lecherous pig just crossed the line! Next step: wine bottle to the temple!" "Yep," Baby Two drawled. "Merger collapses. The elder Burkes demand retribution. Deadbeat Dad ships her off to a company outpost in a South American shantytown where we die of cholera. Classic." My knuckles cracked as I forced my hands open under the table linen. My face was white. I swallowed the fire in my throat. I couldn't afford a temper anymore. Nobody was coming to pull me out of the wreckage. Bishop noticed my compliance. His grin broadened. As the first course was served, his heavy thigh pressed against mine beneath the table. His hand drifted toward my knee under the white cloth, whispering vile promises against the nape of my neck. I sat there, frozen, staring straight ahead, enduring every inch of it. I had no protector. The armor had been stripped away. "BAM." The double doors of the private dining room flew open, hitting the paneled walls with a concussive boom. I jerked around. When I saw Conrad standing in the threshold, his coat flared open, rain still clinging to his hair, a terrible, desperate instinct flapped in my chest—a flicker of relief. Then I saw the murder in his eyes. And that flicker died instantly. He wasn't here to save me. He was enraged that I had defied his orders. He was furious that I had stolen the spotlight from Laurel. "I apologize," I blurted out before he could open his mouth. A public apology was better than an unmarked grave in South America. Conrad’s chest heaved. He strode across the Persian rug, grabbed my arm with enough force to bruise the bone, and hauled me out of the chair. "Out," he snarled. He dragged me into the carpeted corridor like a piece of refuse. Laurel came hurrying out behind him, her voice fluttering with performative grace. "Conrad, please, don't cause a scene! I don't mind if Iris wanted to handle the partners herself..." My stomach turned. At the end of the hall, Conrad shoved me against the damask wallpaper, his frame trembling with suppressed fury. Laurel hovered safely behind his broad back. "Who gave you permission to come here?!" His voice was a serrated blade. "Did I not make it clear? A Level Two analyst does not represent this firm! Are you deaf, or just completely illiterate?!" He took three ragged breaths, fighting to keep his composure from shattering completely. "Iris, who the hell do you think you are? You think this firm halts operations if you aren't in the room? You think in the entirety of Manhattan, I can't find a woman more qualified, more disciplined, more worthy than you?!" I kept my eyes fixed on the parquet floor. The December air leaking through the club windows was freezing. It didn't compare to the hollow, cavernous cold expanding inside my chest. Laurel reached out, her delicate fingers wrapping around Conrad’s forearm. "Conrad, please. Take a breath. She didn't mean to embarrass your family." The moment her fingers touched him, the murderous tension in his shoulders dropped by half. "See?" the first baby muttered, its voice tiny and desolate. "The golden girl is always the golden girl. Deadbeat Dad will always, always pick Auntie Laurel." "Here comes the crescendo," Baby Two noted dryly. "Mom snaps at the hypocrisy, shoves Laurel down the grand marble staircase, gets deported on an international freight liner, and dies alone in the dark." I slowly lifted my chin. I looked at Conrad. I looked at the way his fingers instinctively covered Laurel’s hand to comfort her. The last lingering trace of the girl who had loved him for three years withered into ash. A trophy wife was an investment. A kept woman was a disposable napkin. I closed my eyes. I wouldn't die. Not this time. I locked my hands behind my back, digging my fingernails into my palms until I drew blood, and bent my upper body into a rigid, perfect ninety-degree bow toward Laurel. "I apologize, Miss Lin," I said, every word clipped and dead. "I was out of line." Laurel froze, caught completely off guard. Conrad’s expression shifted violently, a mixture of shock and sheer distaste flickering across his features. "Look at you," he sneered, though his voice sounded thin. "Your spine bends so easily, doesn't it?" A dry, bitter laugh escaped my throat. "If I had a spine, Conrad, would I have spent three years letting you keep me in a velvet cage?" I had choked down my rage, but I couldn't choke down the truth. His face drained of color. For two whole seconds, the corridor was so quiet we could hear the rain lashing the stained glass. Then, his face hardened into an ugly mask. "Sharp tongue to the end. Get out of here. If I ever catch you near a client dinner again, you won't have a career left in this city." He turned, took Laurel by the elbow, and walked away. The corridor emptied. My knees buckled, and I sank down onto the patterned carpet, trembling so hard my teeth clicked together. "...That’s it?" Baby One whispered, entirely dumbfounded. "She didn't push her? She didn't throw a punch? She actually backed down?" "Don't celebrate," Baby Two cautioned. "We’re still in Manhattan." It took me ten minutes to muster the strength to stand. As I dragged myself toward the brass elevator bank, a bloodcurdling, ungodly shriek echoed from the private dining room down the hall. I paused, frowning. That sounded distinctly like Carlton Bishop squealing like a gutted pig. "Ding." The elevator doors slid open. I pulled my foot back, ignoring the urge to investigate. Whatever hell was happening in that room, it was karma. And it certainly had nothing to do with me. When I stepped off the elevator onto my floor at the firm, three analysts rushed over, grabbing my sleeves. "Iris! Did you see the wire? Bishop Enterprises is being raided by the IRS and the SEC right now! Federal agents just locked down their headquarters!" They stared at me with wide, hungry eyes. "Do you know what happened?" I pulled my arm back, shaking my head. "No idea. Terrible people get what they deserve." I walked to my desk, unlocked my screen, and the financial headlines flashed across the browser: BURKE CAPITAL SEVERS TIES: CARLTON BISHOP UNDER FEDERAL INDICTMENT AFTER CONRAD BURKE HANDS OVER WHISTLEBLOWER DOSSIER. "Tabloids Speculate: Did the Burke Heir Destroy a Billion-Dollar Partner to Avenge His Returning Sweetheart?" "Bishop cornered Laurel in London two years ago," Baby One recalled softly. "So that’s why Deadbeat Dad dropped the guillotine. It was for her all along." "Mom lost before she even sat at the table." A muscle in my throat tightened, then went slack. I hadn't been delusional enough to think he did it for me. I had seen how he looked at her. My phone buzzed on the desk. A text from Conrad: "Wait for me in my office after the closing bell. We need to talk." "Here it comes," the baby sighed. "The pink slip. The official breakup. Sucker Mom is getting discarded like yesterday’s trash." I didn't reply. I wasn't going to wait around like a condemned prisoner waiting for the warden to explain why the execution was necessary. If I was leaving, I was leaving on my own terms. I pulled the signed resignation letter from my coat, placed it squarely in the center of the cubicle desk, and unclipped my security badge. I dropped the lanyard on the laminate. I didn't take a coat. I didn't take a box. I walked out of the building, flagged a yellow cab directly to JFK, and bought the first one-way ticket to Los Angeles departing that afternoon. When the jet engines roared and the wheels lifted off the tarmac into the gray New York clouds, the crushing weight on my chest suddenly vanished. Twelve hours later, the plane touched down at LAX. I switched off airplane mode. My screen went berserk. Over a hundred missed calls and a flood of frantic text notifications cascaded down the display—every single one of them from Conrad Burke.