Winters (Book Five)

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Sitting in my office, I space out staring at the wall. My door is wide open and I occasionally turn my attention to the closed door across the hall. Pain cuts through my chest and tears prick in my eyes but I don't let them fall. Sighing, I stare hopelessly at the pile of paperwork and my overflowing inbox. I need to keep going, I need to get this done, but I can't focus.

Hadley has shut down emotionally, her eyes have hardened over again and her responses are short to nonexistent. She won't talk to anyone about what she's feeling right now, but I know Click will eventually get through to her, she always does. A faint pang of jealousy hits me and I shove it away. Now is not the time for me to be petty about my sister relying on and opening up to someone else.

Aviva's behavior from this morning makes my knuckles go white, she overslept which is unlike her and when she finally got dressed, she looked like she had seen a ghost. She didn't want to talk about it, so I didn't push the subject. She will talk to me when she is ready, I just hope nothing traumatic or horrible happens in the meantime. We are all on edge, and I'm afraid, horrifically terrified. I am more afraid than I have ever been in my life, and that says a lot considering everything I have been through and done.

The fear is so numbing and all-consuming; I can feel my heart beating at too high of a rate and the churning of my stomach is making it even harder to eat. The faint trembling of my fingers makes it hard to hold a pen and I can't concentrate on anything. I keep waiting for her to appear again, is she always around? Is she waiting for me to make a mistake and tell them? What happens if I do? Is she the one who put Xander in a coma? Who else could it be, it all aligns too well! Why can't there be any clear-cut answers!

"Cathleen?" A soft voice calls from my doorway and my head whips up in shock. My secretary's soft and concerned face makes me feel horrible. I had already told her about my throat via a text this morning, she believed me when I said I had voice nodules, or she knew not to push the subject.

'Yes, Lil?' I text her and she glances down at the screen.

"Should we be concerned? You haven't sent an email all morning and it's radio silent from Alexander," she says and I see the worry lines in her forehead. I flounder with what to tell her, they don't know who else we are, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had figured it out.

'It's going to be a rough few weeks,' I text her tentatively and her lips turn down and her eyes shine with worry as she reads the message. Lilly and Madge are the best secretaries in the world, they handle our schedule changes and general crazy lives like it's nothing.

"Where's Xander?" She asks me softly and tears prick in my eyes. What was I supposed to tell her? That Alexander magically fell into a coma and we have no concrete evidence as to why, just that some psycho is stalking me, but I can't tell anyone, of course, that would be too easy.

'It's really complicated,' I text slowly, I feel horrible being so vague.

"Do you need help preparing a statement for the media?" She asks me softly and my heart stops cold in my chest. I have to tell the world; our stocks are going to tank; the company's image is going to get chewed up and spit out.

'Not yet, I want to give it a few days. I have set his emails to his autoreply that he's out of the office... Once I know more information, we will game plan what to do going forward,' I send trying to sound more like myself but everything feels hallow.

Lil leaves me to be and I start working on rearranging our schedules with her over our planning program. I remove Alexander off of everything for the next month and start responding to the emails he is getting, making sure to add my footer at the bottom. Logging into a lot of his accounts, I snort when I guess half of his passwords without getting his book locked in his desk, most of his passwords are variations of my name, Hadley's, and Lyles.