“I can’t even look at this,” Lola muttered. “Clean it up immediately, then contact Alonzo to order a new one. Custom-made, just like the first. It won’t be the same, but at least I’ll have another.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, and she stormed off. Lola literally didn’t enter that room again until her new chandelier had arrived and she watched the men install it, repeatedly telling them to be careful with it.
It took three months for the new chandelier to come in, but that was my doing. Alonzo would have replaced her precious chandelier right away, rushed the order, but I refused to contact him until a month after her demand for a new one. I rather enjoyed seeing the broken chandelier on the floor. I took my time cleaning it too. I was in no rush to replace it. In fact, I spent the entire next week getting rid of the crystal pieces. I’d walk by the room with a cup of tea and smile at my destruction. Lola’s hard work, shattered. All thanks to me.
That chandelier was just the start. I realized I had sacrificed so much for Lola Maxwell and what did I get in return? A divorce. A lost baby. A broken soul.
She’d done that. Lola had broken me.
Now it was my turn to break her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“I want you to rewrite my contract.” Three days after losing my baby, this was my demand.
As I’d mentioned before, I had a contract with Lola as household manager that I had printed out and read thoroughly the same night I broke the chandelier.
Per the contract, I was to perform ten years of service for her in her mansion. I could receive up to three vacations a year and take them whenever I wanted, so long as they didn’t coincide with any important events or dinners the employer of the home (Lola) had planned, and I also had health care benefits, which came in handy for my tragic and brief stay at the hospital.
I was also under confidentiality, and if I broke it, my employer could terminate me, but we were past that point now. She wasn’t going to fire me, so that promise was out the window.
What wasn’t included, however, was some kind of bonus or premium after my tenth year, and that didn’t sit well with me for some reason. You’d think after working for someone for ten years you’d get something bigger out of it in the end, right, Ivy? Maybe some sort of early retirement fund as a thank-you for dedicating ten years of your life to two of some of the richest people in Florida, or a brand-new car? Something.
Lola looked up from cutting her grapefruit to focus on me. She was seated on the deck beneath the pool umbrella, a fresh breakfast laid out for her, and a magazine open next to her dish. “Excuse me?”
“My contract,” I repeated. “You’re going to rewrite it.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll tell the journalist who was sniffing around during the time of the accident you caused that you are the reason those people are dead. The journalist had a theory about it being someone famous. Perhaps I’ll tell him what I know.”
Lola’s face turned stoic. She put down her knife, the silver tip glittering as it caught a ray of sunlight, and looked me in the eye. “That accident was almost two years ago. No one would believe you.”
“Detective Jack Shaw. He’s the one you paid off, right? What if I report him to whoever his boss is? Tell him he wrote you out of the files so he could have five hundred thousand of your dollars? Then he’ll have no choice but to confess and hope it will save him his job. You forget, there is a paper trail.”
She narrowed her hazel eyes. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I should be promised something at the end of my contract, especially after everything I’ve lost because of you.”
She scoffed. “Georgia, you’re the one who applied for this job—you’re the one who wanted to work here. I didn’t force you.”
“Yes, I did, but I didn’t realize what I was signing up for, or that you would be so horrible to me.”
Lola ran her tongue over her teeth before saying, “So, you’re going to blackmail me into rewriting your contract? And what exactly do you want to change about it?”
“Everything can remain the same. I’ll finish my ten years with you and then I’ll leave, but I want to be promised ten million dollars by the end of the contract. A million for every year I had to deal with your shit.”
Lola lifted her chin. Her eyes shimmered. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“Wow. Okay, Georgia.” Lola huffed. “You want me to rewrite the contract, I will. But you will have to sign a nondisclosure agreement immediately, in which you will agree not to use what happened over me anymore. You won’t get to hang what you know over my head again, and if you try to blackmail me again, you won’t get the ten million dollars you’re asking for.”