This time, she just handed it to him, handshaking like she couldn't hold it anymore. Marcus took it and read, "You've got until Friday, Sofh. Sign the papers or your whole client list finds out who you really are. Don't make me do this. You know I will.
Marcus read it twice. Then he handed the phone back and his voice when it came was very quiet and very calm. And that was somehow worse than if he'd yelled. Friday. He said, "Marcus, today's Tuesday.
Please don't do anything. Please, you'll make it worse. You don't know him. I don't need to know him." He stood up.
I've known a hundred men like him. Cowards everyone. A man who threatens a woman with pictures instead of standing in front of her like a man that's the smallest kind of man there is. Sophia and the thing about small men is they count on you being too scared to call their bluff. It's not a bluff.
He'll do it. He's done things before. Then we don't give him the chance. Marcus said we without even noticing he'd said it. And Sophia noticed and she went still.
You said he wants you to sign a release. Have you signed anything? No, not yet. Don't Don't sign a thing. Marcus was pacing now, thinking the same way he thought through a busted engine.
The same way he thought through anything broken. Find the real problem, not the noise around it. You got a lawyer? I can't afford a lawyer, Marcus. That's the whole There's free ones.
Legal aid. People who help with exactly this extortion. That's what this is. You understand me? What?
He just texted you. That's a crime. That's not a debt anymore. The second he said sign or I ruin you, he stopped being your ex and started being a criminal and that changes everything. Sophia was staring at him like she'd never seen him before.
You've thought about this? She said slowly. I'm thinking about it right now. No, you the way you just You sound like you know exactly what to do. Marcus stopped pacing.
He looked at her and something in his face closed over just for a second, a shadow of something he didn't say. And then it was gone. I told you, he said. I fix things. But it wasn't the whole truth.
And Sophia, designer reader of rooms, the woman who fixed the thing you could feel but couldn't name. She caught it. She caught the flicker. She caught the thing he didn't say. Marcus, she said carefully.
How do you know all this about extortion and legal aid? And this isn't handyman knowledge. This is something else. And Marcus Carter, who had spent 3 years never letting a single soul over his wall, stood in the middle of a stranger's apartment and felt the ground shift under a thing he'd never told anybody in that whole neighborhood. Not Evelyn, not his sister, not one client, a thing he'd buried so deep he almost believed it wasn't true anymore.
Sophia," he said. "Sit down. You're scaring me. Sit down, please." She sat.
Marcus stood there for a long moment, and he could feel his own heart going, and he thought about the wall, the high, thick wall he'd built, and swore nobody would ever get over. And he thought about the way she'd said, "You're the first person who looked at me like I was worth fixing." And he made a decision that surprised him even as he made it. Before I did this, he said, before the handyman thing, before Lily, before the divorce, before any of it, he took a breath. I was a cop.
Sophia blinked. You were a 10 years Atlanta PD. I worked domestic cases mostly the last few years, which means I sat across from about 400 women who looked exactly like you look right now. His voice had gone rough, scared, ashamed, holding a phone with a thread on it, trying to figure out how bad it would get if they did nothing versus how bad it would get if they did something. I know this, Sophia.
I know it in my bones. I've seen where it goes when a woman signs the paper the man tells her to sign, and I've seen where it goes when she doesn't. And I'm telling you, everything in me is telling you, do not sign that paper. Sophia was speechless. "Why'd you quit?"
she finally asked. And there it was. "The real question, the one under the question." Marcus looked away. "That's a longer story," he said.
"And it's not for tonight. Tonight's about you. But I'll tell you this much." He crouched back down in front of her. The reason I fix things now, sinks and fences and beds, the reason I do this instead of that is because there was a day near the end when I couldn't fix the thing in front of me.
And it broke something in me. I've spent 3 years trying to build back with my hands. So when you tell me you've got a man threatening you and you're scared and you don't know what to do, his voice caught. That's not just a job to me, he said. You understand?
That's the one thing in this whole world I swore I'd never walk away from again. Sophia stared at him and her eyes were full and the whole apartment seemed to hold still around the two of them. Marcus, she whispered. What happened? The day you couldn't fix it.
What happened? Marcus opened his mouth and his phone rang. He looked down. It was his sister's number. His sister who had Lily. his sister who never called during a job unless something was wrong because she knew he was working and she respected that.
Marcus' stomach dropped. He answered, "Renee, what's wrong?" And he heard his sister's voice and it was tight and wrong and fast. And she said, "Marcus, don't panic." "Okay, she's okay, but you need to get to the hospital.
It's Lily." She fell at the park and hit her head. and she's they're saying she's okay, but they want to run a scan and she's asking for you and I need you to come now. Marcus was already moving. Which hospital? He said, and his voice came out flat and clear and cold.
The old voice, the cop voice, the voice he used when everything inside him was screaming, "Renee, which hospital?" He barely heard the answer. He was grabbing his keys, his toolbox forgotten on the floor, and Sophia was on her feet saying, "Marcus, what's wrong? What happened?" And he turned to her at the door.
And for a second, he couldn't even make words. "It's my daughter," he managed. "She's hurt. I have to go," Sophia said instantly. "Go, go.
Don't even go. The bed's not finished, Marcus." She grabbed his arm. "It's a bed. go get your baby. He looked at her hand on his arm and then at her face, and there was something in it, not pity, not fear, but a fierce, steady certainty, like she was pushing her own strength into him through her grip.
I'm coming with you, she said. You don't have to. I'm driving. You're shaking too hard to drive, and you know it. Give me the keys.
And Marcus Carter, who never let anybody help him, who'd built a wall 3 years high. Marcus looked at his own hand and saw that she was right, saw that it was trembling, and he dropped the keys into her palm without another word. They ran down the stairs together. In the truck, Sophia drove fast and steady, and Marcus sat in the passenger seat of his own vehicle for the first time in years, and his knee bounced, and he stared out the windshield and said mostly to himself, "She fell. She just fell.
Kids fall. It's fine. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. Sophia echoed eyes on the road.
They just want to run a scan. That's normal. That's protocol. They scan for head injuries. It doesn't mean anything.