April 2017
It took weeks for her to summon the courage to return to work. Weeks spent grieving the loss of more than just Troy and what they shared. She was grieving the loss of her desire to truly live. Despite all the years of plotting and planning, and the fact that she had successfully pulled off her ambitious scheme, she felt no satisfaction.
She had expected to feel some sense of relief after everything was over. It had all gone perfectly. Ruining Troy’s relationship with Vanessa. Crippling Fox’s bid for public office and humiliating him in the process after a probe had been launched into the suspicious funding that had financed his company in the early years. The Mitchell family name was in tatters. But the most gratifying of all had been watching Uncle Don go to jail for the murder of his nephew.
Quincy had fired one round into Wes’s head, although he was already dead. Tyson and his goons had discarded Wes’s body at the site of one of Quincy’s old haunts. It was an abandoned building in the Bronx that Don still owned after all these years. Back in the day, Quincy had helped his former friend end the lives of many of his enemies there. Now he planted Wes’s body there and stashed the gun in the bushes nearby. An anonymous caller had phoned in a tip. And it didn’t take long before the trail led back to Don. He was languishing on Rikers Island, awaiting trial. Quincy planned to be in the courtroom every day.
Despite all of that, she wanted nothing more than just to crawl up in a ball and cry. She did just that for many days after leaving that run-down house in Brooklyn. Her father had spared Troy’s life, just as she had made him promise that he would. It was the one condition she had for her involvement. She would deliver Troy to Brooklyn, but she made her father promise not to kill him. Instead, Quincy had forced Troy to sign over two million dollars from the Stuart Mitchell accounts. Tyson beat him even more for good measure, then they had left him there in that old house on Pitkin Avenue with the promise that they would surely kill him and his father if he went to the authorities.
But Troy hadn’t gone to the police. Instead, he had let her win. Only it didn’t feel like winning. She didn’t feel any victory whatsoever. The loss of him was so palpable that she felt a very real ache in her soul. She had broken his heart, crushed his pride, and left him in financial tatters. Still, none of the spoils of war were enough to compensate for the complete sense of loss she felt inside. The fact that Wes was dead and that Don was in jail gave her little solace. Troy was gone and so were her hopes for true love in this lifetime.
She stared proudly now at the latest issue of Boss magazine. She had resigned as editor in chief at Hipster in the weeks following Wes’s death. Stuart Mitchell had given her a generous bonus “for all her years of service.” But she knew that it was just more hush money. She never saw Troy again. He and his father were scrambling to maintain control of the family businesses. But Stuart Mitchell eventually crumbled under the burden of government asset seizures and legal fees. Hipster was sold to Time, Inc. And once more, Crystal had reinvented herself. She and Oscar joined forces again and had created Boss, a magazine for millennials on the rise. The publication was still in its infancy. But Crystal was confident that she and Oscar would make it a success. She had already proven with Hipster that she had what it took to win.
Quincy moved down to Maryland and rekindled what remained of his life and his romance with Georgi. The pair had lots to catch up on and many years of distance to make up for. Quincy and Crystal were still rebuilding their relationship. It was easier now that their obsession with revenge had been tragically satisfied. Crystal remained in New York, content with the life she had forged for herself there. Her mother worried about her even more these days. Now that she had conquered an evil giant, she worried that Don or his cronies might hurt her. Crystal left her Brooklyn brownstone. There were too many memories of Troy there. She lived in Murray Hill now. Tyson kept a close eye on her, aware that danger could still be lurking. These days, she was constantly looking over her shoulder. The Mitchell family had been known to hold grudges.
She sat now at a sidewalk café in her neighborhood. Spring was beginning to take form and she peered from behind her sunglasses at the blooming flowers around her. The winter had been brutal. The temperature matching the icy finality of things.
Crystal knew she was forever changed. Gone was the woman with a sunny disposition. In her place was a serious and no-nonsense one. Her staff tiptoed around her, desperate to avoid being the recipient of one of her blank and cold stares. She had laughed to herself at the irony the other day. She was now as feared and lamented as her old boss Angela Richmond had been back at Sable magazine in the early days. Crystal had abhorred working for that woman, who seldom smiled and always gave a clipped response to anyone who dared to bother her with a question. She feared that she was becoming the same person. She wondered what Angela’s story was. Perhaps she, too, had loved and lost in such a devastating fashion. Crystal mused that she might invite the bitch to lunch one day. They might have more in common than she once thought.
Crystal knew that she would move on someday. Eventually, she would regain the fervor she had lost last fall. She had plenty left to live for, after all. She was young, single, successful, and wiser than she had ever been before. Whether she ever experienced it again, she counted herself blessed that she had known what it was like to be in love. Even if it had cost her everything. Few could say they had really experienced that.
She left a generous tip on the table, tucked her copy of Boss magazine under her arm, and glided down the block in her Gucci slingbacks, headed for home. She would spend the afternoon holed up in her apartment preparing herself for an upcoming “Women in Media” conference. She had been invited to be the keynote speaker, an honor that she was very proud of.
Troy watched her as she sauntered ahead of him. He was often there, unbeknownst to her, watching her from a distance. He had become a man obsessed. He had created fake social media accounts just to follow her and see where she was going, what she was doing. He read everything she published. Every article. Every blog. He adjusted his Ray-Bans and watched her walk into her apartment building.
Surely she knew he wasn’t going to let her get away that easily.