Page 9 of Ruthless Lullaby

"She’s having one of her good days,bratok. She hasn’t asked about Cordelia today.”

Cordelia.

Hearing my daughter's name is always a spear in my heart.

"That’s something," I say. "Let’s do our best to keep it that way.”

"It’s not like we have any influence over her condition, Maron. You know that.”

Yes, I fucking know that. Timofey is right. Mother has vascular dementia. It's a bitch of a disease. Her personality is disintegrating right before our eyes. She has good days and bad days. On her good days, she resembles her old self, but on the bad ones, boy, she struggles immensely. And we struggle with her.

On those bad days, she keeps asking about Cordelia, my late daughter.

Cordelia had Down syndrome and she was the most beautiful soul ever born into this fucked-up world. She passed away from heart disease when she was just eight years old. My beautiful baby girl. Her system couldn’t fight the heart disease that came with her Down syndrome. Cordelia was the light of my life. And I will never, ever get over that fucking pain I have over losing her.

My mother and Cordelia were tight. Like soulmates. They completed each other, like pieces of a broken puzzle. And even now, she still clings to her precious granddaughter. In my mother's deteriorating mind, where time, space, and context often become jumbled together, Cordelia remains a fixed point, a constant presence she remembers without fail.

Except she can’t seem to process that Cordelia’s no longer with us. Sometimes she wanders the house in the dead of night, looking for her. There’s nothing we can do about it.It breaks my fucking heart.

Whenever Mother has a good day, I can't help but hold onto false hope that maybe she will get better. But deep down, I know the truth. She's never going to get better. If anything, she’s just going to get worse. That's what the doctors keep telling us. Dementia is a gradual thing, they say. It can stay the same fora while, but then, something happens in the brain, and the next thing you know is that your mother is no longer the person she used to be.

Heaving a sigh, I place the phone back on its base and sink back into my office chair, feeling exhausted. The weight of everything on my shoulders is almost suffocating, but I don't want anyone to see it. Shutting my eyes, I let my mind drift to thoughts of Mindy. Her body. Her curves. The way she pleasures herself in that video. And for a few minutes, I allow myself to enjoy these thoughts.

For now, everything else can wait.

Chapter Five

Mindy

"I'm so sorry, Mindy." Maurice is nearly crying on the phone. "This isn't what I wanted. It just happened. I'm so very sorry." His speech is slurred. What the hell? I pull the phone away from my ear and frown. This is not like him at all. My usually composed fiancé is drunk. Something must be seriously wrong.

"What exactly did you not want to happen?" I ask, but he doesn't respond. In the background, I hear noises - electronic chirps, whirs of spinning slot machines, and the occasional burst of triumphant music signaling a winning jackpot.

"Where are you, Maurice?" I ask.

"I'm at Marble Monkey," he admits.

I furrow my brow. Marble Monkey is undoubtedly the most fancy casino in the entire city. It's a playground for the ultra-rich, where they can indulge in their vices and gamble away fortunes in a matter of hours without batting an eye.

"And may I ask what you are doing there?" I ask, trying my best to sound calm.

"I’m… Just having a little fun."

"What kind of fun?" I ask feeling the tension rise in my stomach.

I can practically visualize him at a poker table, holding a glass of top-shelf scotch, surrounded by rich men, all trying to one-up each other. That's how I picture Marble Monkey - guys going nuts and girls with fake tits giggling at them as they lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"Maurice?"

Silence.

"Mindy," he whispers after some time. "I lost the money."

He lost the money?

What money?

I'm getting impatient. "Maurice, can you please tell me what’s going on? Why are you at a casino and what money are you talking about?"

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