Deliverance (Lucious/Cookie, Anika/Malcolm)

Chapter One: Baby, What's Your Phone Number?

Summary: Without knowing it, a newly married Anika Calhoun has walked straight into the Lyons' den. 

Note #1: This story was written around the second season of Empire. At that time, I was using the ages from the original (unaired) pilot script, which cast Cookie and Lucious as 14 and 16 when they lost their virginity to each other. This is why they're much younger here than they are in the season three flashbacks, which cast Cookie as 16 when she first slept with Lucious.

Note #2: If you want to go straight to the Lucious/Cookie love, you can skip this chapter and not miss much.

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Running into the Lyons on Hakeem's 21st birthday, Anika Calhoun was painfully reminded that she had three connections to this toxic, miserable family. She had been engaged to Lucious, the head of the Lyon family, and had a sexual relationship with Hakeem, the youngest Lyon son. The matriarch, Cookie Lyon, was the now-remarried wife of Lucious as well as the former flame of Anika's new husband, Malcolm DeVeaux. It was enough to make anybody's head hurt.

"We can leave." It was Malcolm's job to study things. He had spotted the Lyons after the silent shift in his wife's personality - first warm and excited, now cold and distant. While Malcolm's split with Cookie had been amicable, he had no more desire to talk to any of them than Anika did. "I can tell everybody that you don't feel good, and we can go home."

"No. We can't do that." The Columbia University cadre was due to meet in the back banquet room to welcome the newest members of their Navy ROTC staff. Only the good word of Malcolm's former commander, a master chief who was one of the cadre of Malcolm's military school, had gotten Malcolm the position that brought him back to New York from Washington, D.C. The last thing Anika wanted was for Malcolm to start off on the wrong foot. But there was no way to get to the banquet room without passing the Lyons' table, and there was no way the Lyons would let either one of them go by without a confrontation.

Seeing them all together – Lucious, Cookie, Hakeem, Jamal, Andre and Rhonda – guaranteed a clash. Andre and Rhonda were tolerable separately, but a pain in the ass together. Jamal was a punk who went in whatever direction his mother went...unless his father was going in a different direction. Since Lucious and Cookie would be united in torment, Jamal would be more extra than usual. And as for Hakeem...

Anika glanced over at Malcolm, who was expecting a battle with Lucious. She didn't even want to think about her almost-stepson. All Anika wanted to do was get through this moment with her dignity and marriage still intact.

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Anika's meltdown had been slow in coming, and it was hard to pinpoint when it started. The best guess was when she slept with Mimi Whiteman to secure a $250 million investor deal in order to get Lyon Dynasty off the ground. Mimi double crossed them all and stuck with Lucious and Empire. The double whammy of sleeping with Mimi and failing to seal the deal was just too good for Cookie not to cut Anika with every chance she got, even though sleeping with Mimi had been Cookie's idea in the first place. Anika kept her head up and fired back her own shots at her ex-pimp whenever she could. Outwardly, she maintained her cool debutante demeanor. Inside, Anika bled to death slowly from a thousand invisible cuts.

"Let me guess," Cookie had mocked Anika the day she came to Cookie with news about Lucious's party. "Those five job offers never happened?" As if sleeping with Lucious, choking her out and dismissing her from Lyon's Dynasty wasn't bad enough, someone let it slip to every major recording label in the country that Anika had been dismissed from both Empire and Lyon Dynasty and why. The Lyons were too powerful to cross to take a chance on a pimped-out cradle-robber like Anika Calhoun. Even with Anika's work experience and education, every single company passed up on Anika.