Chapter 7 - The Desperate Beggar
The private VIP lounge behind the mezzanine was quiet, insulated from the thumping orchestra below by double-paned acoustic glass.
I had stepped inside to adjust the clasp of my bracelet while Julian finished a brief conversation with the Governor’s chief of staff.
The heavy door clicked shut behind me.
“You look like a queen, Nora.”
The voice was rough, trembling with a pathetic mixture of longing and humiliation.
I froze, turning slowly toward the darker alcove near the private bar.
Grant stepped out of the shadows.
He looked like a ghost of the man who had stood at the piano two years ago. His cheeks were sunken, his tailored jacket fraying slightly at the cuffs, his posture broken. The arrogant, untouchable heir of Holloway Logistics had been reduced to a junior consultant at a boutique real estate brokerage, surviving on scraps thrown to him by former colleagues who pitied his mother.
I looked at him without fear, without anger, but with a wall of cold, unyielding boundaries.
“You are trespassing, Grant,” I said, my voice level. “This lounge is restricted to Thorne Enterprises executives and municipal guests. Security will remove you if you don't leave immediately.”
“Let them remove me!” he cried, taking two stumbling steps toward me, his hands outstretched. “Let them call the police! I don't care anymore, Nora! I haven't cared about anything since the day you walked out of the Halston!”
“You walked out, Grant,” I reminded him, my eyes narrowing. “You ran out the door to catch an ambulance for a woman who lied to you about a panic attack.”
Grant flinched as if struck across the face. “I was an idiot! I was blind, I was insane, I was poisoned by five years of regret that turned out to be completely fake! You think I don't know that? You think I don't wake up every single morning choking on the knowledge that I had heaven in my hands and threw it away for a handful of dirt?”
He pointed a shaking finger toward the glass doors leading out to the balcony.
“I saw him give you that ring,” Grant choked out, tears pooling in his bloodshot eyes. “Julian Thorne. He’s using you, Nora! Don't you see it? He only wanted you because you were mine! He took my contract, he took my firm, and now he’s taking my wife!”
“I was never your wife, Grant.”
“You were supposed to be!” he shouted, dropping down before me, his knees hitting the hardwood with a sickening thud. He reached out frantically, trying to grab the hem of my emerald gown, but I stepped back smoothly, keeping the marble-topped credenza between us.
“Grant, stop this,” I said coldly. “Get up. You are embarrassing what little dignity you have left.”
“No! I won't get up!” He began to weep openly, burying his face in his hands like a shattered child. “Please, Nora… please look at me. I sold my car. I sold my father’s watch. I’ve been sober for six months. I’m rebuilding. I can start a new firm. We can leave Chicago! We can go to Seattle, to London, anywhere you want! Just tell Julian no. Tell him you can’t marry him!”
He looked up, his face twisted in agonized pleading.
“Remember the cabin in Wisconsin?” he begged, his voice cracking into desperate, pathetic fragments. “Remember the snow on the pine trees? Remember how I used to bring you blueberry scones every Sunday morning? We can have that back! I swear to God, Nora, I will love you better than he ever could! I won't ever mention Sienna again! I erased her numbers, I burned the pictures—I only see you! Only you!”
I stood behind the credenza, listening to him pour out his soul on the floor.
And in that moment, the final, lingering splinter of pain from my past completely dissolved.
“You still don't get it, do you?” I said softly.
Grant blinked, wiping tears from his cheeks with the back of his sleeve. “Get what? I’m telling you I love you!”
“You don't love me, Grant,” I said, looking down at him with devastating clarity. “You never loved me. Two years ago, you loved the memory of Sienna, and you used me to keep her ghost warm. And tonight, you don't love Nora Vance. You love the woman who built this pavilion. You love the woman Julian Thorne honors as his equal. You love the success, the brilliance, and the power that you can no longer possess.”
I raised my left hand, letting the gallery lights catch the raw, deep-green fire of the emerald ring.
“And for the record,” I added, my voice cutting through his weeping like a surgeon's blade, “I hated the cabin in Wisconsin. It was freezing, the plumbing was terrible, and you spent the entire weekend working in your study while I cooked for your friends. And I have hated blueberry scones since I was twelve years old.”
Grant’s mouth fell open, his eyes wide with horrified incomprehension.
“You… you hated them?” he whispered.
“I told you three times during our first year together,” I said evenly. “You never heard me. Because when you looked at me, Grant, your ears were filled with the sound of a piano song you wrote for another girl.”
The lounge door opened silently.
Julian stepped into the room.
He didn't rush. He didn't yell. He stood in the doorway, six-foot-two of unyielding power, his slate-gray eyes locking onto the broken man kneeling on the floor.
Grant froze, the breath catching in his throat.
Julian walked over, stopping two feet from Grant. He didn't offer a hand to help him up. He simply looked down at him with the quiet, crushing authority of an emperor viewing an insolent peasant.
“The Chicago Police Department has two officers waiting downstairs, Holloway,” Julian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “You have sixty seconds to use the service elevator and exit through the loading dock. If you are still on this property in sixty-one seconds, I will file felony stalking charges and have your remaining consulting licenses revoked before midnight.”
Grant looked from Julian to me.
He looked for a flicker of hesitation in my eyes. A trace of old pity. A lingering ember of the three years we had shared.
He found nothing. Only the cold, brilliant reflection of his own defeat.
May you like
Slowly, painfully, Grant Holloway pushed himself up from the floor. He didn't say another word. With his head bowed, his shoulders slumped, and his hands trembling in his pockets, he shuffled past Julian and disappeared into the corridor.
***
