Chapter 6 - The Unraveling
Five hundred miles away in Chicago, the Waldorf Astoria suite was turning into a slaughterhouse.
According to Arthur Vance’s private investigator stationed in the hotel, Chloe Lawson stormed back into the dining room, her face pale with fury, grabbed her cocktail, and threw it directly into Mark’s face before screaming at him in front of four Midwest regional managers.
Mark’s frantic calls to my phone started at eight-fifteen PM.
One missed call.
Five missed calls.
Twelve missed calls.
Then came the texts:
*Claire, pick up the phone! What did you say to Chloe?! What the hell have you done?!*
*Claire, answer me!*
*Where are my accounts?! My corporate credit card just declined at the hotel!*
*CLAIRE!*
I placed my phone on silent, turned it face down on the nightstand, and took a long, hot bath scented with lavender. For eighteen months, I had checked my phone every ten minutes, terrified that something had happened to him, sickening myself with worry over where he was, who he was with, why he wasn't answering.
Now, the shoe was on the other foot. And it was crushing him.
When Mark finally managed to use an emergency personal card to book a red-eye flight back home, landing at dawn on Wednesday, he arrived at our suburban house looking like a deranged vagrant. His tie was undone, his eyes were bloodshot, and his suit was crumpled and stained.
He burst through the front door, slamming it against the wall.
“CLAIRE!”
I was sitting at the marble kitchen island, dressed in a sleek midnight-blue pantsuit, a cup of freshly brewed black coffee steaming beside me. Sitting opposite me was Elena Rostova, the top matrimonial and corporate litigation attorney in the state.
Mark stormed into the kitchen, his fists clenched, his chest heaving. “What is the meaning of this?! Chloe tried to kill me in Chicago! The hotel locked me out of my room! My personal cards are frozen! What did you do to my accounts?!”
Elena Rostova looked up, adjusting her tortoiseshell glasses, and slid a manila folder across the island.
“Mr. Montgomery, lower your voice,” Elena said, her voice like steel wrapped in velvet. “If you shout at my client one more time, the two off-duty police officers waiting in the driveway will remove you from this property immediately.”
Mark stopped dead in his tracks. He looked around the kitchen. The designer espresso machine was gone. The vintage wine rack was empty. The walls where our collection of contemporary oils had hung were bare, leaving only pale rectangular ghosts on the paint.
“What… what is this?” Mark whispered, his voice cracking. “Where is my car? Where is my wine?”
“They are in the custody of the Claire Montgomery Revocable Trust,” Elena said smoothly. “As per the post-nuptial agreement you signed on Saturday evening, properly witnessed, notarized, and registered with the district court on Monday morning.”
Mark grabbed the edge of the island, his face turning an alarming shade of gray. “I signed that to protect our assets from a corporate tax audit! You lied to me!”
“No, Mark,” I said, speaking for the first time. My voice was quiet, melodic, and devastating. “You signed it because you were so desperate to cover up your affair with Chloe Lawson that you didn't even read the schedule of asset distribution.”
“Claire, please,” he choked out, taking a step toward me, his hands trembling. “It was just a fling! It meant nothing! Chloe meant nothing to me! She threw herself at me, she manipulated me! I swear on my life, it’s over! I broke it off with her last night!”
“Of course you did,” I said, smiling faintly. “Because she knows you set her up to take the fall for six hundred and forty thousand dollars of vendor embezzlement. By the way, Mark… Arthur Vance sent the complete forensic audit of Silverline Consulting to Julian Vance and the board of directors twenty minutes ago.”
Mark staggered backward as if he had been struck with a sledgehammer. He hit the dining room archway, sliding down against the frame until he was practically sitting on the floor.
“No…” he whimpered. “No, no, no… The COO vote is on Friday… Claire, you can’t do this. You’re destroying my life! You’re destroying *our* life!”
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“Our life died eighteen months ago, Mark,” I said, standing up and looking down at him. “The night you looked at me waiting in the kitchen with cold coffee and told me I was an inconvenience. You told me waiting for you was a problem. So I stopped waiting.”
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