Chapter 6 - Nathan’s Desperation
Twenty-four hours after the gala, the Carter empire was in freefall.
The Boston National loan officer had been arrested. Federal investigators were combing through Carter Development's commercial accounts. Nathan was out on bail, his passport confiscated, stripped of his vice presidency by his own father’s emergency board action.
I had moved into my private penthouse in the Back Bay—a property purchased with my own trust funds years before I ever married Nathan, one of the few things he had never been able to touch.
At eleven o'clock that night, my intercom buzzed.
I walked over to the security monitor. Nathan was standing in the lobby vestibule below, soaked in rain, wearing a drenched trench coat, looking like a ghost of the man I had married.
"Emily," his voice crackled through the speaker, ragged and broken. "Please buzz me up. Just five minutes. That’s all I’m asking. If you have any memory of who we used to be, just five minutes."
I stood before the monitor for a long moment. Then I pressed the button. "Come up, Nathan. The building security guard will be standing outside my door."
Two minutes later, he walked into my foyer. He smelled of rain and cheap whiskey. He took off his wet coat, his hands shaking violently, and dropped it onto the bench.
"You look well," he murmured, his voice hollow.
"What do you want, Nathan?" I stayed in the center of the living room, ten feet between us, arms crossed.
"They're going to indict me, Em. Boston National is calling the full balance. My father... my father stripped my equity. He told me today that I’m dead to him. Margaret won't even take my calls. She blames me for the family name being dragged through the mud."
"You did drag it through the mud," I pointed out.
Nathan took two steps toward me, his face contorting into an agonizing mix of anger and grief. "I did it for us! Can't you understand that? I wanted to be equal to you! Every time I looked at your trust, your family's history, your brilliant designs—I felt like a parasite! I needed Carter Development to belong to *me*, not to my father, not to your charity!"
"So you stole from me?" I countered, my voice ringing with cold indignation. "You slept with Vanessa Reed to feel like a big man? You forged my name on a five-million-dollar note because you were insecure?"
"I was going to pay it back!" he screamed, tears finally spilling down his cheeks. "The Seaport deal would have cleared ten million in profit! I would have paid the loan, put the trust money back, and you never would have known!"
"That’s the difference between us, Nathan," I said softly. "You think a crime doesn't exist if you don't get caught. You think an affair doesn't matter if you can convince your wife to look the other way in a hotel lobby."
He dropped to his knees on my hardwood floor.
The proud, handsome, aristocratic Nathan Carter, weeping at my feet, his forehead pressed against the wood.
"Please," he sobbed. "Withdraw the fraud complaint. Tell the prosecutors it was an internal accounting misunderstanding. If you testify that you gave me verbal authorization for the loan signature, the criminal charges drop. My father said if the charges drop, he’ll pay the civil damages."
I looked down at him. For a split second, I felt a shadow of the grief I had buried—the memory of a boy who had once held my hand on the shores of Cape Cod and promised to build a life of honor with me.
Then I remembered the cold arrogance in his eyes when he told me *not to make a scene* at the Langford.
"I can't do that, Nathan."
He jerked his head up, his eyes bloodshot, wild with sudden rage. "Why?! What do you gain by putting me in prison? You’ve already won! You have the Seaport project! Julian Sterling gave Bennett Design the entire primary contract! You have everything!"
"Because you need to learn what an action costs," I said. "For three years, your mother shielded you from consequence. Your father bought your way out of failure. And I cleaned up your design messes. You are a thirty-two-year-old child who has never once paid the bill for his own mistakes."
I walked over to the door and opened it. The security guard was standing in the hall.
"Sign the unconditional divorce settlement Arthur Vance sent to your public defender tomorrow," I said, not looking at him. "Do that, and I won't pursue punitive damages against whatever personal assets you have left. Refuse, and Arthur will take every dime you ever inherit."
Nathan slowly pulled himself up from the floor. He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve, looking older, hollowed out, defeated.
"You never loved me," he whispered with a bitter sneer.
May you like
"No, Nathan," I said quietly as he stepped out the door. "I loved you so much that I let you take credit for my life. The tragedy is that you actually believed you were the one who created it."
***
