Chapter 11 - The Fractured Alliance
By Friday night, the panic had metastasized.
Spencer Campbell’s private office on the top floor of the Apex Tower was normally a temple of glass, marble, and muted jazz. Tonight, it looked like a bunker under siege.
Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, the city lights flickered in the winter dark, but inside, Colette was pacing the Persian rug like a caged animal. Her hair was disheveled, her mascara smudged, her designer coat discarded across a leather armchair.
"How did he get those files, Spencer?!" she screamed, her voice hitting a register that made the junior associates in the hallway flinch. "I had that box hidden behind the masonry! Conrad couldn't have found it unless you told someone!"
Spencer stood behind his massive desk, his tie undone, holding a tumbler of scotch that was shaking slightly in his grip. He had never looked so old, so stripped of his immaculate corporate gloss.
"Me?" Spencer snapped, slamming the tumbler onto the glass desk with enough force to send scotch sloshing over the edge. "You kept a ledger on me, you stupid bitch! You were cataloging my zoning payouts and my Delaware routing numbers while sleeping in my bed!"
"I was protecting myself!" Colette shrieked, tears of pure rage spilling down her cheeks. "Look what you did to Conrad! You stole his accounts, you bought his permits, you ruined his business! Did you think I was going to let you do that to me when you got bored and found another thirty-year-old paralegal?!"
"Because of your stupidity, the State Attorney has frozen the escrow on the waterfront project!" Spencer roared, stepping around the desk, his eyes bulging with fury. "The bank pulled the commercial credit lines an hour ago! Whitmore has gone dark—he won't answer his phone, his firm is scrubbing his name from their website, and I have federal subpoenas arriving at eight o’clock Monday morning!"
Colette backed away, suddenly terrified by the raw, animal violence in Spencer's eyes. For the first time, she saw the reality of the man she had traded her family for. He wasn't a knight in an Audi. He was an apex predator trapped in a corner, and she had just become excess weight.
"Spencer... please," she stammered, her voice suddenly small, reverting to the fragile victim persona she had perfected. "We can settle with Conrad. Conrad is soft. He loves me. If I go back to him, if I tell him it was all a mistake, if I tell him you forced me—"
Spencer let out a harsh, barking laugh that was entirely devoid of sanity. "Conrad soft? Conrad just had my repossession crew thrown off his lot, humiliated my lawyer in front of his workers, and handed the Attorney General the rope to hang me with. He isn't soft, Colette. He’s a mountain. And you just traded him for an avalanche."
Spencer reached into his coat, pulled out a keycard, and tossed it into the wastebasket beside his desk.
"Get out," Spencer said, turning his back to her and staring out at the rainy night.
"What?"
"Get out of my office. Get out of my building. Your name isn't on the lease for the penthouse. Security has already packed your bags and left them with the concierge. You're on your own, Colette."
May you like
Colette stood frozen, the silence of the room crushing her like ten tons of wet sand. Her kingdom was gone. The Audi, the penthouse, the country club, the emerald dresses—all of it had evaporated into cold, legal ashes.
***
