Chapter 5 - THE MIDNIGHT CALL
The rain was lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows of my Tribeca penthouse when my phone rang at 1:14 AM.
I was sitting at the kitchen island, nursing a cup of chamomile tea, reviewing Q3 revenue projections for Apex Technologies. The apartment was completely silent except for the rhythmic drumming of the storm outside. It was a peaceful silence—the kind of silence I had been starved of for seven long years.
I glanced at the caller ID. Preston.
I let it ring. It played its full cycle, going to voicemail. Ten seconds later, it started vibrating again.
I picked up, sliding my thumb across the screen. I didn't say hello. I simply waited.
"Chloe?" Preston's voice sounded hollow, broken, and utterly wrecked. He sounded like a man who had spent the last seventy-two hours drinking himself into oblivion in a cheap motel room. "Please... please pick up. I know you're there."
"You have thirty seconds before I block this number permanently," I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion.
A heavy sob choked through the line. "They fired me, Chloe. Sterling & Sterling officially terminated my partnership this afternoon. They said... they said my conduct brought irreparable harm to the firm's reputation. My entire life is gone. Everything I worked for, everything I built..."
"You built nothing, Preston," I reminded him quietly. "You rode my coattails, spent my capital, and played the big man when you had an audience of sycophants to clap for your cruelty. What happened? Did your frat-boy friends stop returning your calls once the tabloids started camping outside their apartments?"
"They blocked me," he whispered, the humiliation bleeding raw through every syllable. "Everyone blocked me. Mom is crying in her bedroom because her country club friends won't return her calls. I have no money, Chloe. My personal accounts were frozen by the court. I can't even pay my legal fees."
"Then I suggest you find a public defender," I replied smoothly. "Because my lawyers are moving forward with the full civil suit for damages, emotional distress, and battery. You'll be lucky if you walk away from the divorce with the clothes on your back."
"Chloe, please!" he wailed, his voice rising in hysterical panic. "We were married! You loved me once! Remember when we first met? Remember how happy we were before all this money and pressure—"
"I remember the exact moment I stopped loving you, Preston," I interrupted, my voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper. "It wasn't in the pool. It wasn't when your mother insulted me at the dinner table. It was when I looked up through the freezing saltwater, gasping for air, and saw you standing there with your arms open wide, soaking up the applause of people who wanted to watch me drown. That was the moment I realized you never loved me at all. You only loved what I could do for you."
"I was drunk! It was a prank! It meant nothing!" he screamed into the phone.
May you like
"It meant everything," I said. "Goodbye, Preston."
I tapped the red end call button, went into my settings, and blocked his number forever. Then I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window, looked out over the glittering lights of Manhattan, and took my first deep, unburdened breath in seven years.
