Chapter 7 - The Eviction of Mercer
Grant stared at the two plastic trash bags sitting beside the service entrance. Inside were several pairs of jeans, some gym clothes, and three pairs of sneakers—items he had owned before he married Evelyn, before he wore custom-tailored tuxedos and drank five-hundred-dollar bourbon.
Lila looked from the trash bags to Grant, her expression twisting into utter revulsion.
“That’s it?” she demanded, her voice shrill and trembling with rage. “That’s your great fortune? Two garbage bags on the floor of a lobby?”
“Lila, shut up,” Grant whispered, pressing his hands to his temples as a throbbing headache pounded behind his eyes. “We need to call a hotel. We need to regroup.”
“With what money, Grant?” Lila screamed, not caring that the doorman and two passing residents were watching her unravel. “My accounts are frozen! My reputation is destroyed! Every recruiter in this city will know by tonight that I’m being investigated for corporate fraud! You told me you ran that company! You told me your wife was an empty-headed socialite who didn't know a balance sheet from a grocery list!”
“I didn't know!” Grant yelled back, the humiliation finally boiling over into blind fury. “She never told me!”
“Because she knew you were an idiot!” Lila spat. She threw her leather portfolio directly at his chest, turned on her designer heels, and marched out into the freezing wind, pulling her coat tight around her shoulders. She didn't look back.
Grant stood alone in the marble lobby. He looked at Thomas, the doorman, who simply stared back with quiet, professional disdain. Slowly, Grant walked over to the service door, bent his six-foot-three frame, and picked up the two plastic bags. They were heavy, clumsy, and smelled faintly of industrial plastic.
As he stepped out onto the sidewalk, the cold hit him like a physical blow. He had no car, no credit cards, no penthouse, and nowhere to go.
He walked down the street until his dress shoes were soaked through with gray slush. He pulled out his personal phone, the only piece of property he still possessed that wasn't tied to a corporate lease, and dialed Bentley Shaw.
The phone rang four times before clicking over to voicemail.
He dialed Harrison, the senior board member. Disconnected.
He dialed his college friends, the men who had stood in a circle around him at the gala, laughing at his jokes, clinking glasses, and watching him kick his wife. Every single call went directly to voicemail. The message was clear: in the high-stakes world of Chicago finance, Grant Mercer had become toxic waste. No one wanted his name appearing on their caller ID.
Desperate and shivering, Grant checked his pocket for his personal debit card linked to a minor credit union account he hadn't used in three years. He walked into a corner pharmacy, found an ATM in the back, and inserted the card with trembling fingers.
The screen flickered: ACCOUNT BALANCE: $412.18.
Grant stared at the green glowing numbers. Four hundred and twelve dollars. That was the sum total of his worth on earth. Just seventy-two hours ago, he had stood on a stage before two hundred people, boasting of a billion-dollar valuation, soaking in the applause, basking in the illusion that he was a titan of industry.
He took out two hundred dollars in cash, bought a cheap winter jacket and a bottle of low-shelf whiskey, and walked into a dingy motel on the western edge of the city. He sat on the edge of a stained mattress, listening to the sirens wailing in the distance, drinking straight from the bottle.
With every burning swallow, the memory of Saturday night replayed in his mind: the sudden crack of Evelyn’s heel across the marble, the gasp of the crowd, the way she had looked at him before she walked away.
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She hadn't looked angry. She hadn't looked defeated.
She had looked at him the way a judge looks at a condemned criminal right before handing down the sentence.
