Chapter 9 - A Call To Nowhere
The call connected. A quiet click sounded on the other end of the line.
""Claire?"" Ethan blurted out, his voice cracking with desperate, sobbing emotion. ""Claire, is that you? Please don't hang up. Please, I am begging you on my knees, just listen to me for two minutes.""
There was a brief, heavy pause. When a voice responded, it was not Claire’s soft, familiar tone. It was the calm, measured, baritone voice of Harrison Vance.
""Mr. Mercer,"" the attorney said smoothly. ""This mobile device is currently registered to the corporate executive security detail of Vale Meridian Holdings. Ms. Vale does not take unsolicited calls from unverified numbers.""
""Harrison... Mr. Vance, please,"" Ethan begged, tears streaming down his hollow cheeks, completely uncaring that the diner waitress was staring at him with pity. ""Just tell her I called. Tell her I understand everything now. Tell her I know how blind, arrogant, and foolish I was. I don't care about the company. I don't care about the money or the stock. I just want to see her. I just want to apologize to her face. I'll sweep the warehouse floors for her. I'll do anything... just tell her I love her.""
""Mr. Mercer,"" Harrison said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion, ""your sentiment arrives precisely six months too late. When Ms. Vale was your wife, you treated her devotion as an entitlement and her humility as weakness. You discarded her for superficial validation. Now that the consequences of your own reckless choices have caught up to you, you confuse financial desperation with remorse.""
""I do love her!"" Ethan wept into the receiver.
""If you truly had any lingering respect for Ms. Vale,"" Harrison replied calmly, ""you would accept your fate with dignity. Under the terms of the corporate civil settlement executed yesterday afternoon, all pending criminal fraud referrals against you have been suspended—on the sole condition that you never attempt to contact Claire Vale, her family, or any Vale Meridian facility ever again. If you dial this number again, or step within five hundred yards of her presence, that immunity will be revoked within thirty minutes.""
Ethan gasped, his chest aching as if his heart had physically shattered. ""Did... did Claire ask you to put that condition in?""
""No, Mr. Mercer,"" Harrison said quietly before ending the call. ""Ms. Vale didn't mention your name at all. You simply no longer exist in her world.""
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The line went dead, buzzing with a flat, hollow dial tone.
Ethan slowly lowered the cheap phone to the scratched diner table. He buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly, completely broken. The twenty-thousand-dollar check he had so smugly offered her had bought him an eternity of irreversible ruin.
