Chapter 7 - The True Face of Chloe
While Julian was weeping in my Brooklyn kitchen, his Park Avenue penthouse was undergoing a frantic, frantic evacuation.
Marcus Sterling called my private line forty minutes later, his voice filled with grim amusement.
"Claire, are you with Julian?"
"He's sitting across from me," I answered, placing the call on speakerphone.
"Well, tell him his muse has left the building," Marcus said crisply. "Chloe caught wind of the Harbor Point default rumors through her friend at the public relations agency thirty minutes ago."
Julian’s head snapped up, staring at the phone on the counter. "What did you say, Marcus?"
"She packed four designer suitcases, emptied your master bedroom safe of eighteen thousand dollars in cash and two Rolex watches, and just checked into the Four Seasons in Miami on your corporate credit card," Marcus reported. "Her Instagram already has a new post: Sometimes you have to choose your own peace over someone else’s sinking ship."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Julian looked down at his trembling, empty hands. The illusion had shattered into a thousand jagged, mocking pieces.
The spontaneous girl who ate street hot dogs and brought 'color' into his world had evaporated the very second the money stopped flowing.
"She... she took the watches my father left me," Julian choked out, a sound of absolute, devastating betrayal breaking through his chest.
"A bought companion doesn't stay for the funeral, Julian," I said, my voice devoid of anger, filled only with the cold reality of life. "She stayed while you were buying her jewelry and taking her to South Beach. Did you really expect a twenty-four-year-old influencer to sit on the floor with you and redraw business plans until dawn?"
Julian dropped his forehead against the cold marble, sobbing with such violent, agonizing remorse that his shoulders shook like an earthquake.
"I ruined everything," he wailed, his voice muffled against the stone. "I threw away the only woman who ever loved me for a handful of dirt. I threw away my children. I threw away my soul."
May you like
I stood up, walked around the island, and set a clean linen napkin beside his hand.
"Cry if you need to, Julian," I said gently. "Then wipe your face. Because Orchard Light is calling an emergency debt restructuring meeting at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, and you have a presentation to make."
