Chapter 2 - The Taste Of Scorched Earth
By five o'clock that evening, my phone was ringing incessantly in my handbag. I had turned off notifications, but the silent vibration buzzed like an angry hornet against the leather interior. When I finally stepped into the lobby of the boutique hotel where I had booked a suite under my maiden name, I pulled the screen up to check the notifications.
One hundred and fourteen missed calls.
Forty-two voicemails.
Eighty-eight text messages from Aaron, his mother Victoria, and various executives whose names I barely recalled.
I tapped the most recent voicemail from Aaron. His voice echoed through the speaker, laced with the sharp, condescending fury that had characterized the last year of our marriage.
""Claire, have you lost your absolute mind? You humiliated me in front of five hundred people! Do you have any idea what that Slack message did to our PR team? Jasmine is in tears in my office, the board is calling emergency sessions, and you left my personal belongings with a front-desk receptionist like some trashy daytime soap opera! Call me back right now, or I swear to God, I will have my legal team freeze every account you have access to. You will leave this marriage with nothing!""
A dry laugh escaped my lips as I deleted the message without a second thought. Freeze my accounts? He still had no idea. He genuinely believed that the black credit card he had graciously bestowed upon me was my sole source of oxygen in this world. He thought that by cutting off my clothing allowance, I would come crawling back on my knees to beg for his forgiveness while Jasmine stood by smiling smugly.
My mother called twenty minutes later. I answered immediately.
""Claire, darling,"" her voice came through warm, steady, and devoid of the panic that Aaron's family seemed to thrive on. ""Your father and I just arrived at the Marblehead house. The groundskeeper opened the gates, the heating is on, and the pantry is stocked. Are you in Boston?""
""I'm at the Eliot Hotel, Mom,"" I said, leaning my head against the cool velvet headboard. ""Nathan is reviewing everything. We have an ironclad defense.""
""Good,"" my mother said fiercely. ""Your father never liked that boy. He tolerated Aaron because you loved him, but Aaron had the eyes of a man who looks at a woman and sees furniture. An ornament to polish when company comes over and shove into a dark corner when he wants to play with his toys. You gave him three years of grace he never earned. Don't look back.""
""I won't, Mom. I promise.""
After hanging up, I opened a private browser on my tablet and pulled up the internal intranet of Prescott Global. My administrative access as Aaron's spouse had not been revoked yet; his IT department was likely too panicked handling the PR fallout of the Slack message to audit the executive family portals.
The gossip channels were ablaze. Even though the original message had been scrubbed thirty minutes after I posted it, hundreds of employees had captured screenshots. It had leaked onto LinkedIn, Twitter, and anonymous corporate blind boards. The headlines were savage: Billionaire Logistics Heir Caught In Bed With Executive Assistant While Wife Resigns Publicly.
Attached to one of the message boards was a candid photograph taken outside the Prescott Tower just thirty minutes ago. Aaron was walking toward his town car, scowling darkly at a swarm of local financial reporters who had caught wind of the spectacle. Trailing just half a step behind him, clutching an expensive designer purse that Aaron had likely purchased with his company card, was Jasmine Cole.
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She wasn't crying, despite Aaron's claims. In fact, her chin was tilted up, her eyes gleaming with the predatory triumph of a woman who believed she had finally forced the legitimate wife out of the picture. She looked directly into the camera lens with an unmistakable expression of victory. She believed she had won the prize. She believed she was about to be crowned the new queen of Prescott Global.
I closed the browser, set the tablet on the nightstand, and closed my eyes. Poor Jasmine. She had fought so hard to steal a man who was nothing more than an empty, gilded shell, completely oblivious to the fact that the gold she coveted was already melting beneath her feet.
