Chapter 8 - The Price of Pride
Benjamin Kendall sat on the edge of an old, lumpy twin bed in a rundown, single-room motel in White Plains, New York.
He had refused to stay in any of Northline’s luxury hotel assets. He had refused to touch the joint executive bank accounts. He had surrendered his sports cars, his tailored wardrobe, his corporate credit cards. He wore a simple pair of dark jeans and the same faded gray fleece he had kept in the trunk of his car for over a decade.
He had spent the last two weeks reporting to Northline’s headquarters as an employee, not an owner. He worked fourteen hours a day, rebuilding the supply chains for Harbor Point, personally negotiating with the union contractors, and sleeping four hours a night on this cheap motel mattress.
He didn’t ask for sympathy. When his former executives tiptoed around him with awkward condolences, he cut them off and demanded operational reports. He was paying his penance with sweat and silence.
Every evening at seven o'clock, he would sit outside the Westchester estate in a rented sedan, parked two hundred yards down the winding, tree-lined street. He didn’t approach the iron gates. He didn’t ring the buzzer. He just sat there in the dark, watching the warm yellow light spilling from the second-floor windows.
He could see the silhouette of Miles practicing his violin. He could see the silhouette of Laura carrying Sadie on her hip, swaying gently to some music he couldn't hear.
The pain inside his chest was so intense it physically took his breath away. He realized now what a fool he had been. He had complained about predictability. He had complained about calendars, pediatricians, grocery lists, and dinner schedules.
Now, sitting in the damp, freezing interior of a rental car, eating cold sandwiches from a gas station, he realized that those mundane, predictable moments were the highest form of paradise any human being could ever experience. To be needed by people who loved you. To have a sanctuary built on trust. To have a woman who had stood between you and a leather belt when you were sixteen, who had spent fourteen years creating a fortress of safety for your broken childhood.
He had thrown it away because he wanted to feel like an exciting boy again.
A sudden rap on the driver’s side window made him jump.
Standing outside in the pouring November rain was Eric, his college roommate. Eric didn't look amused. He looked soaked and dead serious.
Ben rolled down the window. “Eric? What are you doing here?”
“Laura called me,” Eric said bluntly, wiping rain from his forehead. “She told me that if I didn't drag your pathetic, self-pitying ass out of this parked car, she was going to call the Westchester police for illegal loitering.”
Ben’s heart skipped a violent beat. “She... she saw me?”
“Of course she saw you, you idiot!” Eric snapped, opening the car door and grabbing Ben by the collar of his fleece. “The estate has thirty-two state-of-the-art security cameras! She’s watched you sit here freezing to death every single night for two weeks! Get out of the car.”
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“Where are you taking me?” Ben asked, stumbling out into the torrential rain, the icy water instantly soaking through his clothes.
“She told me to bring you to the back terrace,” Eric said, shoving him toward the open gate. “And if you screw this up, Ben, I swear to God I will help her bury you in the rose garden.”
