Chapter 4 - The Chat Turns Ravenous
Patricia was still standing paralyzed by the edge of the rose garden, clutching her cracked phone against her chest. But the notifications were chiming like an avalanche of church bells. The livestream hadn't cut out; Marcus had merely angled the lens so that the entire scene was framed in cinematic widescreen.
"Turn it off, Patricia!" Nathan suddenly yelled, springing to his feet and lunging toward his mother. "Turn off the damn broadcast right now! Are you completely insane?!"
Patricia scrambled backward, nearly tripping over her silk trousers. "I can't! It’s frozen! The screen is cracked! There are forty-five thousand people watching! Nathan, they're posting our home address! They're tagging the district attorney's office!"
The comments were flying across the screen at lightning speed:
— “WAIT A MINUTE! The teacher is actually the billionaire heiress?!”
— “Look at the side-chick crying over the earrings! She thought she was moving up, she’s moving straight to Rikers!”
— “The mother-in-law literally set up her own son to get arrested on 4K live video!”
— “Julian Blackwell just called her Madam Chairwoman! Nathan is finished!”
— “Someone call the FBI on Vanessa Morales LLC right now!”
Nathan covered his face with his palms, sliding down against the stone wall until he was kneeling on the cold flagstones. The very audience Patricia had gathered to witness my public humiliation was now cheering for their total destruction.
Vanessa struggled with trembling, manicured fingers, crying out in pain as she finally ripped the heirloom diamond earrings from her ears. A tiny bead of blood appeared on her lobe. She thrust the sparkling gems toward me, her teeth chattering in humiliation.
"Here! Take them! Take your stupid rocks!" she sobbed.
I held out a white linen handkerchief. "Drop them here. I wouldn't want your sweat tarnishing the platinum setting."
She dropped them with a muffled clink. I folded the handkerchief carefully and handed it to Julian, who pocketed it with a respectful nod.
"Now," I said, turning back toward Nathan. "About those divorce documents you brought for me to sign."
Nathan slowly raised his head. His eyes were red, hollowed out by absolute ruin. "Claire... please. Listen to me. We can talk about this inside. Just you and me. Like we used to. We don't need lawyers. We don't need Blackwell. Think about eleven years of marriage! Think about what we built together!"
"What we built?" I laughed, a sharp, clean sound that echoed across the estate. "You didn't build a single wall in this town without my family’s trust fund underwriting your bonding insurance. You didn't win the civic center contract because of your brilliance; you won it because Julian Blackwell owed my father a lifelong debt of loyalty and honored it through me."
May you like
I reached down and picked up the clipboard Nathan had thrown onto the garden table earlier. I casually turned to the final page, where a bright yellow signature tag fluttered in the autumn wind.
"You brought a notary public, didn't you Nathan? He’s sitting in your Mercedes right now, waiting to stamp my eviction." I smiled. "Tell him to come out. Because I have some documents of my own."
