Chapter 3 - The Socialite’s Desperate Hunt
In Manhattan, the veneer of high society was beginning to crack.
Sabrina Whitmore paced across the imported Italian marble of the Callaway penthouse, her silk heels clicking sharply against the stone like gunshots. Her phone was clamped to her ear, her manicured fingers twisting a heavy emerald pendant that hung around her neck.
"What do you mean his cards are inactive?" Sabrina snapped into the receiver. "He’s the majority shareholder! How does a billionaire just vanish without a paper trail?!"
"Ms. Whitmore, I am Grant's personal attorney, not his babysitter," Daniel Vance’s smooth, icy voice replied from the other end. "Grant invoked a formal sabbatical clause in the corporate bylaws before he departed. Callaway Holdings is operating under an executive committee. All personal domestic credit accounts tied to his primary residence have been placed on temporary administrative hold until his return."
"We have caterers waiting for final payments!" she screamed, her composure disintegrating. "The venue at the Plaza requires a ninety-thousand-dollar security deposit by Friday or they release the date! The gown designer won't release the train without a wire transfer! People are starting to ask questions, Daniel!"
"Then I suggest you answer them," Daniel replied flatly. "Or write the checks from your own account."
"My account?" Sabrina gasped, horrified. "Are you insane?!"
Daniel hung up.
Sabrina threw the phone onto the velvet sofa, trembling with pure, unadulterated fury. She turned to Lauren, who was sitting at the breakfast bar sipping a mimosa, looking increasingly nervous.
"He knows," Lauren whispered, clutching her glass. "Sabrina, he told you he heard everything that night. You thought he was just pouting, but he’s gone. If this wedding falls apart, everyone in the city is going to know you got dumped six weeks before the altar."
"I am not getting dumped!" Sabrina hissed, her eyes narrowing into cold slits. "Do you have any idea what my social standing will look like if this wedding is canceled? The Whitmore gallery is barely breaking even. My father’s firm is swimming in debt. This marriage was supposed to settle everything!"
"Then find him," Lauren said bluntly. "He didn't take his private jet. His driver said he left the building on foot at dawn on Tuesday. But someone saw an old car missing from the lower maintenance garage in Queens."
Sabrina stormed over to her laptop on the marble island. "The garage attendant said it was an old charcoal sedan registered to his late uncle. What was the license plate?"
"I wrote it down," Lauren said, pulling a slip of paper from her purse. "And a private investigator my father uses traced a gas station charge from Tuesday afternoon. Just outside of Oak Ridge, Pennsylvania. One swipe of a backup debit card before he locked the accounts."
Sabrina grabbed her designer leather jacket and sunglasses from the foyer table. "Call the driver. We're going to Pennsylvania."
"To do what?" Lauren asked, hurrying after her.
"To bring my fiancé home," Sabrina snarled. "He wants to play the wounded romantic living like a peasant? Fine. I’ll play along. I’ll apologize, cry on cue, and tell him whatever fairy tale he needs to hear until that marriage certificate is signed. But Grant Callaway is not walking away from me."
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Two hours later, a chauffeured black Mercedes sped west along Interstate 78, cutting through the autumn countryside like an arrow aimed directly at the heart of Oak Ridge.
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