Chapter 3 - The Frozen Cards and the Panic in the Boardroom
The phone began ringing at 8:15 a.m. I ignored it, letting the screen flash silently on the kitchen counter while I fed Noah his morning bottle.
Cole had tried calling six times in a row, followed by a frantic string of text messages that quickly escalated from arrogant commands to sheer panic.
“Lauren, where the hell are you?”
“Why is the master bedroom empty?”
“What kind of childish game are you playing? Answer your phone right now!”
Then came the message that proved he had finally tried to use his wallet to solve his problems:
“My corporate AmEx just got declined at the hotel front desk. What did you do?”
I didn't reply. I simply watched the notification light blink, feeling a profound, breathtaking sense of liberation wash over me.
Across town, Cole Moretti was standing in the marble-clad lobby of the Four Seasons, wearing the same wrinkled suit from the night before, staring dumbfounded at his declined black card while Sierra Vaughn stood a few feet away scrolling anxiously through her own phone. According to the rapid updates Daniel Harris was forwarding to my encrypted email, Cole’s morning had turned into a waking nightmare.
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When Cole attempted to log into his primary online banking portal to transfer funds, he was met with a locked screen and a formal legal notice stating that all liquid capital, investment portfolios, and corporate equity shares linked to his name had been placed under emergency federal receivership pending a breach of trust and asset dissipation investigation. Worse still, the penthouse apartment where we lived—which Cole had always bragged about buying with his own brilliance—was actually leased through a shell corporation owned by the Bennett Estate. By 9:00 a.m., the building management had served him with an immediate eviction notice, revoking his keycard access and locking him out of his own closet, his designer shoes, and his passport.
The untouchable corporate golden boy, who had spent years making me feel small, worthless, and financially dependent, was suddenly a homeless man in a wrinkled suit standing on a freezing Chicago sidewalk on Christmas morning, staring at a frozen screen with nothing left to his name.
