Chapter 9 - The Rain on Fifth Avenue
When the elevator reached the ground floor, Eleanor’s private town car was already idling at the curb, its hazard lights blinking rhythmically against the slick, rain-soaked pavement of Fifth Avenue.
A light drizzle had begun to fall, turning the autumn air bitingly cold.
As I stepped through the revolving glass doors of the St. Regis lobby, a figure lunged out from behind the exterior granite pillars.
“Claire!”
It was Daniel.
Security had stripped him of his overcoat. He stood in the freezing rain in his white dress shirt and soaked trousers, his black bow tie gone, his hair plastered to his forehead in messy, dark strands. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and wild with the utter ruin of his life.
Two private security guards instantly moved to block him, their hands reaching inside their coats, but I raised a single hand.
“Hold on,” I told them.
The guards paused, creating a human barrier five feet between Daniel and me.
Daniel took two trembling steps forward, rain pouring down his nose, mingling with the fresh tears tracks on his cheeks. He looked smaller than I had ever seen him. Without the tailored armor of his executive suit, without the illusion of his unearned corporate status, he was just a terrified, hollow boy from Ohio.
“Claire,” he sobbed, his voice cracking against the sound of passing taxis. “Please. Look at me. Just... just talk to me for one minute. Please.”
“I’m looking at you, Daniel,” I said, standing beneath the dry awning of the hotel entrance, Eleanor’s warm cashmere coat wrapped securely around me.
“I didn't know,” he pleaded, his hands trembling as he clutched his own chest. “If I had known who you were... if I had known what you had... I would have never... I swear to God, I would have treated you like a queen! I would have spent every day showing you how much I appreciated you!”
A cold, humorless laugh escaped my lips.
“I know, Daniel,” I said softly. “That’s the tragedy of it.”
He blinked, confused by my answer, the rain blinding him as he tried to wipe his eyes with a soaked sleeve. “What? Then... then give me another chance! We can fix this! We can go back to the brownstone, we can talk through this, I’ll fire Vanessa myself, I’ll never look at another woman—”
“You still don't understand,” I interrupted, stepping forward just enough so he could hear every syllable clearly over the hum of the city. “If you had known who I was, you wouldn't have loved me. You would have loved Harlow Capital. You would have loved the private jets, the board seats, the five-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne you love throwing in people’s faces.”
Daniel’s mouth worked soundlessly, his jaw shaking from the biting cold.
“I gave you seven years of my life to see if you could love a woman for who she was,” I said. “And tonight, the very second you thought you had enough power to discard her, you threw a drink in her face and paraded a thief around the room to make sure she felt completely worthless.”
“I was stupid!” he wailed, dropping to his knees on the wet concrete of Fifth Avenue, oblivious to the pedestrians staring at him in horror. “I made a mistake! A horrible, disgusting mistake! Please, Claire! Don't take everything away from me! I have nowhere to go! My accounts are empty! My mother’s nursing home... who is going to pay for my mother?”
I looked down at him, feeling no rage, no vindictive thrill, only a deep, profound emptiness where my love for him used to live.
“Harlow Philanthropies will continue to pay for your mother’s medical care,” I said calmly. “Because she is an innocent woman who raised a deeply broken son, and I do not punish mothers for the sins of their children.”
Daniel looked up, a glimmer of desperate, pathetic hope flashing in his eyes. “Claire... thank you... thank you, God, I knew you were good—”
“But as for you, Daniel,” I continued, cutting him off with the finality of a slamming vault door, “you are on your own. The locks on the brownstone have already been changed. Your personal belongings will be packed into two cardboard boxes and left with the building superintendent by noon tomorrow. If you approach me, my offices, or my properties again, my legal team will file an immediate restraining order and pursue the full extent of the criminal fraud charges regarding Blue Crest Global.”
“Claire, no!” he screamed, reaching his hands out toward the polished leather of my boots as the security guards stepped forward, physically lifting him off the pavement and shoving him back toward the street corner. “Claire! You can’t leave me like this! You’re my wife!”
I turned my back on him.
I didn't look back as Eleanor opened the door to the town car. I stepped inside, the warm leather seats and quiet interior enclosing me like a sanctuary.
May you like
Eleanor slipped into the seat beside me, pulled the door shut, and tapped on the privacy glass. The car pulled away from the curb, leaving Daniel Mercer kneeling in the freezing rain, screaming my name into the Manhattan night as the red tail lights faded into the dark.
***
