Chapter 4 - THE DESPERATE PLEAPreston fell to his knees right in front of the sofa.
It was a pathetic sight—a man who had ruled Wall Street boardrooms for a decade, now groaning on imported Italian marble, clutching at the hem of my trousers like a drowning sailor grabbing a piece of drifting driftwood.
"Look at me, El," he begged, his voice cracking with genuine terror. "Please. I messed up. I know I did. I made a massive mistake with Sloane. It was a stupid, meaningless distraction. She meant nothing to me!"
I didn't move. I looked down at him with an expression of cold, detached curiosity, as if he were a bug crawling across my shoe.
"Is that really your defense, Preston?" I asked quietly. "A meaningless distraction? You bought her a five-million-dollar penthouse with embezzled funds and paraded her in front of six hundred of our closest friends to humiliate me. And your best excuse is that she meant nothing?"
"She lied to me!" Preston blurted out, his face contorting in sudden, desperate self-preservation. "She manipulated me, Eleanor! She kept pushing me for more commitment, more money, more status! She trapped me with her games!"
I let out a short, humorless laugh. "Oh, Preston. Do you hear yourself? You’re blaming the twenty-five-year-old mistress for your lack of self-control? You are fifty years old. You signed the wire transfers. You stole from the escrow account. You chose to betray every single vow you made."
He shook his head frantically, tears finally spilling over his eyelids and tracking down his hollow cheeks. "The board fired me, El. They voted me out! Summit Ridge Bank has frozen every single personal and corporate asset I own. My credit cards are declined. My lawyers are abandoning me because I can't pay their retainers. I am ruined. Financially, socially, completely ruined!"
"Yes," I agreed smoothly. "You are."
"You can stop this!" he cried, grabbing the edges of the coffee table. "You’re a Hartwell! Your family has billions in liquid capital! If you call Mason, if you tell Arthur Vance to back off, they’ll restore my credit lines. We can drop the divorce, we can move away—go to Europe, start over fresh. Just you and me. Like the old days."
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, locking my eyes onto his terrified gaze.
"Preston," I whispered, "do you remember what you told me three nights ago when I asked you why you were coming home late from the gym?"
He froze, his mouth hanging half open.
"You looked me dead in the eye," I continued, my voice steady and ice-cold, "and you told me that I was being paranoid. You told me that my suspicions were insulting to your integrity as a husband and a businessman. You told me that I needed to trust you because you were building a future for us."
Preston swallowed hard, his throat working convulsively.
"And now," I said, pointing a single finger down at the legal documents resting on the table, "you want me to save you from the very future you built."
"I made a mistake!" he sobbed. "Haven't twenty years of marriage earned me a second chance?"
"Twenty years of marriage earned you my loyalty," I replied softly. "You spent all of it. Now, you pay the balance."
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I stood up, stepping away from him as he slumped forward, burying his face in his hands, letting out ragged, broken breaths of absolute despair.
"Sign the papers, Preston," I said, walking toward the floor-to-ceiling windows to watch the morning traffic crawl across Fifth Avenue. "It’s the last merciful thing I’m ever going to do for you."
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