Chapter 7 - Whispers in the CityNews travels fast in Boston’s wealthy circles. Within a month, the complete collapse of Daniel Vance and the spectacular implosion of his romance with Chloe became the talk of every country club, law firm, and charity board in New England.
Daniel had tried to contest the trust revocation, hiring cheap attorneys on contingency fees, but his father’s legal team had systematically crushed every single motion before it even reached a judge. Stripped of his wealth, his car, his apartment, and his social standing, Daniel was forced to move into a tiny, run-down studio apartment on the industrial outskirts of Cambridge—taking a low-level administrative job at a failing logistics firm just to pay for his groceries.
Chloe, meanwhile, had fled to New York within forty-eight hours of the airport fiasco, desperately trying to latch onto another wealthy victim, only to find herself blacklisted from every exclusive social circle after her role in the scandal went viral across local gossip columns.
As for me?
I walked through downtown Boston on a crisp autumn afternoon, wearing a sharp, tailored camel-wool coat and designer boots I had bought with my own hard-earned architectural consulting fee.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I pulled it out, expecting an email from my project manager regarding the Wellesley residential renovation.
Instead, it was an unknown local number.
I swiped and answered.
“Hello?”
“Helen?”
The voice was raspy, broken, and terribly thin. It took me a full three seconds to recognize it.
“Daniel?” I asked, my tone flat, unbothered, and entirely devoid of emotion.
“Helen, please... I’m begging you,” he sobbed softly over the line, the sound of passing traffic roaring in the background of a public payphone or a crowded street. “I’m living in a hellhole. I have nothing left. Can we... can we just talk? For old times' sake? Just five minutes. I miss the girls so much.”
I stopped walking, standing on the sunlit sidewalk near Boston Common, watching businessmen and families stroll past us in the crisp autumn air.
“You missed your chance to talk, Daniel, four months ago when you packed your bags for a luxury cruise and told me to raise our daughters alone,” I said, my voice as steady as granite.
“Helen, please! We were married for eleven years! Don't you care at all about what we had?”
“What we had,” I replied calmly, “died the moment you walked through that airport terminal arm-in-arm with another woman, thinking you could throw us away like garbage.”
“I made a mistake! I was blind! I’ll do anything—”
“I know you made a mistake, Daniel,” I interrupted softly. “And you’re paying for it. But my daughters and I? We are finally free.”
May you like
Without giving him another second to plead, I tapped the red button, ending the call permanently.
I didn't block the number. I didn't need to. He wasn't a threat anymore; he was just a ghost from a life I had left behind.
