Chapter 1 - The Envelope of Ruin
The piece of cardstock Cassandra pulled from her worn leather tote was thick, yellowed at the edges, and stamped with a priority mail seal dated three years ago. My name was handwritten on the front in her jagged, nervous script: Damon Prescott.
It was unopened. The red wax seal I had pressed onto it during our final, disastrous argument was still intact, unbroken.
"I drove to your headquarters the week after we split," Cassandra whispered, her voice barely carrying over the low hum of the GE jet engines. "Your security guards wouldn't let me past the lobby because I didn't have an appointment. I mailed it to your private office. It came back to my apartment two months later, marked Return to Sender: Addressee Unknown."
I stared at the wax seal—my own family crest, a foolish affectation I’d picked up during my Wharton days. My chest felt hollowed out, a cavity where a heart used to beat. Two months after our break-up, I had been in Zurich closing my first billion-dollar venture capital round. I had changed offices, changed phone numbers, and hidden my residential address behind a web of shell corporations to escape the relentless press after my father’s corporate collapse.
"I didn't know," I choked out, the words tasting like ash. "Cass, I swear to God, I never saw this."
"Of course you didn't, Damon," she said, her voice dropping into a flat, devastating quiet that hurt worse than screaming. "Your empire was expanding. You were busy saving the world with neonatal tech, trying to fix the ghost of your sister while ignoring the living, breathing reality right in front of you. You didn't have time for a struggling artist from a broken home. You told me yourself: 'Ambition is a jealous god, Cassie. It doesn't share.'"
Luke tugged on my sleeve, interrupting our private apocalypse with the innocent cruelty only children possess.
"Mister, why are your eyes wet? Are you crying because of the bouncing plane?"
I swallowed the lump in my throat, blinking rapidly against the sting of tears. "No, buddy. Just... thinking about old times."
May you like
Across the aisle, the elderly woman openly adjusted her reading glasses to stare. My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket—a silent, vibrating reminder of the multi-million dollar chain of command waiting for my digital signature in Colorado. Calder’s offer is gaining momentum. Thirty minutes to midnight, Damon.
I looked down at the envelope, then at the twins, and realized the multi-million dollar acquisition of Merritt Systems suddenly felt like Monopoly money compared to the life-shattering debt I owed the woman sitting beside me.
