Chapter 5 - The Desperate GambleBy the following Monday, the corporate bloodbath was complete.
Vance & Associates' stock plummeted by forty-two percent within four hours of the market opening. Meridian Bank called in all corporate loans immediately, giving Adrian exactly seventy-two hours to liquidate or face receivership. The high-rise office he had spent a decade building was suddenly swarming with federal auditors, forensic accountants, and Northstar repo agents.
And right in the middle of it all, my phone rang.
It was Adrian. His voice—usually smooth, confident, and dripping with condescension—was now cracked, breathless, and frantic.
“Camille. Please. We need to talk. Right now.”
“I’m busy, Adrian,” I said, looking out the panoramic window of my new corner office on the 72nd floor of Northstar Dominion.
“Don’t do this over the phone! They’re freezing my accounts, Camille! They’re taking the building! Sienna packed up her things and walked out the second the freeze hit—she didn't even look back! I have nothing left. The lawyers, the bank, the auditors... they’re destroying everything I built!”
“You mean everything we built,” I corrected calmly.
“Yes! Yes, you were right! You built it! I admit it!” He was practically hyperventilating now, his usual arrogance completely stripped away, leaving only a terrified, drowning man grasping at straws. “Please, Camille. Call Odessa Crane. Tell her to call off her legal team. You’re my wife—well, my wife of nine years—you can't just let them ruin me!”
“Your wife?” I let out a cold breath. “The same wife you told to take four hundred thousand dollars and go quietly? The same wife you stood by while Sienna Vey erased you out of existence?”
“I was stupid!” he sobbed, his voice cracking with genuine desperation. “I was arrogant! I thought... I thought you still loved me too much to ever actually walk away! I gambled everything on the belief that you would always be there to clean up my messes, no matter how badly I treated you!”
“You’re right about one thing, Adrian,” I said, my voice cutting through the speaker like a surgical blade. “You did gamble your entire marriage on that belief.”
“Then save me!”
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“No, Adrian,” I whispered. “I’m not going to save you. Because unlike you, I don't need to stand behind a man to be seen anymore.”
Click. I hung up the phone.
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