Chapter 8 - Ashes in the Penthouse
The sound of cardboard boxes being taped shut was the only noise inside Julian’s former corner office.
Two private security guards stood silently at the open doorway, their arms crossed, watching his every move. Julian threw his desk ornaments into a banker’s box with trembling hands: a brass clock, a crystal decanter, framed awards for cases he had won using my father’s blueprints.
He reached for the silver-framed photograph on the corner of his mahogany desk.
It was our wedding portrait. We were standing beneath an arch of white peonies in the Hamptons. In the picture, I was smiling with unreserved trust, looking at him as if he held the stars in his hands. He was looking directly at the camera, smug, conquered, triumphant.
Julian’s fingers tightened around the frame until the glass cracked under the pressure of his thumb. With a muffled curse, he hurled it into the wastebasket.
His personal phone buzzed continuously on the blotter.
*Chloe:* Julian, answer me! The locks are changed! Where am I supposed to go?
*Chloe:* The police are threatening to tow my car because the lease was under Apex Consulting! Call me!
*Chloe:* You ruined my life! You promised me everything would be fine!
Julian swiped the screen, cutting off the calls, and shoved the phone into his pocket. His hands were shaking so severely he could barely grip the edge of the cardboard box.
As he walked down the central corridor toward the executive elevators, employees stood beside their cubicles, watching in stony silence. The paralegals he had flirted with, the junior associates he had berated, the receptionists who had covered for his long "lunches"—all of them looked through him as if he were already a ghost.
When the elevator chimed and opened on the ground floor, reality struck its final blow.
Parked directly in front of the main lobby doors was a flatbed tow truck. A bailiff in a reflective vest was hooking a steel cable to the front axle of Julian’s silver Porsche.
Julian rushed out into the afternoon drizzle. "Hey! Stop! What the hell are you doing? That is my car!"
The bailiff glanced at a clipboard without pausing his winch. "Mr. Mercer? Vehicle is registered to Mercer-Sterling Fleet Holdings, LLC. Partnership repo order executed this morning at ten a.m. Personal items inside the vehicle have been bagged and left with the front desk."
"You can't do this! I have no way to get home!"
"Take the bus, pal," the tow truck driver grunted, pulling the lever. The sports car was dragged up the steel ramps, chains rattling loudly, echoing down the crowded city street.
Julian stood on the curb, clutching his single cardboard box. Bystanders in raincoats maneuvered around him, annoyed by the obstruction. He pulled his collar up against the cold wind, realizing he didn't even have an umbrella.
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His empire hadn't fallen with a dramatic explosion. It had dissolved like wet tissue paper under the rain, leaving him standing on the pavement with twelve thousand dollars to his name and nowhere to go but his childhood bedroom at his mother’s apartment.
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