Chapter 10 - The Scraps of Evan
I met Evan Harrington in the facility's courtyard garden, seated on a stone bench surrounded by blooming azaleas. I had walked out there myself, using only a single carbon-fiber cane to assist my balance.
Evan looked unrecognizable.
The bespoke suits were gone, replaced by a wrinkled button-down shirt and scuffed loafers. The arrogance that had once defined his walk was replaced by a hollow, sunken posture. Dark circles hung heavily beneath his bloodshot eyes.
When he saw me walking toward the bench, he gasped, rising quickly to his feet.
"Audrey... you're... you're walking," he whispered, his voice trembling.
"Sit down, Evan," I said, taking my seat on the opposite end of the stone bench, laying my cane across my lap. "You have five minutes before security escorts you off the property."
He dropped back onto the bench, burying his face in his hands for a long moment before looking up at me with raw, desperate agony.
"My father cut me out of the trust," Evan choked out. "He fired me from the board. Nobody in the sector will hire me. They look at me like I pushed you myself. Audrey, I lost my home, my car, my entire future... all because I stayed quiet for ten minutes to protect a merger."
"You didn't stay quiet to protect a merger, Evan," I replied, my voice completely devoid of anger, which seemed to terrify him more than if I had screamed. "You stayed quiet because you are inherently hollow. You calculated my pain, weighed it against your inheritance, and decided I wasn't worth the inconvenience of honesty."
"I loved you!" he cried, reaching across the stone toward my arm.
I lifted the cane, blocking his hand cleanly.
"You loved the status of being Helena Vance's granddaughter's husband," I said. "You loved the merger. You loved Taryn when she flirted with you behind my back at Thanksgiving. Don't lie to me, Evan. Chloe found the WhatsApp messages on her phone. You two were sleeping together a month before the balcony."
Evan froze. His face went entirely gray. The last pathetic shred of his defense dissolved into dust.
"I... Audrey, please..."
"Sign this," I said, pulling a folded legal document from my coat pocket and dropping it at his feet.
He picked it up with shaking hands. "What is this?"
"A full and final assignment of your intellectual property rights to the Harrington-Vance development software," I stated. "Victoria bought the debt on your private holding company this morning. If you sign that document, she will waive the personal deficiency judgment against you. You will have enough money to buy a one-way ticket to whatever cheap city will have you, and you will never set foot in Savannah again."
"And if I don't sign?" he whispered, his hands trembling violently.
"Then tomorrow morning, Victoria files for personal bankruptcy execution against you. You will be stripped down to the clothes on your back, and we will subpoena your phone records for Taryn's criminal trial. The entire world will read the texts where you joked about my medical brace three days before she pushed me."
Evan looked down at the paper, then at the pen I extended toward him.
He didn't hesitate. He scribbled his signature in a hurried, ragged scrawl, handing it back with tears streaming down his face.
May you like
I took the paper, checked the signature, and stood up with my cane.
"Goodbye, Evan," I said, turning my back on him. "I hope the five million views were worth your life."
