Chapter 4 - Unraveling the Web
The flashing blue and red emergency lights painted the neoclassical columns of the mansion in surreal, pulsing hues. Two female officers took Evelyn by the elbows. The matriarch of Lake Forest, who had spent decades dictating social standing in the city, began thrashing and sobbing like a spoiled toddler.
"Get your hands off me! Do you know who I am? I sit on the board of the Children’s Memorial Hospital! I host the Spring Gala!"
"Not this year, Mrs. Whitmore," Officer Ramirez said flatly, clicking the steel cuffs tight around her wrists. "Step down the stairs, please. Don't make us carry you."
Vanessa was weeping uncontrollably, her designer makeup smeared into ugly black streaks down her cheeks. "It was Evelyn’s idea! She told me Emma was ruining Grant’s life! She promised me that if Emma was out of the picture, Grant would propose to me before New Year’s! She gave me the sapphire! Check my phone, the texts are right there!"
"Shut up, you stupid girl!" Richard Whitmore roared, lunging toward Vanessa before an officer shoved him back. "Shut your mouth!"
"Everyone will be interviewed downtown," Superintendent Miller said, nodding to his men as they guided both women toward the waiting patrol cars.
Guests were already scattering toward their vehicles, desperate to distance themselves from the radioactive crater that the Whitmore name had just become. Within forty-eight hours, the story would hit every high-society column from Chicago to New York. The mighty Whitmores had not only gone broke, but they had also physically assaulted the sole heiress of Sterling Enterprises over a planted bauble.
Grant stood alone on the terrace steps, his shoulders hunched, his hands shaking at his sides. He looked utterly diminished. Without the illusion of his family’s immense wealth and the manufactured superiority of his mother, he was simply an empty shell of a man who had chosen cowardice over love.
"Emma," he croaked, taking a tentative step toward me. "Please. Look at me. We can fix this. I didn't know about the necklace. I swear on my life, I didn't know Vanessa would do that! I thought... I thought you were just hiding something from me!"
"I was hiding something, Grant," I said, meeting his bloodshot eyes. "I was hiding the fact that I paid off your father’s gambling debts in Macau last spring. I paid off the twelve million dollars he owed to a syndicate because I didn't want you to carry the burden of his shame."
Grant’s jaw dropped. He whipped around to stare at his father. "What?"
Richard Whitmore couldn't look his son in the eye. He stared at the gravel, his hands trembling in his pockets.
"Your father spent the last five years running your logistics company into the dirt," I told him, each word landing like a hammer blow. "He gambled away the pension funds. He mortgaged this house three times over. The only reason your credit cards worked, the only reason you could buy that Italian sports car you drove here tonight, was because I signed the personal guarantee on your corporate line of credit."
Grant stumbled backward, shaking his head. "No... no, that’s impossible. You're an archivist. You make sixty grand a year."
"I made sixty grand a year because I wanted to earn my own way while I finished my doctorate," I replied coldly. "I wanted a partner who loved Emma. Not Emma Sterling. Not the girl whose trust fund could buy your father’s company ten times over."
I reached up to my left hand. The three-carat diamond ring Grant had given me—a ring he had constantly bragged was an heirloom from his great-grandmother, but which I had discovered weeks ago he had purchased on an extended payment plan—felt heavy and poisonous on my finger.
I slid it off.
I took three slow steps forward and dropped the diamond into the wet puddle of champagne Evelyn had spilled on the limestone steps.
May you like
"Keep it," I said. "You're going to need the pawn value for your father’s bail."
***
