The guests were now openly abandoning the party. High society is a pack of wolves; when the alpha beast bleeds, the rest do not offer aid—they look for parts to devour.
“Margaret, dear, we must be going,” Mrs. Kensington, Margaret’s supposed best friend and social rival, said loudly as she draped a mink stole over her shoulders. “I have an early meeting with our family foundation. It was… quite an illuminating evening.”
“Wait! Victoria, please!” Margaret pleaded, scrambling up the stairs toward her departing guests. “The dinner! The catering! The main course is coming!”
Nobody stopped. Men turned their backs, pretending to check their wristwatches, while women whispered behind silk handkerchiefs. Within five minutes, thirty people had hurried past the security gate, their limousines and town cars speeding off into the night like rats fleeing a scuttled vessel.
Daniel remained on the gravel, staring blankly at the ground. His world had shattered in less than twenty minutes. The loans, the social standing, the power he wielded so ruthlessly over me—all of it had been an illusion, constructed upon the very foundation he had just destroyed with his own hands.
“Emily…” Daniel whimpered, crawling toward me again. “Emily, please. Look at me. Baby, remember our first vacation? Remember the cottage in Maine? I love you. You know I have a temper… you know the pressure I’ve been under with the harbor deal! My mother pushed me! She was in my ear all day about the dinner! I didn’t mean to hurt you! You know I would die for you!”
“You didn’t die for me, Daniel,” I said, looking down at him. For the first time in six years, I didn’t feel terror when he approached. I felt only disgust. “You dragged me across the floor by my hair. You told thirty people I was your dog. You let your mother spit on me.”
I reached up with trembling fingers and unclipped the diamond wedding band from my left finger—a cheap, half-carat stone he had bought while bragging to his friends about his new sports car.
I dropped the ring onto the gravel beside his hand.
“Keep it,” I said. “You’re going to need the pawn value tomorrow.”
Alexander placed a firm, protective hand on the small of my back. “Come, Emily. Your mother has had your old room prepared since the day you left. Your doctor is already waiting at the penthouse.”
Daniel lunged forward, his fingers clawing at the hem of my father’s trousers. “Mr. Carter! Please! Don’t leave! Give me until the end of the week! Just three days! I’ll sign whatever you want! I’ll transfer fifty percent of the voting shares to Emily! I’ll sign a postnuptial agreement! Please don’t call the debt!”
Alexander stopped. He didn’t look down at Daniel with rage. He looked down at him with the cold finality of an executioner.
“Every single drop of blood you took from my daughter,” Alexander said quietly, “will cost you an empire. Guard.”
Two private security officers stepped forward, seized Daniel by the arms, and hauled him backward. Daniel fought and kicked, screaming obscenities and pleas in the same breath, until they dropped him onto the lawn like a sack of spoiled flour.
Alexander guided me into the back seat of the Escalade. The door closed with a heavy, soundproof thud, cutting off the wails of Margaret Whitmore and the frantic screams of her ruined son.
As the convoy turned through the ornate wrought-iron gates, I looked out the tinted window. The Whitmore mansion, once a towering fortress that had imprisoned my soul, shrank into the dark, cold night.
