Chapter 8 - The Price of Loyalty
The scandal became national news before midnight.
By morning, the video from the ballroom had been viewed eleven million times.
Half the internet called me brilliant.
The other half called me heartless.
Some said I had every right to expose them.
Others said I should have protected Sloane because she was pregnant.
A morning television host accused me of turning private pain into public entertainment.
Another praised me for refusing to protect wealthy criminals.
I watched none of it.
I spent the morning in the Hartwell boardroom.
Employees needed reassurance.
Investors needed facts.
Patients and hospitals needed to know the company would survive.
By noon, the stolen accounts were frozen.
By three, Daniel’s photograph had been removed from the executive floor.
By five, his office had been emptied.
His personal belongings were placed in six cardboard boxes.
I instructed security to send them to the apartment he had purchased for Sloane with stolen money.
The government had already seized the apartment.
The boxes were returned.
Daniel called me from his attorney’s office.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“No.”
“You destroyed my life.”
“You used my prescription medication to steal my legal rights.”
“I made a mistake.”
“A mistake is forgetting an anniversary.”
I looked through the window at the city below.
“You committed a conspiracy.”
“I am the father of an unborn child.”
“That child deserves better than the man you chose to become.”
His voice softened.
It was the same tone he had once used when asking me to marry him.
“Evie, we loved each other.”
I closed my eyes.
For one dangerous second, I remembered the young man who had held my hand in the hospital after my first miscarriage.
Then I remembered him laughing with Sloane while planning to declare me incompetent.
“You loved what I could give you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then tell your attorneys to stop demanding half my company.”
Silence.
His lawyers had argued that his years as CEO entitled him to a major ownership settlement.
The company he had tried to steal was still his priority.
I laughed quietly.
“That’s what I thought.”
Before hanging up, Daniel spoke one final time.
“Sloane says you’re trying to take her parents’ house.”
I frowned.
“I have no interest in her parents’ property.”
“She said you bought their mortgage.”
“No.”
I opened the investigator’s report on my desk.
“But someone did.”
The purchasing company was controlled by Northstar.
Daniel and Sloane had borrowed against her parents’ home without telling them.
Even now, they were blaming me for damage they had caused themselves.
I forwarded the document to Sloane.
May you like
Then I added five words.
Ask Daniel where the money went.
