Chapter 3 - The Locked Doors
I threw a hundred-dollar bill onto the table and sprinted out of the restaurant into the biting Chicago wind. I hailed a cab, my mind frantically trying to assemble a defense strategy. I needed to get to my office. I needed to access my hard drives, shred the physical ledgers, and freeze the company accounts before Claire's lawyers could lock me out.
The cab dropped me off in front of the towering glass skyscraper that housed my firm. I rushed through the revolving doors, flashing my badge at the front desk, and marched toward the executive elevators.
I swiped my keycard. A harsh, red light flashed. The elevator doors remained firmly shut.
I swiped it again. Red.
"Mr. Mercer?" a deep voice echoed behind me.
I turned around. Two massive security guards, men whose paychecks I had signed just yesterday, were walking toward me. Behind them stood a man in a sharp gray suit holding a cardboard banker's box. It was Claire’s attorney, the same man who had stood silently beside her in the courtroom just two hours earlier.
"Your access privileges have been permanently revoked, Daniel," the attorney said, a terrifyingly calm smile resting on his face. He stepped forward and placed the cardboard box on the marble floor at my feet.
I looked down. Inside the box was a pathetic collection of my personal desk items. A framed photo of my dog. A few expensive fountain pens. A stress ball. Everything else had been seized.
"You can't do this!" I shouted, the panic finally breaking through my shock. "I built this company! I own sixty percent of the shares! A hostile takeover takes months of SEC approvals!"
The attorney chuckled softly, adjusting his glasses. "It does take months. Eighteen months, to be exact. Which is exactly how long my client has been quietly acquiring your mezzanine debt through blind trusts. And as for your shares? Did you actually read the divorce settlement you signed this morning, Daniel? Or were you too eager to meet your mistress for lunch?"
The memory hit me with the force of a freight train. The settlement. Claire had asked for virtually nothing. No alimony. She had only asked for the modest suburban house and a seemingly random portfolio of our "shared corporate debt." I had laughed internally, thinking she was a naive fool taking on liabilities while I walked away with the pure equity of my firm.
May you like
"By absorbing your debt," the attorney explained, twisting the knife, "she became your primary creditor. And the clause you initialed on page forty-two legally surrendered your equity in the event of a default. You defaulted the moment you expensed a fifty-thousand-dollar bracelet to an over-leveraged corporate account. You signed your own company over to her this morning."
I stumbled backward, hitting the cold marble wall of the lobby. I had been outplayed on a level of genius I couldn't even comprehend. Claire had known about Tessa for eighteen months. She hadn't cried. She hadn't screamed. She had gone to work.
