Chapter 1 - The Trap Inside The Manor
I stared at the photograph on my phone, the soft glow of the screen illuminating the rustic timber walls of my mountain cottage. The girl in the picture—young, blonde, and carrying designer luggage she certainly couldn't afford on a waitress’s salary—was practically skipping through the massive wrought-iron doors of Hawthorne Manor. Her name was Mia. I knew this because, despite Julian’s assumption that I was blissfully ignorant, I had always been the one paying attention to the details. It was how we built Mercer Holdings. It was how I knew his marriage to me had been over months before he finally admitted it.
Julian thought the hard part was over. He believed he had cleanly excised me from his life, keeping his beloved mansion and his newfound youth in one seamless transaction. But Julian, for all his business acumen, had never truly understood the foundation of his own empire.
When I asked for sixty percent of our liquid assets and left him the house, it wasn’t an act of grace. It was a calculated checkmate. Hawthorne Manor was a sprawling, thirty-thousand-square-foot beast that cost nearly two hundred thousand dollars a month just to maintain. The property taxes, the specialized landscaping, the security teams, the smart-home servers—it was a financial black hole. And because Julian’s wealth was primarily tied up in restricted company stock and untouchable long-term investments, the sudden drain of sixty percent of his actual cash was going to hit him like a freight train.
Back in Charleston, Mia’s fairy tale was already unraveling. I received a text from Margaret, my fiercely loyal former housekeeper.
“She’s complaining about the temperature, Mrs. Mercer. She asked me to make her a matcha latte. I told her the espresso machine is broken and I am resigning effective Friday.”
I smiled, sipping my tea. I had taken the espresso machine’s specialized water filter with me. A petty move? Perhaps. But a highly satisfying one.
Meanwhile, I spent my first week at Pine Hollow breathing real air for the first time in a decade. I traded my silk cocktail dresses for worn-in denim and thick knit sweaters. I woke up to the sound of wind rushing through the Blue Ridge pines instead of the incessant buzzing of Julian’s corporate phone. I began restoring the cottage’s old wraparound porch, hiring a local contracting firm owned by a man named Liam. Liam was entirely unlike Julian; he was grounded, calloused, and looked at me as if I were a person, not a prized corporate asset to be managed.
As the first week of our thirty-day waiting period closed, Julian’s silence broke. My phone buzzed with an email. It wasn't about the divorce. It was about the house.
May you like
Claire, the security system requires a master reset code. The staff is leaving en masse. What did you say to them? Please call me. Mia is feeling unwelcome.
I deleted the email. If Julian wanted to play house with his shiny new toy, he would have to learn how to keep the lights on himself.
