Chapter 2 - The Severance
The sound of my heavy silk train dragging across the country club’s stone foyer sounded like dry leaves in a storm.
Behind me, the ballroom erupted into chaos. I heard Barbara’s shrill voice demanding that the catering director cut the microphones, followed immediately by Daniel shouting my name.
“Olivia! Liv, damn it, wait!”
I didn’t break stride. I reached the double glass doors of the private bridal suite, pushed inside, and turned the brass deadbolt.
A second later, heavy fists banged against the oak wood.
“Olivia! Open the door!” Daniel rattled the knob frantically. “You’re embarrassing yourself! My mother was trying to establish order—she has a certain way of doing things, you know that! We can talk about the wording later!”
“Go away, Daniel,” I said, leaning against the vanity counter to steady my trembling hands.
“Open the door, or I swear to God I’ll have security bring the master key!” he snarled, dropping the gentle, wounded-puppy facade he had maintained for the two years we dated. “You don’t walk out on me in front of the Prescott partners! Do you have any idea what kind of money was sitting in that room?”
“I know exactly what kind of money was sitting in that room,” I replied through the wood, my voice chillingly calm even as my stomach churned with acid. “And none of it is mine. Just like none of mine will ever be yours.”
A side door leading to the service corridor clicked open. Claire slipped in, followed by Ryan. Ryan immediately wedged a heavy mahogany armchair beneath the brass handle of the main door, reinforcing the lock.
“You okay?” Ryan asked quietly. His tuxedo jacket was unbuttoned, his tie slightly crooked, his jaw set like concrete.
“No,” I said honestly. “My chest feels like someone dropped an anvil on it. But my head is completely clear.”
Claire dropped her satin clutch onto the dressing table and unzipped my garment bag. “I brought your duffel from the trunk of your car. Your jeans, sneakers, and your laptop bag. Strip out of that dress before he decides to claim the lace belongs to the Whitmore trust.”
I reached behind my back, struggling with the row of tiny pearl buttons. Claire’s nimble fingers took over, unfastening them one by one. The dress pooled around my ankles like white froth. I stepped out of it, kicked off the Jimmy Choo heels that had pinched my toes since three o’clock, and pulled on my worn denim and an oversized black cashmere sweater.
“Ryan,” I said, tying the laces of my sneakers, “what did Barbara mean by ‘already prepared’?”
Ryan pulled his phone from his pocket. As an equity partner at one of Chicago’s top corporate litigation firms, he didn’t waste time on emotion when there was paper to examine.
“I called our firm’s title clerk three minutes after Barbara opened her mouth,” Ryan said, his screen casting a blue glow over his face. “Daniel’s boutique firm, Whitmore Partners, has been running title searches on your grandfather’s Milwaukee warehouse and your two properties on Ohio Street for the last eighteen days.”
My blood went cold. “He told me he was looking into refinancing options for his own commercial loan on the Oak Street retail space.”
“He lied, Liv,” Ryan said bluntly. “And here’s the kicker: an electronic deed conveyance filing was queued up in the Cook County Recorder of Deeds system at 4:15 p.m. yesterday afternoon. Pending final execution.”
“Execution requires my notarized signature,” I stammered, pulling my hair into a tight, messy bun. “I never signed a deed transfer. I haven’t signed a single piece of paper since the catering contract six months ago!”
Ryan exchanged a grim look with Claire.
“We don’t think you did,” Ryan said softly. “Daniel has an in-house notary at his brokerage. A kid named Carter Phelps. Remember Carter? He was Daniel’s pledge brother at Northwestern.”
The memory hit me like a slap. Last week, Daniel had brought home an envelope of corporate tax returns for Grant Property Group, claiming his accountant could find an extra forty thousand dollars in depreciation deductions if I signed off on the state disclosures. I had signed the signature tabs he marked with little yellow Post-its while drinking tea at our breakfast bar.
Had he swapped the signature pages? Had he used Carter to notarize a conveyance document while I was busy tasting buttercream frostings?
A violent thump rattled the main door.
“Olivia!” Daniel shouted again. This time, his voice cracked with raw desperation. “Listen to me! We took out a bridge loan three weeks ago! The bank needed collateral! It’s just temporary—a sixty-day hold until the River North deal closes! If you walk out on this, they’ll call the note! The firm will collapse!”
I stood frozen in the center of the dressing room, the pieces clicking together with sickening precision.
Daniel wasn’t trying to absorb my business to build a glorious family dynasty.
He was drowning. And he had planned to use my life’s work as a flotation device.
“Did you hear that?” Claire whispered, her eyes wide with fury. “He didn’t marry you for love, Liv. He married you for a balance sheet.”
“Ryan,” I said, my voice hardening until it sounded like steel striking stone. “Can they execute a fraudulent conveyance if the marriage license isn't finalized?”
Ryan looked at the small white envelope lying on the vanity—the state marriage license we had signed in the church office two hours before the ceremony. The officiant, Pastor Thomas, had signed it, but it had not yet been mailed to the county clerk.
Ryan stepped over, picked up the white envelope, and slipped it inside his breast pocket.
“Pastor Thomas hasn't left the building,” Ryan said. “And without this paper in the Cook County system, as far as the State of Illinois is concerned, you are nothing more than Daniel Whitmore’s former fiancée.”
“Good,” I said. I grabbed my laptop bag and slung it over my shoulder. “Claire, call an Uber to the side delivery bay. Ryan, you and I are going to Daniel’s penthouse.”
“Why his place?” Claire asked.
May you like
“Because,” I said, staring at my reflection in the mirror—barefaced, pale, but completely awake for the first time in two years, “I keep my father’s original corporate seal and the Grant master stock certificates in the safe in his study. And I’m getting them back before Barbara Whitmore figures out she bet on the wrong horse.”
***
