Chapter 6
For the next few days, I went completely off the grid.
I ignored every call from Michael.
When he texted, I fired back a quick line about being busy or in a meeting, just enough to brush him off.
At first, he was just annoyed, thinking I was being unreasonable.
But when he found out that the supplementary card with its 300 thousand dollar limit had been shut off, the panic started.
That day he was at a luxury store with Sophia, and she had her eye on a 100 thousand dollar bag.
He pulled out his credit card and handed it to the salesclerk, acting like he owned the place.
"Sorry, sir, your card has been frozen."
The clerk's polite, distant tone landed like a slap.
Sophia's smile stiffened.
The curious glances from the other customers made Michael's face flush, then turn pale.
He tried to look unbothered and handed over his own debit card.
"Incorrect PIN."
He tried once more, and the card failed again.
Then it hit him that the card was tied to the joint account with Emily.
He stormed out of the luxury store and immediately called me.
I didn't answer.
All he could do was text me, and every message came out furious.
Michael: [Emily, what are you doing? Why did you shut off my card?]
Michael: [Did you change the account password? What are you trying to pull?]
This time, I didn't even bother with a brush-off, and I left him on read.
Michael was pacing back and forth in his office, looking like a caged lion.
Every spending habit he had was built on the card I let him carry.
His own paycheck account had money in it, but it could not begin to cover the life Michael liked to present.
And now, even that card was frozen.
For the first time, he understood what it felt like to be broke.
Sophia followed behind him, asking cautiously, "Michael, what's wrong? Did your wife find out about us?"
Michael waved her off. "No chance. If she'd found out, she'd be crying and screaming by now. She wouldn't sit there quietly.
"Something got crossed somewhere. Don't worry about it."
He said that, but deep down he was growing increasingly uneasy.
The next hit came before he had absorbed the first.
That afternoon, he got a call from the office of the Prime Holdings CEO telling him to report to an emergency board meeting.
His stomach dropped, and he knew something bad was coming.
The tension in the conference room was thick enough to lean on.
Every board member sat stone-faced, and Wesley Harris, the CEO, sat at the head of the table looking ready to explode.
"Michael." Wesley dropped the courtesy title and used his first name flat. "Explain the Carter Enterprises contract."
Michael felt a jolt. "Mr. Harris, wasn't the Carter Enterprises renewal set for next week?"
Wesley grabbed a document off the table and slammed it down in front of him.
"Renewal? Carter Enterprises sent us formal notice this morning terminating every contract we have with them.
"Not just the west side project. All of it, every single one!"
The news went off in Michael's head like a bomb.
Carter Enterprises was Emily's family's company, and Prime Holdings' biggest client.
Ending the relationship meant Prime Holdings would lose close to 30 percent of its annual revenue. The stock would collapse, and the company would be in serious trouble.
"That's impossible!" Michael blurted. "Albert gave me his word. Why would he turn around like this?"
One of the board members snorted. "Albert Carter? Michael, do you still not understand?
"Albert Carter says his daughter is divorcing you, and you still expect to throw your weight around on her family's connections?"
Divorce?
Michael sat there like he had been struck by lightning.
Emily wanted a divorce?
He couldn't work out when she had said it, or where she had found the nerve.
Wesley looked at him standing there in pieces, and the contempt on his face was plain.
"You got the vice president job because of your wife's family. Now you can't hold your own marriage together, and you've cost this company a fortune. What are you still doing in this building?
"As of today, you're fired!
"The company will pursue you for negligence. You're on your own from here."
Those icy words were the death sentence for Michael's career.
Security escorted him out of the conference room, and he ended up standing outside Prime Holdings with a cardboard box of his own belongings.
The sun was blinding, but all he felt was a bone-deep chill.
He was out of a job.
His accounts were empty.
And Emily was divorcing him.
Everything he was proud of had crumbled in a single day.
It finally landed on him that Emily wasn't throwing a tantrum.
She was getting her revenge, and she was doing it in the coldest, most ruthless way possible.
With trembling hands, he called me again.
This time, I picked up.