After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 31

After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 31

That fury finally erupted at the Boston Children’s Hospital annual charity gala.

Noah held a glass of champagne he had barely touched. His eyes were bloodshot as he irritably listened to the people around him discuss markets, yachts, and their next vacation destinations. Sloane, dressed in an expensive custom Oscar de la Renta gown, was complaining unhappily to him about why their seats hadn’t been arranged at the main table this year.

“Noah, are you listening to me? This is an insult!” Sloane’s voice was sharp, sticky with alcohol. “They actually seated us here with second-tier sponsors!”

Noah’s anger found an outlet. He set down his glass, his voice lowered but cold as ice.

“Sloane, you spent three hundred thousand dollars on a dress just so you could complain about not having a good enough seat at an event like this?”

Sloane froze. She hadn’t expected Noah to attack her in public. Her face instantly flushed, her pride stabbed hard.

“What do you mean? Are you blaming me?”

“I’m only stating a fact,” Noah said, his voice cold enough to drop shards. “My company is about to be destroyed by that ‘hero’s’ family, and you’re still throwing money around on Newbury Street. Have you cared even once?”

“The company? That’s your problem!” Tears rushed into Sloane’s eyes, her favorite weapon. “I gave up so much for you, sacrificed so much, and now you’re attacking me over money? Noah, you don’t love me anymore!”

Before the words had fully settled, a crisp slap rang through their small section of the room.

Sloane slapped Noah while crying. The guests around them instantly looked over in shock. But this was only the beginning. As if she had gone mad, she began tearing at the Oscar de la Renta gown, expensive enough to buy a Porsche. Lace and silk ripped with a piercing sound.

“If you don’t love me anymore, just say it! You don’t have to humiliate me like this!” she screamed hysterically, staging an earth-shattering drama.

The scene was already chaotic enough, but Zack’s appearance pushed the farce to its peak. He appeared from nowhere, pulled Sloane behind him, and took on the posture of a hero saving a beauty as he shouted at Noah, “Stay away from her, you bastard!”

Noah looked at this Brooklyn thug in a cheap suit, reeking of marijuana, then at Sloane crying behind him like rain on pear blossoms. The string of reason snapped. He threw a punch and immediately began brawling with Zack.

The champagne tower collapsed. Delicate desserts were trampled into mush. The two men rolled over the luxurious carpet like beasts. The surrounding elites were shocked at first, then raised their phones. Someone even had their assistant start an Instagram livestream.

The video exploded online immediately.

The hashtags #BostonCharityBrawl and #WhitakerHeirMeltdown shot onto the trending list within minutes. In the video, Sloane looked nearly insane, her hair disheveled and her expensive gown torn by her own hands into rags, nothing like the “innocent first love” image she had painstakingly cultivated.

“My God, isn’t that Sloane Carver, the one who stole her friend’s husband?”

“Who is the guy fighting him? He looks like some street thug.”

“Latest update: he’s her other boyfriend! So Mr. Whitaker got cheated on and was still paying the bills?”

The online carnival began. Someone dug up the video of Noah’s high-profile confession to Sloane at his father’s birthday banquet and edited it together with his current bruised and battered appearance, set to music about the clown being himself all along. On Reddit, someone claiming to be their classmate started a long explanatory thread, detailing how Sloane knowingly inserted herself into a marriage, then continued her entanglement with her ex-boyfriend after getting Noah.

Overnight, all of Boston high society was discussing the enormous scandal. No one knew whether to mock Noah for bringing it on himself or pity him as the biggest fool of the year.

The three people in the emergency ward did not yet know that they had become the internet’s laughingstock.

Noah woke to a wave of sharp pain. The wound at the corner of his mouth still throbbed faintly, but he couldn’t feel it. His mind held only the shameful brawl recorded by countless phone cameras, and the image of Sloane standing with that man.

Without the slightest hesitation, he picked up his phone and made the first call.

“American Express? This is Noah Whitaker. Cancel every supplementary Black Card under my name. Immediately. Right now.”

After hanging up, he made a second call, this time to the company’s CFO.

“Terminate all financial support to the Carver family businesses. Yes, I mean all of it. Execute immediately.”

The last call went to his private lawyer.

“Prepare an eviction notice and send it to my penthouse at the Four Seasons. I want Sloane Carver out of there within twenty-four hours.”

His series of instructions was calm, swift, and devoid of emotion. He didn’t even bother to visit Sloane in the ward next door.

His private assistant hurried over and quietly reported the new round of stock decline triggered by the farce. Noah only waved a tired hand.

“Handle it,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t want to see either of those two people again.”