His Final Betrayal Was My First Move Chapter 33

His Final Betrayal Was My First Move Chapter 33

He stumbled out of the moldy apartment, Daphne’s sharp laughter chasing him like poisoned icicles, piercing the last of his dignity.

So that was it.

He hadn’t been a manipulated victim, but a fool who had willingly taken the bait. He hadn’t been a rescuer, but a bastard who had thrown the most precious thing he had into the mud, again and again, to satisfy his pathetic vanity.

One thought burned wildly in his mind, overriding the humiliation of bankruptcy and the anger of betrayal.

He had to see Amelia.

He had to apologize to her in person.

Driven by this almost redemptive impulse, he went to the new Boston office of the Maine Coast Art Education Foundation. It was a glass-and-steel building in the heart of the Financial District, glittering coldly and expensively.

The young woman at the front desk wore a professional smile. After checking her computer, she looked up politely.

“I’m sorry, sir. Ms. Reed’s schedule is full today. Do you have an appointment?”

“I’m Griffin Whitaker.” He said his name. Once, that name had been a key that opened every door in Boston.

The woman’s smile didn’t change. She just repeated, “Yes, Mr. Whitaker. But without an appointment, I can’t let you go up.”

He was politely asked to leave. The revolving glass door pushed him back onto the street, completely separating him from Amelia’s new world.

He refused to give up. He tried using old connections to find out which events Amelia might attend. But he quickly discovered that the club managers who had once bowed to him now rejected him in cold, businesslike tones. The Harvard Club, the Union Club—every private venue he had once regarded as his own backyard had quietly erased his name from the guest list.

He had been expelled from that circle.

Silently, yet definitively.

Only the clumsiest method remained.

Griffin began waiting downstairs from Amelia’s office. He could no longer afford Savile Row suits. Wearing a wrinkled old coat, he sat in the coffee shop across the street or simply stood on the corner like a lost ghost, waiting from morning until dusk.

He never saw her.

He could only see one black Mercedes after another slide silently into the building’s underground garage. Security would clear the area in advance to ensure absolute privacy for the VIP passage. He knew Amelia was in one of those cars. She entered and exited this building as naturally as breathing, while he had been stripped of even the right to look up at her.

He existed, but he was ignored.

The boomerang struck him right between the eyes. He finally tasted what Amelia had tasted countless times before: being treated as an irrelevant background object, forgotten where he stood.

At that moment, in the top-floor office of the building, Julian’s assistant was reporting quietly.

“Sir, Mr. Whitaker is still downstairs. This is the fifth day in a row.”

Julian lifted his gaze from a quarterly foundation report and calmly looked out the window. From this height, the once-arrogant man on the street below looked as small as a stain that could be wiped away with a finger. There was no triumphant pleasure on Julian’s face, only the calm of a procedure nearing its end.

Amelia needed to personally put an end to this rotten past. Not for Griffin’s sake, but for her own.

He turned to his assistant. “It’s time.”

The assistant lowered his head knowingly.

“It’s time for her to close this door herself,” Julian said, his voice steady and clear. “Arrange an ‘accidental encounter.’ Make sure everything is under control.”