The Prenup Evaluation That Ended Five Years Chapter 06

Three days later.

Gavin’s office. Twenty-eighth floor of a downtown high-rise.

A coffee cup lay overturned on the carpet.

Brown liquid bled into a wide stain.

The client’s project manager hurled a thick stack of architectural drawings at Gavin’s face.

Pages scattered across the floor.

“Mr. Mercer, do you know the first thing about design?”

“Half the structural load calculations are wrong!”

“The utility lines don’t match the actual site. Not even close!”

“If the crew had kept building off these plans, the foundation would’ve caved in!”

“We’re shutting the project down. Effective immediately.”

“You’ll be hearing from our lawyers about breach of contract.”

The manager kicked the drawings aside, turned on his heel, and slammed the door on his way out.

Gavin didn’t move. A vein throbbed at his temple.

He jabbed the intercom on his desk.

“Get Sloane in here. Now.”

Thirty seconds later, Sloane pushed through the door.

New Chanel suit. Fresh coffee in hand. Not a care in the world.

“Gavin, what’s with the mood?”

Gavin pointed at the mess of drawings on the floor.

“Your name is on these plans! You signed off on them!”

“The numbers are a disaster. Did you even look at them?”

Sloane set her coffee down and barely glanced at the papers on the floor.

“When was I supposed to go through all that? I’ve been busy.”

“Tessa always handled the technical specs. That was her thing.”

“Just pull up her original files and tweak whatever needs fixing. Problem solved.”

Gavin grabbed the phone.

He dialed my extension.

[We’re sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer in service.]

He hung up and called HR.

“Tell Tessa to send me the backup drafts for the redevelopment project. Now.”

The HR manager’s voice came back careful.

“Mr. Mercer, Miss Vale completed her resignation three days ago.”

“Her local drive was wiped clean. Every document she uploaded to the shared server was blank.”

“She didn’t even collect her last paycheck.”

Gavin slammed the receiver down.

The plastic casing cracked.

Sloane walked over and looped her arm through his.

“Forget the drawings.”

“The auditors are coming for my firm any day now.”

“When is that forty thousand you promised me for the escrow account coming through?”

“Oh, and the food in that private suite was garbage. They couldn’t even get the chicken soup right.”

“Call the hospital director and have them swap out the cook.”

Gavin shook her off.

He crossed to the safe behind his desk.

Punched in the code. Pulled the heavy door open.

He was after the bank statements for the company’s emergency funds.

He lifted the panel at the bottom.

A worn hardcover diary tumbled out. Things tucked inside it scattered across the carpet.

Gavin crouched down.

Seven or eight plasma donation receipts. Several hospital bills, carefully folded.

Five years back, Gavin’s company had burned through everything. He couldn’t even afford to rent servers.

I’d taken out a high-interest loan to cover a five-thousand-dollar server lease for him. To afford groceries and pay the interest, I went to different plasma centers three days in a row, lying about my cooldown periods.

The hospital bills were from the night I’d been rushed to the ER. A gastric ulcer had ruptured after I’d spent hours entertaining his investors.

Tucked behind them was a surgical consent form.

Every line meant for an emergency contact’s signature was filled in with my own shaky handwriting.

Gavin stared at the form in his hands.

The edges had yellowed and gone brittle.

“Gavin, what are you digging around for?”

Sloane walked over and nudged the diary with the toe of her heel.

“What is all this? Throw it out. It’s just taking up space.”

Gavin looked up at Sloane.

He gathered the receipts and the diary off the floor and shoved them into his pocket.

He grabbed his keys and walked out without a word.

“Where are you going? You still owe me that money!”

Sloane called after him.

Gavin didn’t answer.

He took the Maybach and drove to my old neighborhood. He ran every light on the way.

He pulled up outside the shabby apartment building.

He took the grimy stairs two at a time, all the way to the fifth floor.

He pounded on the metal door of 502.

“Tessa!”

“Open the door!”

The door next to it cracked open.

The building super stepped out holding a trash bag.

“Quit banging. You’re going to knock that door off its hinges.”

“The girl who lived there broke her lease three days ago.”

Gavin turned to him.

“Where did she go?”

The super tied off the garbage bag without looking up.

“How should I know?”

“A whole line of black cars came and picked her up.”

“Didn’t even ask for her security deposit back. Just told me to toss whatever she left behind.”

He pointed at the pile of trash by the stairwell.

“See? Some of her clothes she didn’t want.”

Gavin looked where he pointed.

A gray sweater sleeve hung out of a black trash bag.

I’d knitted it for him by hand during his first year in business.

The motion-sensor light in the hallway clicked off.

In the dark, there was nothing left but the smell of mildew rising from the pile.