The Prenup Evaluation That Ended Five Years Chapter 08

Nothing in the interrogation room but a metal table and two chairs.

A fluorescent tube buzzed overhead, throwing white light across the table.

Gavin sat with cold handcuffs locked around his wrists.

Across the table, an officer hit play on a video.

Security footage. A hallway inside Gavin’s company, weeks ago, on the night I resigned.

On screen, Sloane waited until the office emptied out, then opened the filing cabinet with a spare key.

She pulled the corporate seal and dropped it into her bag.

Then she walked back to her office and shut the door.

The timestamp in the corner read nine p.m.

The officer tapped the table.

“The Whitmore Group’s security team helped us recover the footage you erased.”

“Sloane confessed. All of it.”

“She faked the seal going missing so she could forge your company’s guarantee for her escrow account.”

“She’s facing embezzlement charges, forgery of official documents, and more.”

“Her firm has been shut down.”

“You’re the registered owner of the company, Gavin. That makes you liable too.”

“Your company is going into bankruptcy liquidation.”

Gavin stared at the screen.

He dropped his head and covered his face with both hands.

Two weeks later.

Court officers showed up at Gavin’s mortgaged estate.

They padlocked the front door and taped a neon foreclosure notice to the glass.

Two of them walked Gavin out through the front entrance.

He was carrying a white plastic bag.

Inside it: two half-used bottles of prescription antacids and the old gray sweater.

That was everything he had left.

The rain came down hard.

It hammered the asphalt of the gated neighborhood.

Gavin walked through the rain for two hours.

He reached the Whitmore Group’s building.

The barrier at the underground garage entrance lifted.

A black Rolls-Royce rolled out.

Its headlights cut through the rain.

Gavin threw the bag aside and threw himself in front of the car.

The driver slammed the brakes.

Tires shrieked on wet asphalt.

Gavin’s knees cracked against the flooded pavement.

He held up the old diary, rain-soaked and falling apart.

“Tessa!”

“I messed up!”

“I know I messed up, okay?”

“Just look at me!”

The rear window came down halfway.

I sat in the leather seat.

Warm air hummed from the vents, holding the cold at bay.

I looked at the man outside, with mud streaked across his face and hair matted flat to his skull.

“Gavin.”

“Stop performing. This isn’t for me. It’s for you.”

“Your life isn’t worth a single drop of my father’s insulin.”

I pressed the button.

The window rose and sealed him out.

“Drive.”

The driver hit the gas.

The tires rolled through a puddle.

Dirty water sprayed across Gavin’s face and clothes.

He scrambled to his feet and ran after the car.

“Tessa, don’t go!”

“One more chance. That’s all I’m asking!”

His foot caught a speed bump and slipped out from under him.

He went down hard.

His chin hit the concrete. His teeth bit through his lip.

He spat out a mouthful of blood and grit.

He opened his hand.

The scraps of the Premarital Depreciation Worksheet he’d kept all this time had dissolved into a lump of wet pulp.