Chapter 3 - The Empty Chair
Back in San Diego, the storm was breaking in a very different way.
It was 9:00 p.m. when Adrian Mercer returned to the penthouse, carrying a bottle of vintage champagne and a box of high-end pastries. He had spent the afternoon with Sloane, finalizing the promotional materials for Mercer Renewal. They were celebrating.
“Evelyn?” Adrian called out as he stepped into the foyer.
Silence answered him.
He walked into the living room. The lights were off. The floor where Evelyn’s blood had spilled three days ago had been polished until it shone like ice, every trace of the incident sanitized.
“Evelyn?”
He walked down the hall to the master bedroom. The bed was neatly made. On the vanity mirror, where her cosmetics usually sat, there was nothing except a single white envelope.
Adrian frowned, setting the champagne bottle on the nightstand. He picked up the envelope.
Inside was a single document: a fully executed, signed petition for divorce, demanding zero financial settlement, zero alimony, and zero property distribution.
Attached to it was a small sticky note in Evelyn’s neat, precise handwriting:
“You said you made my work valuable. Keep the penthouse. Keep the furniture. Keep Sloane. I took the only thing in this house that had any real worth.”
Adrian’s chest tightened. He rushed to his private study. He opened the concealed floor safe behind the bookcase.
The green ledger folders—the ones containing the off-book offshore accounts he used to pay off corrupt city inspectors for the Renewal real estate acquisitions—were gone.
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded his veins.
He pulled out his phone and dialed Evelyn’s number.
“The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service.”
“Dammit!” Adrian cursed, slamming his fist onto the mahogany desk.
His phone began to vibrate in his palm. The caller ID showed Sloane.
He answered angrily. “What?”
“Adrian, we have a problem,” Sloane’s voice came through the speaker, high-pitched and laced with anxiety. “The lead buyer from Saks just called me. They received an anonymous package in the mail this evening.”
Adrian’s blood turned to ice. “What kind of package?”
“Physical swatches of the Renewal sustainable silk line,” Sloane stammered. “With handwritten production notes dated two years ago... signed by Evelyn. Saks has placed our pre-order contract on administrative hold until we can verify intellectual property ownership!”
Adrian stood frozen in the middle of his study, the darkness of the empty penthouse pressing in on him from every side.
He thought he had pushed a quiet, weak woman out of his life. He thought he had erased her from the server, erased her from the building, erased her from his success.
He turned around and looked at the empty space behind his desk where her drawing easel used to stand.
May you like
For the first time since he had ordered his security director to kill the cameras, Adrian Mercer realized he wasn't the hunter in this story.
He was the prey.
