Chapter 5 - The Ultimatum in the Study
Back in Westchester, the Marino estate was pitch black except for the single desk lamp burning in Dominic’s second-floor study.
The room was freezing. The central heating had shut down an hour ago when the estate’s automated maintenance system detected an unauthorized override code—a security protocol only two people in the state possessed: Dominic Marino and Walter Hayes.
Dominic sat behind his mahogany desk, his iPhone flat on the blotter, glowing with incoming messages from Richard Vance, his private investigators, and three separate board members demanding an emergency conference call regarding the municipal contract.
The door opened without a knock.
Vanessa stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her silk robe, her face pale in the dim light.
“The heat is off, Dominic. The housekeeper—the new agency temp—refused to bring up my dinner. She said she’s quitting too. What is happening to this house?”
Dominic didn’t look up from his screen. He was staring at the PDF file Carrie’s lawyer had sent him—specifically the attachment on page twelve: a scanned copy of his own signature on a secret promissory note he had signed three years ago to bail out one of Vanessa’s failed business ventures in Soho. A note that, if made public, would prove he had been funneling corporate funds into his mistress’s personal accounts while filing joint tax returns with his pregnant wife.
“Pack your bags, Vanessa,” Dominic said. His voice wasn’t angry. It was flat, hollow, and utterly final.
Vanessa stared at him, her mouth parting in disbelief. “What did you say?”
“I said pack your bags,” Dominic repeated, finally looking up. His eyes were bloodshot, the shadow of a dark beard lining his jaw. “You have twenty minutes before the driver takes you back to your apartment in the city.”
“You’re kicking me out?” Vanessa’s voice rose into a shrill, hysterical pitch that bounced off the mahogany walls. “Because your wife had a temper tantrum? Because your mother decided to play dramatic martyr at the Delamar? You built this empire, Dominic! You don’t bow down to women who—”
“I built this empire,” Dominic interrupted, standing up so violently his chair tipped backward onto the Persian rug, “because Carrie managed the books, smoothed over the board members, covered for my father’s mistakes, and kept my mother from cutting us both out of the family trust.”
He stepped around the desk, stopping two feet from Vanessa. The man she had known as a ruthless, untouchable Manhattan titan was gone; in his place stood someone terrifyingly hollow.
“And now,” Dominic whispered, his voice trembling with a rage that had nowhere to go, “she’s sitting in a room somewhere in this county with my child, my mother has abandoned my estate, four people who watched me grow up have walked off the property without taking a single month of severance, and my lawyer is telling me I’m six signatures away from a federal investigation into corporate embezzlement.”
Vanessa backed away until her shoulders hit the doorframe. “You’re bluffing. You’ll fix it. You always fix it.”
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“I don’t fix anything anymore,” Dominic said, turning his back on her and walking toward the dark window that looked out over the empty driveway where Carrie’s car used to sit. “Because for the first time in my life, Vanessa… there is no one left to clean up the mess.”
Outside, the rain began to fall harder, beating against the glass with a rhythmic, indifferent fury that sounded suspiciously like a closing door.
