Chapter 3 - The Cold Apartment
By 2:00 a.m., the rain had begun to fall over Manhattan, slicking the pavement of Fifth Avenue in long, shimmering reflections of neon and gold.
The penthouse at the top of the Whitaker Tower was silent.
Grant walked through the double oak doors, his heavy footsteps echoing against the marble foyer. The apartment was dark, save for the ambient light of the city glowing through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
He walked into the master bedroom.
The walk-in closet door stood wide open.
Half the clothes were gone. Her simple dresses, her silk scarves, her mother’s antique jewelry box—everything that belonged to Evelyn had been removed with surgical precision.
On the center vanity table sat two items.
The first was her wedding ring—a five-carat flawless diamond Grant had bought her four years ago after he was photographed leaving a Miami hotel with an Italian model.
The second was a small, hand-drawn sketch.
Grant walked over to the vanity, his hands trembling as he picked up the paper.
It was a sketch her father had drawn in 2011—a design for a small, sunlit seaside cottage in Maine, with a large porch overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Beneath the sketch, in Evelyn’s neat handwriting, were five words:
“I was never your ornament, Grant.”
Grant dropped the paper. He sank onto the edge of the large, empty bed, burying his face in his hands as the rain pounded violently against the glass.
For eight years, he had believed he was the master of his universe. He had believed that money, power, and public admiration gave him the right to dismiss the woman who cooked his meals, kept his secrets, and waited up for him until 3:00 a.m. every night.
Now, sitting in the vast, empty penthouse that cost forty thousand dollars a month, he realized the terrifying truth.
The penthouse wasn't a home. It was a museum.
And the only thing inside it that had ever been real was the woman he had driven away.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand.
It was Lila Monroe.
“Grant? Where are you? The press is sitting outside my apartment. Are we still going to the Hamptons this weekend?”
May you like
Grant stared at the screen for three long seconds.
He didn't reply. He blocked her number, threw the phone against the wall where it shattered into plastic fragments, and lay down on the cold, empty bed in his suit.