Chapter 8 - The Collapse and the Rebuilding
Over the next six months, the city’s business social pages read like a slow-motion demolition derby.
Unable to secure his fifty-million-dollar credit line without the drainage lease, Richard Vance was forced to sell sixty percent of Vance Development Corp to an institutional investment fund at a devastating forty percent loss. His reputation as an untouchable real estate mogul was shattered overnight.
Chloe, refusing to live on Nathan’s reduced junior-researcher salary, filed for divorce four months later. She demanded the suburban mansion, full custody of baby Oliver, and a massive alimony settlement.
However, Arthur Sterling’s litigation team—acting under my explicit instructions—represented Nathan in the divorce proceedings.
Using the hospital’s security footage from that fateful afternoon (which Arthur had quietly subpoenaed from St. Catherine’s Hospital), along with Chloe’s public social media posts, Arthur’s team proved that Chloe was emotionally volatile, physically aggressive, and had made false statements to law enforcement regarding my eviction from the hospital suite.
The family court judge awarded joint fifty-fifty physical custody of baby Oliver to Nathan, while ordering the immediate sale of the suburban mansion to satisfy outstanding marital debts.
Chloe was forced to move back into her parents’ house, her social standing ruined, her country-club friends quietly scrubbing her from their event lists.
Nathan moved into a small, simple two-bedroom apartment six blocks away from Elm Street.
He lost his corner office. He lost his tailored designer suits. He lost his status.
Every morning at 6:30 AM, Nathan rode the subway to work, sitting among ordinary working people, carrying a canvas briefcase containing legal research briefs for junior partners who used to be his subordinates.
He worked twelve hours a day. He didn't complain. He didn't yell. He didn't blame anyone else.
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For the first time in his life, Nathan was forced to stand on his own two feet without his mother’s secret financial cushion or his father-in-law’s corporate connections.
And every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, after finishing his research shifts, Nathan walked six blocks through the neighborhood, carrying a diaper bag and a stroller, to the small white house on Elm Street.
