Blog

Chapter 6: The Beggar

The news of Gavin’s catastrophic collapse quickly reached my ears via Hayes. It was all within my precise, mathematical calculations.

My private cell phone rang. The caller ID was Gavin.

I pressed the answer button, feeling a wave of exhaustion.

“Rowan, what exactly is your goal here?!” Gavin’s enraged voice assaulted my ears. “What unforgivable offense did I commit against you that you insist on trying to destroy my family’s legacy?”

“Gavin,” I said softly, my voice raspy. “My protection of your pathetic ego over the past three years has been more than enough. You are on your own.”

“Protection? You are truly a shameless, vindictive bitch, claiming you’re the victim while you stab me in the back!” Gavin roared, unleashing a torrent of vicious, desperate insults.

I didn’t feel anger anymore. I just felt profoundly tired. I couldn’t understand how I had ever worshipped a man with such a fragile, hollow core. I decisively tapped the red button, hanging up on him mid-sentence.

I pulled the SIM card out of the phone, snapped it in half, and threw it in the trash.

Since that day, my phone was completely unreachable. I was relieved, but Gavin was not so lucky.

After much agonizing deliberation, Gavin realized his pride was going to cost him his company. He personally drove to my corporate headquarters.

He paced back and forth in the grand marble lobby.

“Ms. Rowan is no longer at the company. Do you need anything else, Mr. Gavin?” Hayes asked coldly, stepping out of the executive elevator, offering not a single ounce of professional courtesy.

“When will she be back? I will wait here,” Gavin demanded, his tone dripping with his usual arrogance.

Hayes didn’t reply. He simply walked past Gavin and left the building.

Late into the afternoon, the employees gradually filed out. Gavin, growing increasingly panicked, jumped up from the waiting area, staring at the revolving doors. Until the final security lights went out at midnight, he still hadn’t seen me.

The next morning, when Hayes arrived to clear out my remaining files, he saw a man sitting on the cold concrete steps of the building from a block away. Only when he got closer did he realize the disheveled, unshaven man in the wrinkled suit was the billionaire CEO.

“I want to see Rowan,” Gavin said, his voice hoarse. He wanted to leave arrogantly, but he couldn’t. His board of directors had given him forty-eight hours to secure funding or face expulsion.

Hayes looked at the man with bloodshot eyes and sighed. He pulled out his phone and called my temporary apartment.

“Let him up,” I instructed.

I was sitting in my old executive office. The room had already been stripped of my personal belongings. Even the fresh orchids on the desk had wilted and died, their brown petals resting on the glass.

The heavy doors opened. Gavin walked in.

“Rowan?” Gavin called out uncertainly, looking around. “Why does this office look so dead?”

“What do you want, Gavin?” I asked, my voice chillingly cold, leaning back in my leather chair.

“The revoked contracts. The patent licenses,” Gavin stammered, walking closer to the desk. “You can’t just pull the rug out from under me like this. The market is slaughtering us.”

“I can, and I did,” I replied evenly. “You can’t just take advantage of your shield and then stab it when you think you’re safe. If that’s all you came to whine about, you can leave.”

I started to lose patience. The pain medication was wearing off, and a deep, agonizing ache was radiating from my stomach into my spine.

Gavin didn’t respond. He looked as if he were trying to swallow glass.

“Rowan, please. I am begging you. Help me one more time. Just this last time,” Gavin whispered, lowering his eyes, suddenly unable to look at me.

I couldn’t help it. A dry, humorless laugh escaped my lips.

“Gavin, when you beg someone, you should actually adopt the posture of a beggar,” I said sarcastically.

I stood up slowly, fighting the intense wave of nausea, and walked around the desk. The sharp click of my stilettos echoed in the empty room. I stopped directly in front of him. Because he had his head bowed in shame, and with the height of my heels, I was looking down at him.

After a moment of agonizing hesitation, Gavin’s broad shoulders slumped. His knees buckled.

He was actually going to kneel on the floor.

Just as his knees were about to hit the carpet, I reached out and grabbed his forearm, stopping his descent. His muscles were rigid. If I squeezed any harder, my brittle fingernails would break against his suit jacket.

Gavin finally looked up at me. In his eyes, there was no love. There was no remorse for the hospital. There was only blatant, desperate, suffocating greed. He just wanted his company back.

I let go of his arm, chuckling coldly to myself. Before the threat of absolute poverty, a man’s pride meant absolutely nothing.

Just as Gavin’s face lit up with relief, thinking I had accepted his submission, I immediately extinguished his delusion.

“Hayes, escort him out,” I commanded loudly toward the open door.

I walked back around my desk, turning my back to him, refusing to look at his face again. The dismissal was absolute. Gavin had no choice but to let security usher him out of the building.

After settling the final legal transfers to Leo, I boarded a private charter flight to the remote coastal town in the Pacific Northwest. I didn’t bring any staff. I didn’t bring Hayes. I just wanted to spend my final weeks entirely alone, watching the ocean.

Chapter 7: The Hunt

What I didn’t know was that a few days later, Gavin returned to my corporate building.

The only difference was that I was no longer there. Even the wilted flowers had been thrown in the trash.

“Ms. Rowan has been gone for over a week. She stepped down from the board to travel, and I have no idea where she went,” Hayes lied smoothly, packing the final boxes into a crate.

“She stepped down? What about the divorce agreement she dropped off?” Gavin demanded.

Hayes paused, looking at Gavin with utter disdain. “You mean the one your mistress shredded? Ms. Rowan requested you sign it immediately. She wanted to finalize the separation before she left.”

It turned out she was the one trying to leave him. Gavin felt a strange, deeply unsettling knot form in his chest. Wasn’t she the one who had forced this marriage? Why was she the one walking away so cleanly?

Hayes pulled a freshly printed copy of the divorce decree from his briefcase and slid it across the glass table.

Gavin read the terms. Both parties agreed to terminate the marriage. The massive commercial real estate holdings owned by Gavin’s family would remain entirely his. In a final, shocking clause, Rowan was personally paying him an eight-million-dollar severance package as “divorce compensation.”

“Did she draft this?” Gavin asked, his voice hollow. She hadn’t taken a single dime from him. She had actually paid him to leave her alone.

“If there are no objections, sign it,” Hayes said coldly. “Don’t delay the legal proceedings.”

Gavin picked up the heavy pen. He hesitated for a long moment, staring at the signature line. Finally, he signed his name. Eight million dollars would briefly stall his creditors.

Just as he set the pen down, the office doors flew open.

Leo stormed into the room, his eyes blazing with a feral, uncontrollable rage. When he saw Gavin holding the signed divorce papers, Leo lunged forward.

He tackled the billionaire CEO to the floor. Leo straddled Gavin’s chest, raining brutal, heavy punches down onto Gavin’s face. He punched him until his knuckles bled, until blood trickled from Gavin’s nose and split lip, until Hayes physically dragged Leo off the gasping executive.

“You parasitic bastard!” Leo screamed, struggling against Hayes’ grip, tears streaming down his furious face. “She gave you everything, and you threw her in the garbage!”

Gavin left the building in a daze, his face bruised and bleeding, clutching the crumpled divorce agreement in his trembling hand.

When Gavin returned to his penthouse, Vivian rushed out to meet him.

“Gavin, what happened to your face?!” Vivian gasped. Gavin hadn’t been home for three days, frantically trying to salvage his company. Before, he would always text her his location.

Gavin looked at her, his eyes red and exhausted. “Vivian… are you hiding something from me?”

Vivian’s eyes widened, filling with immediate, defensive tears. “Gavin, what are you saying? How could I hide anything from you? I’m your partner. I’m the mother of your child!”

She deliberately emphasized the child, placing a protective hand over her flat stomach.

Gavin stared at the woman in front of him. He looked down at the divorce papers in his hand. Vivian reached out to snatch the documents, eager to see if she was finally the undisputed queen of the estate.

“Take your hands off that,” Gavin snapped, stepping backward, creating a sharp physical distance between them.

He didn’t look at her with adoration. He looked at her with a sudden, terrifying clarity. He turned to his security detail standing by the door. “Have the driver take Miss Vivian back to her apartment.”

Vivian froze. He didn’t call her “darling.” He called her Miss Vivian. She could clearly sense the catastrophic shift in his demeanor, and a cold spike of panic lodged in her throat.

(Click ‘Next’ to continue)