Chapter 5 - The Financial House of Cards
"Mother, shut your mouth!" Ethan’s roar was so loud it startled the birds from the towering oaks surrounding the lawn.
He didn't just step forward; he put himself directly between Eleanor and our children. The transformation was terrifying. The broken, kneeling man had vanished. In his place stood the predator who had ruled boardroom after boardroom, his jaw clenched so tight the tendons in his neck looked like steel cables.
"Do not speak to them like that," Ethan said, his voice dropping into a register that vibrated with cold, unadulterated fury. "Do not ever use that word in my presence again."
"Ethan!" Eleanor cried, recoiling from her son's rage. "I did this for you! Everything I ever did was to protect your legacy! She was a nobody! She would have dragged you down into the dirt! Look at what she did—she hid your flesh and blood from you! She stole four years of their lives away from you!"
"Because you told him I killed them!" I fired back, my voice cutting through hers like a diamond blade. "You had your private physician falsify a medical termination report, Eleanor! You told Ethan I took your dirty money and walked away! If I had stayed, you would have used your judges, your high-priced attorneys, and your bought-and-paid-for police chiefs to declare me unfit and take my babies from me!"
Ethan turned to Eleanor, his face a mask of absolute horror. "Tell me she's lying."
Eleanor didn't answer. Her eyes darted toward the Hastings family, looking for an escape, looking for an ally. But Senator Hastings was already taking two steps backward, pulling his hysterical daughter with him. The senator was a politician above all else; he could smell a carcass from a mile away, and Montgomery Global was rotting right before his eyes.
"Tell me she is lying, Mother!" Ethan bellowed, stepping into her space, towering over her. "Did you forge that clinic report? Did you look me in the eye while I drank myself into a coma for six months and let me believe my wife killed my children?!"
"She wasn't worthy of us!" Eleanor finally screamed back, her aristocratic veneer shattering into raw, ugly spite. "She was white trash from Rockford! She didn't have the breeding! She didn't have the name! The Montgomery family has ruled this state for four generations! I wasn't going to let some mechanic's brat inherit everything my father built!"
A collective gasp echoed across the courtyard.
Eleanor had said it out loud. In front of the senators, the judges, the socialites, and worst of all, in front of the dozens of high-end wedding videographers whose cameras were still rolling, streaming the entire disaster to the screens set up inside the banquet pavilion.
"Four generations," Ethan repeated softly. His voice was suddenly devoid of anger. It had turned into something far more dangerous: total, chilling indifference. "And it ends today."
He reached up, grasped the silk tie at his throat, and yanked it loose with one brutal pull. He tore off the boutonnière of white gardenias—the symbol of his union with Caroline—and dropped it onto the grass, grinding it beneath the heel of his shoe.
"The wedding is off," Ethan announced to the entire gathering.
"Ethan, no!" Caroline wailed, trying to push past her father. "You can't do this to me! You can't leave me at the altar for *her*!"
"Caroline, shut up," Ethan said without even looking at her. "You never wanted me. You wanted the Montgomery name and the building on Michigan Avenue. Go ask your father to buy you another husband."
He turned back toward me, his chest rising and falling heavily.
"Avery," he whispered, his eyes searching mine with a desperation that was almost painful to witness. "Please. We need to talk. Not here. Not in front of them."
"We don't have anything to talk about, Ethan," I said coolly, taking Liam and Noah by the hands, while Caleb gripped Liam’s coat. "I didn't come here to win you back. I didn't come here for an apology."
"Then why did you come?" he asked, his voice cracking.
May you like
"To show your mother exactly what she threw away," I said, meeting Eleanor’s venomous, tear-streaked glare with absolute triumph. "And to serve you with notice. You have forty-eight hours to vacate this estate, Eleanor. The foreclosure paperwork has already been filed with the county clerk."
***
