Chapter 3 - The Anatomy of a Mistake
I didn't go back to the table. I walked straight out of the steakhouse into the biting Chicago wind, leaving Arthur and the Dallas delegation to wonder what had happened to their golden boy.
My black town car was idling by the curb. The driver, Marcus, looked back through the partition as I slid into the leather-scented interior, slamming the door shut with a muffled thud.
“Sir? Are we heading back to the Drake?”
“No,” I said, staring blankly through the rain-streaked window at the neon lights reflecting off Michigan Avenue. “Wait.”
I pulled out my phone. My hands—usually steady, calculating, and cold—were shaking. For the first time in my life, my wealth felt like a cruel joke. I could buy out this restaurant. I could buy the entire block. I could purchase a controlling stake in the corporation holding our merger. But I couldn't buy back three years of lost time. I couldn't erase the image of Elizabeth carrying heavy trays with an infant strapped to her chest while I dined on dry-aged beef.
How did it come to this?
The memory clawed its way to the surface, uninvited.
I met Elizabeth when we were both nobodies living in a cramped studio apartment in Wicker Park. She was an art student with paint permanently stained under her fingernails; I was a junior analyst working eighty-hour weeks trying to break into private equity. We had nothing except each other. We ate ramen off a cardboard box, laughed until our ribs ached, and believed the world was ours for the taking.
As I climbed, something inside me warped. The more money I made, the more I needed. The more power I acquired, the more contemptuous I became of anything that slowed me down. Elizabeth didn't want the penthouse in River North; she wanted a home filled with plants, laughter, and a family. When she tried to talk to me about starting over, about slowing down, I called her small-minded. I told her she didn't understand the sacrifices required to be great.
When she packed her bags and left, she took nothing except her clothes and her sketchbooks. No alimony. No settlement. She just vanished.
And I told myself I was better off. I told myself she was an anchor cutting my line.
Now, looking through the tinted glass of my car at the entrance of the restaurant, watching employees trickle out the back door at the end of their shift, the truth tore through me like shrapnel.
She hadn't been an anchor. She had been the only real thing keeping me grounded to the earth. And I had cut the rope myself.
A slender figure emerged from the service alley, wearing a faded gray trench coat over her uniform pants, the baby carrier securely fastened to her front, shielded by a large wool blanket.
“Marcus,” I said quietly. “Follow her. Keep a discreet distance.”
May you like
“Yes, sir.”
The town car glided silently into the wet Chicago night, tailing the exhausted mother as she walked toward the subway station, stepping into the cold rain while I sat enveloped in luxury, watching my past slip through my fingers once again.
