Chapter 4 - The Board's Panic
The heavy silence in the hospital room was immediately shattered by the frantic ringing of Adrian's cell phone.
Adrian frantically pulled the phone from his pocket, his hands shaking so violently he almost dropped it.
He looked at the caller ID and whispered that it was the chairman of his board of directors.
Arthur Whitmore smiled grimly and suggested that Adrian should probably answer that call.
Adrian pressed the phone to his ear and weakly said hello.
Even from across the room, I could hear the chairman screaming through the small speaker.
The board had just received emergency notifications that their primary lenders were demanding immediate repayment of all outstanding debts.
The company's stock, which traded heavily on after-hours markets, was already in a catastrophic freefall.
Adrian desperately tried to assure the chairman that he was handling the situation.
The chairman loudly cursed at him, demanding to know why the Whitmore merger had suddenly collapsed.
Adrian looked helplessly at me, his perfect world completely unraveling in a matter of minutes.
He told the chairman that Claire had executed a hostile injunction against the merger.
The chairman abruptly stopped screaming.
There was a terrifying pause on the line before the chairman spoke again in a dead, cold voice.
The chairman informed Adrian that the board was convening an emergency vote of no confidence effective immediately.
The line went dead, and Adrian dropped the phone onto the floor.
He fell to his knees beside my hospital bed, abandoning all of his previous pride and arrogance.
He practically begged me to lift the injunction, swearing he would give me whatever I wanted.
He promised to give me full custody of our daughter, a massive alimony settlement, and complete public credit for the company's success.
I looked down at the man I had loved for thirteen years, feeling absolutely nothing but pity.
I told him that he could not offer me custody of a child he had never even wanted.
Celeste stepped forward, her expensive wedding dress rustling loudly against the linoleum floor.
She looked down at her new husband groveling on the floor and sneered in pure disgust.
She demanded to know if it was true that he never wanted the baby.
Adrian scrambled to his feet, trying to desperately grab Celeste's hands.
He swore that the baby was an accident that ruined his timeline, but he loved Celeste perfectly.
That was the exact moment I decided to completely end him.
I asked Sarah to play the audio file we had secured yesterday afternoon.
Sarah pulled a small digital recorder from her briefcase and pressed the play button.
Adrian's own voice echoed clearly through the hospital room.
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The recording captured him speaking to his corporate fixer in a private restaurant booth.
On the tape, Adrian explicitly bragged that getting me pregnant was a calculated strategy to keep me distracted and exhausted during the divorce proceedings.
