Chapter 6: The Ultimatum

Eleanor Peton returned from her emergency meetings in New York on the second of June in a foul, polished, and dangerous mood.

She had spent three grueling days begging a private equity firm to restructure the Peton bond covenants. She had hated every degrading second of it.

She marched past Hadley’s open office door without even looking inside. The annual Peton Charitable Foundation Gala was set for the seventeenth.

It was a massive, high-stakes black-tie affair. They needed to impress the mayor, the bishop, and four major investors who had recently pulled their funding.

On the eighth of June, Eleanor’s terrified assistant, Greta, walked into Hadley’s office. She placed a small, thick ivory envelope on the desk.

“What is this, Greta?” Hadley asked, looking at the embossed paper.

“I can’t stay,” Greta whispered, her eyes darting toward the hallway before she practically ran out of the room.

Hadley sliced the envelope open. It wasn’t a corporate memo. It was a royal decree.

At the Gala, Eleanor’s sharp handwriting read, I will be publicly announcing your engagement to Wittman Ashcroft IV. His family’s banking assets will secure our future. Wear the silver gown.

Hadley felt her stomach violently drop into her shoes. She hadn’t spoken to Wittman Ashcroft IV in eight years, not since he got blackout drunk and spilled champagne on her shoes.

She grabbed the letter, stormed down the mahogany corridor, and kicked Eleanor’s door shut behind her.

“You did not ask me,” Hadley snarled, throwing the heavy paper onto Eleanor’s immaculate desk.

Eleanor didn’t even look up from her laptop. “I did not need to.”

“I am thirty-six years old, Mother! I am the Chief Operating Officer of this company, not a piece of medieval property to be bartered away!”

“You will marry someone who matches the empire, Hadley,” Eleanor replied, finally looking up with eyes as cold as dead stars. “Wittman is suitable. His capital is suitable.”

“I will not do it.”

“We are not in a fairy tale,” Eleanor hissed, standing up to assert her dominance. “Daughters of houses like ours do not wait to be courted by men who actually have to work for a living. You will smile at the Gala, or I will strip you of your title.”

Hadley stood in the doorway, vibrating with raw, unadulterated fury. “You are destroying everything Marin tried to build.”

Eleanor flinched at the dead woman’s name, but quickly recovered her icy sneer. “Marin was weak. Do not make her mistake.”

Hadley turned and walked out. She didn’t return to her office.

She drove her car south through the historic district like a bat out of hell, blasting through yellow lights. She drove past the marina and past her childhood home.

She had spent her entire adult life swallowing Eleanor’s toxic poison to keep the peace. The accommodations had become so quiet, she had completely forgotten what they cost her soul.

She parked her car on the dark side street next to the Beaumont Inn. She walked around to the hidden harbor-side porch, kicked off her heels, and sat on the top wooden step.

It was 8:40 p.m. when Silas came walking around the corner from his cottage.

He was holding a heavy metal flashlight, but he didn’t turn it on. He saw her silhouette shivering on the steps in the dark.

Silas walked up the brick path silently. He didn’t ask why the corporate heiress was crying outside a construction zone.

He sat down on the second step, exactly one level below hers. He pulled a freezing cold bottle of water from his jacket and set it quietly on the brick beside her trembling hand.

Hadley picked it up, pressed the freezing plastic against her flushed cheek, and drank deeply.

Twenty-three minutes passed in absolute silence. The distant shrimp boats moved across the black water, slow and patient.

When Hadley finally stood up to leave, she paused. She reached out and rested her hand flat against Silas’s broad shoulder.

It was just once. It was the desperate, exhausted way a person touches the railing of a bridge they finally trust not to collapse.

“Thank you,” she whispered into the dark.

Silas didn’t speak. He watched her taillights fade down Tradd Street. He sat alone on the cold steps for another hour, never turning on the flashlight.

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