Chapter Seven: The Friend Who Disappeared
He found himself walking aimlessly down Fifth Avenue.
He passed the stores he used to shop in. Gucci. Tiffany. Bergdorf Goodman.
They all seemed like fortresses now—impenetrable and hostile.
His phone buzzed again.
An incoming call. Unknown number.
He answered it, desperate for a friendly voice.
“Hello, Harrison.”
It was a voice he recognized.
Carter Bennett. His best friend. His college roommate. A hedge fund manager worth three billion dollars.
“Carter.”
Harrison almost sobbed.
“Carter, you have to help me. It’s a nightmare. Saraphina is doing something—legal jiu-jitsu. They locked me out of the apartment. Can I crash at your place in Tribeca? Just for a night, until I get my lawyers to fix this?”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
“Harrison, look,” Carter said, his voice awkward.
“I can’t really do that.”
“Why not? We’ve been friends for twenty years.”
“Yeah, but my fund. The Bennett Group.”
Carter cleared his throat.
“Our biggest LP—our biggest investor—is the Caldwell Trust. They provide forty percent of our capital.”
Harrison stopped walking.
He stared at a puddle on the ground, watching the raindrops create ripples that vanished in an instant.
“She called you,” Harrison said dully.
“Her lawyers did,” Carter admitted.
“They implied that if I offered aid and comfort to a known financial liability, they might reconsider their allocation strategy. They might pull their money, Harrison. I can’t lose forty percent of the fund. I have investors. I have a wife.”
“She’s blackmailing the whole city.”
“She’s not blackmailing anyone,” Carter said.
And for the first time, he sounded fearful.
“She’s just calling in the debts. She’s the ocean, Harrison. You don’t fight the ocean.”
He paused.
“I’m sorry. Good luck.”
The line clicked dead.
Harrison stood alone on the corner of Fifth and Fifty-Seventh.
He was wet. Shivering. Holding a plastic bag with a dead phone.
He had $4,900 in his pocket.
But in the world he used to inhabit, he was destitute.
He looked up at the towering skyscrapers disappearing into the mist.
He used to think he was one of the giants who built them.
Now he realized he was just a tenant.
And the landlord had just changed the locks.
