Chapter 3 - The Celebration at Birchwood Arms
While Claire lay in the quiet luxury of Saint Jude’s Private Pavilion, the atmosphere inside Apartment 7 at Birchwood Arms was entirely different.
The smell of wet wool and rain had been replaced by the heavy scent of expensive takeaway sushi, cheap prosecco, and Amber’s signature floral perfume.
Derek sat on the leather sofa—the one he had bought on a three-year financing plan that still had eleven months of payments remaining—with a glass of cold wine in his hand. His tie was loosened, his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and for the first time in six months, he felt an exhilarating sense of weightlessness.
The tension that had filled the apartment for the last half-year—the quiet, heavy disappointment in Claire’s eyes, the endless medical appointments, the stack of nursery bills sitting on the kitchen counter—was gone.
“To new beginnings,” Barbara said, raising her glass from her position near the dining table. She had already cleared Claire’s botanical prints off the wall and stacked them near the trash chute in the hallway. “A proper home for my son at last.”
Amber came out of the master bedroom wearing a silk robe that Claire had left behind in the closet. It was too long for her, dragging slightly on the floorboards, but she wore it with the casual arrogance of a conqueror inspecting new territory.
“The closet space in there is ridiculous,” Amber said, sitting on the arm of Derek’s chair and leaning down to kiss his cheek for the camera she was still holding in her left hand. “She had so many boring beige dresses in there. I put them all in trash bags and dragged them out to the landing.”
Derek smiled, though a tiny, involuntary twitch caught the corner of his left eye. “Did you have to put them on the landing? The building manager gets annoyed about stuff in the common areas.”
“Oh, who cares about the building manager?” Amber laughed, taking a sip from his glass. “We’re paying four thousand a month for this place. They can handle a few trash bags for one night.”
Barbara nodded approvingly. “Amber is right, Derek. You need to start asserting yourself more. You’ve been far too passive with Claire. Letting her sit around drawing those little pictures while you carried the entire financial burden.”
“She did pay half the rent, Mom,” Derek muttered, taking a larger gulp of his wine than he intended.
“With what?” Barbara snorted. “With those small freelance checks that barely covered her own doctor’s visits? Please. You were paying for the insurance, the utilities, the car lease. You were practically supporting a charity case.”
Derek did not correct his mother. It felt better to agree with her. It felt better to believe that he had been the provider, the martyr, the hard-working man who had finally put his foot down against an ungrateful, dreary wife.
Amber swung her legs over his lap, pointing her phone toward her own face. “Okay, story time for my followers,” she whispered into the microphone, her eyes sparkling with dramatic flair. “Update on the situation: the dead weight is officially removed. We are currently celebrating in our new place. Out with the old, in with the gold.”
Derek grinned for the lens, raising his glass on cue. He liked the way he looked on Amber’s feed. She used filters that made his jawline look sharper and his hairline thicker. With Claire, there were no filters. Claire looked at him with clear, grey eyes that saw every insecurity, every shortcut he took at work, every time he inflated his sales figures to make himself sound important.
Being with Claire felt like sitting for an exam he was constantly failing. Being with Amber felt like winning an award he hadn't even had to run for.
“What about her doctor’s appointment on Thursday?” Derek asked suddenly, the thought slipping out before he could stop it. “She’s supposed to have the final growth scan.”
Barbara set her glass down with a sharp clink. “Derek, stop it. She has brothers, doesn't she? Or cousins up in Buffalo? Let them take care of her. You are not responsible for a woman who refused to make an effort in her own marriage.”
“She’s eight months along, Barb,” Amber said smoothly, though her eyes remained glued to her screen as she edited her video. “If she really needed help, she would have called someone. Did you see her face when she left? She didn't even cry. She’s probably sitting in some twenty-four-hour diner right now, waiting for you to call her and apologize. It’s a classic guilt trip.”
Derek remembered the way Claire had looked at him before she stepped out into the rain.
She hadn't looked angry. She hadn't looked panicked. She had looked at him with a strange, detached pity—the same way one might look at an actor who had forgotten his lines on stage.
The memory made a cold lump form in his stomach, but he chased it down with another swallow of cold wine.
“You’re right,” Derek said, forcing a laugh. “She’s trying to manipulate me. She’s always done that. Quietly judge me while I do all the work.”
“Exactly,” Barbara said, marching into the kitchen to pour herself another glass. “Now, tomorrow morning we need to go down to the bank and remove her name from the joint checking account. We don't want her draining your savings out of spite.”
“There’s only about fourteen hundred dollars in that account anyway,” Derek said, rubbing the back of his neck. “The deposit for the new car cleared yesterday.”
Amber looked up from her phone, her brow furrowing slightly. “Wait, what new car?”
“The BMW 4 Series,” Derek said, feeling a rush of pride as he mentioned it. “I put down the initial deposit using the quarterly bonus check.”
“I thought you said your bonus wasn't coming until next month?” Amber asked, her voice losing a bit of its playful tone.
“It’s guaranteed,” Derek said quickly. “My supervisor, Miller, told me last week that my sales metrics for the third quarter were at ninety percent of quota. The payout is automated.”
What Derek did not mention—what he had not told Barbara, Amber, or even his own lawyer—was that forty percent of those third-quarter sales metrics belonged to the Henderson Logistics account. And the Henderson account had been secured entirely through Claire’s personal connections and her redesign of their supply chain interfaces.
Derek had taken the credit on the internal company portal, of course. Claire hadn't minded; she had smiled, kissed his cheek, and told him she was happy to help his career. He had convinced himself that he could maintain the account on his own once the initial contracts were signed.
His phone buzzed on the coffee table.
It was an email notification from the internal server at Apex Logistics, his employer.
Derek reached for the phone, expecting a routine memo from the night shift or an automated confirmation of his car deposit. Instead, the subject line read: URGENT: SECURITY LOCKOUT – ACCOUNT #4092 (HENDERSON LOGISTICS).
He tapped the screen.
Mr. Shaw,
As of 21:15 EST, the secure data pipeline connecting Apex Logistics to the Henderson Group interface has encountered a critical authentication failure. The external design protocols and proprietary routing scripts registered under License Key #M-8891 have been revoked by the primary rights holder.
As a result, all pending Q3 shipments associated with this account are currently halted at the Hartford distribution hub.
Please contact Senior Partner Richard Miller immediately.
Derek stared at the screen. The blue light reflected in his eyes, turning his expression frozen and pale.
“Derek?” Barbara called from the kitchen. “Where do you keep the extra wine glasses? These ones are covered in dust.”
Derek did not answer. His thumbs were flying across the screen, trying to log into his company cloud drive to access the backup files Claire had created for him three months ago.
Every time he entered his credentials, the same red text flashed across the interface:
ACCESS DENIED. AUTHORIZATION REVOKED BY CREATOR.
“Derek?” Amber asked, standing up from the couch and looking at his face with sudden alertness. “What’s wrong? You look like you’re going to throw up.”
“Nothing,” Derek lied, his voice sounding thin and high in his own ears. “Just... a minor server glitch at the office. I need to make a call.”
He stood up, his legs feeling heavy and clumsy, and walked out onto the balcony overlooking Birchwood Avenue. The rain was still coming down in torrents, soaking his slippers the moment he stepped outside, but he did not feel the cold.
He dialed Richard Miller’s private cell number.
It rang six times before going to voicemail.
“Richard,” Derek said into the speaker, his voice trembling despite his best efforts to stay calm. “It’s Derek. I got the notification about the Henderson pipeline. There must be a glitch with the server license. I’m handling it right now. I’ll have the scripts back online before the morning shift starts. Don't worry about it.”
May you like
He ended the call and stood against the cold iron railing, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Below him, Birchwood Avenue was dark and empty, the water rushing down the gutters toward the river. For the first time that night, the silence of the apartment behind him felt less like victory and more like the quiet before a landslide.
