Chapter 2 - The Taste of Rain
The storm outside Atlas House had turned from a steady drizzle into a sheets-down Chicago downpour.
Noel stepped through the heavy glass double doors of the restaurant and into the icy rain without stopping to retrieve her coat from the cloakroom. The cold water hit her heated face immediately, stinging the split skin of her lip and washing away the lingering metallic taste of her own blood.
She walked fast, her heels striking the wet pavement of Michigan Avenue with rhythmic precision. She didn't look back to see if security was following her, nor did she check to see if Darius had managed to pull himself out of the ruined dining room.
Her phone began to vibrate violently inside her clutch purse.
She pulled it out as she stood under the awning of a closed high-end jewelry store two blocks away. The screen illuminated with Darius’s caller ID, accompanied by three rapid-fire text messages from his personal assistant, Marcus, and two notifications from the Holt Table board group chat.
DARIUS: You are dead to me. Do you have any idea what you just did? DARIUS: Answer your phone, Noel. MARCUS: Mrs. Holt, Mr. Vance is threatening to pull the Series B funding. Please tell me where you are.
Noel stared at the illuminated screen for a long, quiet moment. The rain streamed off the edge of the awning, dropping in a heavy curtain just inches from her toes.
She did not answer the calls. She did not open the messages.
Instead, she opened her contacts, found the number for Marcus, and typed a single reply:
NOEL: Send my personal belongings from the North State Parkway penthouse to the Drake Hotel under my maiden name. If Darius touches a single box, I release the audited books from the second-quarter tax filing.
She hit send, deleted the thread, and removed her SIM card from the side of her phone, dropping the small piece of plastic straight down into the storm drain beneath her feet.
Without a working cell signal, the night suddenly felt vast and empty.
Noel took a deep breath of the freezing, ozone-heavy air. For six years, her entire existence had been dictated by Darius Holt’s calendar. Every morning began with his briefing; every evening concluded with his networking events, his investors, his grand visions for scaling Holt Table from a boutique restaurant group into a national hospitality conglomerate.
She had built the operational backbone of his company. She had designed the supply chain systems that kept six high-end locations running with minimal waste. She had personally vetted every head chef, negotiated every commercial lease, and smoothed over every PR nightmare Darius created whenever his ego outpaced his intelligence.
And in return, she had been given a seat at the edge of the table, a allowance for designer clothes, and a crack across the jaw in front of forty people because she wouldn't drink a glass of champagne while taking sinus medication.
A yellow taxi pulled up to the curb, its tires splashing a wave of rainwater over the sidewalk. Noel hailed it, opened the door, and slid into the worn leather backseat.
“Where to, lady?” the driver asked, checking his rearview mirror with a quick glance that lingered slightly on her lip and her stained silk blouse.
“The Drake,” Noel said quietly. “And take the long way down Lake Shore Drive.”
As the taxi pulled away from the curb, Noel reached into her purse and pulled out a small black leather notebook—the only item she had taken from her seat before picking up the soup.
It was her personal ledger. It didn't contain menus or seating arrangements. It contained six years of private bank account numbers, off-book transfers between Holt Table’s holding companies, and the full paper trail of Darius’s secondary offshore shell company in the Cayman Islands—a company he thought only he and Leila Morgan knew existed.
Noel ran her thumb over the embossed leather cover.
May you like
She wasn't going to hide in a hotel room and cry. She wasn't going to file a standard divorce petition and settle for half of his assets.
She was going to take everything he had built on her back, and she was going to leave him with nothing but the burnt suit he was currently peeling off his body.
