Chapter 5 - FREEDOM AND ONE LAST BETRAYAL
By March, the divorce was final.
Willa Mercer walked out of the courthouse carrying one folder and wearing no wedding ring.
She sat in her car afterward.
She expected grief.
Instead she felt quiet.
Freedom wasn’t fireworks.
It was space.
Room inside her own chest.
Grant appeared at her office three weeks later.
He looked nothing like the man she married.
His expensive suits were gone.
So was the tan.
He was thinner, his face hollowed by sleeplessness.
Willa almost didn’t recognize him.
“Five minutes,” she said.
Grant nodded.
He looked around her office.
Architectural plans covered one wall. Restaurant performance charts covered another. A photograph of the conservation studio sat beside her computer.
“You built all this?”
Willa folded her hands.
“Yes.”
“Damian gave it to you.”
There it was.
Even broken, Grant still couldn’t quite imagine she might have earned something.
“Your brother gave me a desk,” she said. “I built the rest.”
Grant lowered his eyes.
“You’re right.”
She waited.
He sat across from her.
“I’m in treatment.”
“For drinking?”
“And some other things.”
“Good.”
“I’m trying.”
“I hope you keep trying.”
His eyes filled.
“I miss you.”
Willa felt sadness.
But not temptation.
That surprised her.
“Grant—”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“Then don’t make me say it.”
“I love you.”
“No.”
He looked up.
Willa’s voice remained gentle.
“You love the version of me who arranged your life so you didn’t have to look at yourself.”
His face tightened.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
She stood.
“I loved you once. Very much.”
“Then maybe—”
“That isn’t an invitation.”
He went silent.
Willa walked around the desk.
“You want forgiveness because you think forgiveness means getting back what you lost.”
Grant began crying.
She didn’t hate him for it.
“But sometimes forgiveness means I stop wishing you pain while still refusing to let you hurt me again.”
He wiped his face.
“I’m sorry.”
“I believe you.”
That seemed to surprise him.
She opened the office door.
“And I hope someday you become someone who wouldn’t do it again.”
Grant paused in the doorway.
Then he nodded.
He left.
What Willa did not know was that he went directly to a bar near the river.
He ordered whiskey.
Stared at it for twenty minutes.
Didn’t drink it.
A stranger sat beside him.
Gray jacket.
Gold watch.
“Grant Bell?”
Grant looked over.
The man smiled.
“I work for Malcolm Voss.”
Grant should have stood up.
He didn’t.
Not immediately.
The man bought himself a drink.
Then asked one question.
“Where will Willa Mercer be during the Lakeside Grand opening?”
Grant stared at him.
And for one catastrophic second, the weak man inside him returned.
The resentful man.
The brother who had lost everything.
He answered.
Then he went home.
At 2:14 in the morning, Grant woke sweating.
May you like
At 2:18, he called Damian.
By then, the opening celebration was less than eighteen hours away.
