Chapter 5 - Panic at the Restaurant
Back at The Gilded Hearth, the celebration had devolved into a full-scale corporate and familial disaster.
Guests who had spent the evening congratulating Michael now hurried past him toward the valet station, desperate to distance themselves from the unfolding scandal. Regional sales directors whispered among themselves, taking mental notes of how a man who couldn't even manage his own household finances could possibly be trusted with corporate accounts.
Jessica was in full hysterics, sitting at the head table with a glass of lukewarm water she refused to drink, sobbing loudly about how her reputation in Wisconsin had been ruined forever.
“Where is she?!” Jessica shrieked, grabbing Michael by the lapel of his tailored suit as he stood frozen near the shattered glass. “Find your wife right now, Michael! Tell her to call off her lawyers! Tell her to apologize to me for this public execution!”
“Mom, shut up!” Michael roared, finally snapping under the crushing weight of public humiliation. He pushed her hands away so violently that she stumbled back into her chair. “Don't you get it?! She doesn't care about an apology! She doesn't care about my job! She holds the debt on my car, my office lease, my bank accounts, and this entire venue! We are broke, Mom! Do you hear me? We are completely, utterly broke!”
David Harrell sat staring blankly at his empty plate. The seventy-year-old patriarch, who had spent a lifetime sneering at working-class people and demanding deference from everyone around him, looked ten years older than he had an hour ago.
“All these years,” David muttered, his voice cracking with bitter irony. “We thought she was a dependent. We thought she was lucky to have a Harrell. And all along... we were just living inside her charity case.”
“Mr. Harrell?”
A young man in a crisp suit—one of Attorney Dawson’s junior associates—stood beside David, holding a manila folder.
David looked up, his eyes hollow. “What do you want?”
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“Mrs. Harrell has authorized a temporary grace period for personal items,” the associate said smoothly, placing a single document on the table. “You have forty-eight hours to vacate your temporary residence in Minneapolis before the commercial eviction notice takes effect. Here is a list of approved storage facilities. Good evening.”
The associate turned and walked away, leaving the Harrell family sitting in the wreckage of their own manufactured royalty.
