Chapter 2 - The Demands of the Arrogant
The penthouse suite of the Blackwood Manor in Greenwich, Connecticut, was thick with the scent of lilies and French roast coffee on Monday morning.
Victoria Blackwood sat at the marble kitchen island, wrapped in a silk kimono, scrolling through Instagram with an irritated sneer on her face. Her head throbbed with a champagne hangover, but her irritation far outweighed her physical discomfort.
"Has the little peasant called you yet?"
Margaret Blackwood swept into the kitchen, wearing a cashmere robe and diamond studs. Her expression was imperious, though her makeup couldn't entirely hide the tight lines of exhaustion around her mouth.
"No," Victoria snapped, tossing her phone onto the counter. "He turned off his location, and he hasn't read my messages since midnight. Can you believe the nerve of him? Dropping the ring in front of everyone! Senator Hayes's wife was standing right behind us! I was humiliated!"
"Good riddance to bad rubbish," Margaret said dismissively, pouring herself an espresso from the built-in machine. "The boy was utterly devoid of class. I told your father from day one that bringing someone with no pedigree into this family was an insult to our ancestors. That father of his looked like he smelled of motor oil. Imagine having that man at our Christmas galas."
"He was useful, Mother," Victoria said through gritted teeth. "Daniel was predictable. He took care of everything I asked, he never looked at other women, and he worshiped the ground I walked on. Now I have to go through the whole process of finding someone else, and the social season has already started."
"You won't have to look far, darling," Margaret smiled coldly. "Harrison Sterling asked about you last week. The Sterling family controls half the shipping terminals in New Jersey. That is real money. That is breeding. Not some mid-level logistics clerk who thinks a four-hundred-dollar suit makes his working-class father a gentleman."
Just then, Richard Blackwood strode into the kitchen.
Unlike his wife and daughter, Richard looked like a man who hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. His silk tie was askew, his silver hair was disheveled, and the skin beneath his eyes was swollen and dark. He was clutching a thick leather portfolio to his chest as if it were a life raft.
"Richard, what on earth is the matter with you?" Margaret frowned, setting her cup down. "You look dreadful. Don't tell me you're still obsessing over that little scene last night. Daniel is gone. Good riddance."
"Shut up, Margaret," Richard rasped, his voice ragged.
Margaret gasped, her face flushing crimson. "Excuse me?! How dare you speak to—"
"I said shut up!" Richard roared, slamming his fist onto the marble counter so hard that the china rattled. "You and your venomous mouth! Do you have any idea what you did last night?!"
Victoria recoiled, her eyes widening. "Dad? What are you talking about? He was just Daniel!"
"Just Daniel?!" Richard's hands were shaking violently as he pulled a document from the folder. "At six o'clock this morning, my chief accountant received an encrypted priority notice from Sovereign Horizon Group. The restructuring facility—the four-hundred-and-twenty-million-dollar credit line that keeps Blackwood Holdings breathing—has been unilaterally terminated."
The kitchen fell into a stunned, breathless silence.
"Terminated?" Victoria blinked, failing to grasp the magnitude. "What does that mean? Just go to another bank. Talk to Chase or Citibank."
"You stupid, ignorant girl!" Richard spat, his voice trembling with terror. "No commercial bank will touch us! Sovereign Horizon holds the senior lien on every single asset we own! Our office towers, the hotel, the Hamptons property, this house! They own our debt! If they terminate the facility, our secondary credit lines default automatically. We owe eighty million dollars by Wednesday afternoon, and we don't have eighty million cents!"
Margaret pressed a hand to her chest, her arrogant facade cracking for the first time. "Richard... you said that syndicate was managed by friendly institutional investors. You said they renewed every year without hassle!"
"They did!" Richard paced back and forth, clutching his temples. "For eighteen months, they gave us the most generous terms in the industry! They never interfered! But thirty minutes ago, I reached Marcus Vance, the managing director of Sovereign Horizon. Do you know what he told me?"
"What?" Margaret whispered.
"He told me that the Chairman reviewed our family’s conduct and determined that Blackwood Holdings failed the fundamental character and governance standards required for high-tier institutional partnership." Richard stared at his wife with eyes full of murder. "Vance specifically mentioned that the decision came directly from the ultimate beneficial owner of the fund."
Victoria let out a shaky, contemptuous laugh. "Well, what does that have to do with Daniel? Daniel is a nobody. He’s probably crying in his little apartment right now, regretting that he walked out on me."
"I don't care about Daniel!" Richard yelled. "I care that our entire family is facing bankruptcy in seventy-two hours! Vance agreed to grant me an audience at ten o'clock this morning at their headquarters on Wall Street. I am going down there to get on my knees if I have to. And you—" he pointed a trembling finger at Victoria, "—you are going to call Daniel Bennett and tell him to apologize. Because right now, the press is already whispering about our liquidity problems, and the last thing we need is rumors of a broken engagement rattling the market even further!"
Victoria scowled, but the fear in her father's eyes was contagious. She grabbed her phone and dialed my number again.
It rang three times before going straight to voicemail.
Furious, she hammered out another text:
*Daniel, my father has a critical meeting this morning and doesn't need your childish drama. You made a complete fool of yourself last night. If you want any chance of me forgiving you, you will show up at Blackwood Manor by noon, apologize to my mother on your knees, and bring a formal written apology for your father's behavior. Don't test my patience.*
She hit send, convinced that her royal decree would bring me crawling back.
May you like
She had no idea that at that exact moment, my car was pulling into the private subterranean garage beneath the Sovereign Horizon Tower on Wall Street.
***
